Moss,
To stray from topic a bit, but how is heating with locust? I致e always heard it can burn too hot, be hard to control, warp stoves, etc...?
I love it! It's heavy wood. And it takes a couple years to dry out, although it will burn when wet pretty well, actually, which is surprising. But that will build up soot pretty fast in the pipe, and reduces the heat output considerably because you're boiling water. So, I don't do it. Did it a few times in a pinch when we first got the stove, but after seeing the spark screen on top of the chimney pipe soot up in just a month or so, I started realizing what was happening and stopped that.
I have a Napoleon wood stove. It has a single air control. Once I get a fire going, no matter what the wood, if I shut the air down all the way, it'll damp off the fire nicely no matter how hot it got before closing the air control. I will say, though, that the locust CAN burn way hotter than anything I've ever tried. I just don't let it burn that hot. A couple times I did forget that I had the fire started and gone downstairs to see the thermometer pegged things just a blazing away. But the stove never got red hot. All I do in that situation is open the door wide open and toss in another log. Opening the door stops the jet-like air flow from the stove vents and the new log takes a lot of energy out of the fire. Just a couple minutes, then I close the door and shut off the air and the fire dies right down to normal.
I burn locust almost exclusively, but I will do a downed tree for friends, family, etc... so I have some maple and cherry and oak to compare it to. I get about 4-5 hours of burn time from those woods before its a bed of coals. I get an honest 9-10 hours with the locust with the same air control setting. I load it up when I wake up in the morning, get it going real good and shut off the air control all the way about 10 minutes before I leave for work. Check it again on the way out the door to make sure the fire came down. When I get home, 9 hours later, I'll still have a 400 degree stove, and the room is still 80 degrees and my blower is still moving hot air upstairs. If I do that with cherry, oak or maple, the stove is 200 degrees when I get home, and the room is in the low 70s, and the blower has shut down. Throw in about half a load of wood when I get home and that's good until bed time. Load it to the top when the 11:00 news comes on, and shut down the air at 11:20 and it's good to go until morning again.
All-in-all, locust is a great firewood. For quick fires, or just cool evenings I'll use the oak, cherry, maple, etc... but if I want a long burning fire, its gonna be locust. :thumbsup:
