How do you burn piles?

[dmccarty]

The tires have lots of stuff in it that is not real clean burning. Here they would burn trees in town or near town but it appears they have a ban on burning for land clearing in some counties. I have seen one area being developed. It used to be in the middle of no where and the road was only paved a few years ago. A few years before paving the road just dead ended and had been like that for many decades.

This particular place stradles two counties. I drove throught there one day and land clearing was going on for subdivisions in both counties. One subdivision in one county was burning slash. Withing sight of the burn was another site but they had to chip the slash since they were in a different county.

NC regs prevent used oil from being use to start the fire as well. Which I don't get. Oil would clump to the wood and not fall on the ground like diesel. As far as I know you could burn the used oil in an oil burner. What is the difference? I don't know. The rules is Da rules. I don't make 'em.

Later,
Dan

 

[ragkar]

You guys gave me some great suggestions for my today burn of stumps and root balls and squaw wood.
I used a burn pit (actually a 3'x8' stump hole), propane weed burner, lawn blower and of course my tractor fel and bh.
The propane burner starts the fire amazingly fast compared to my old boy scout technique.
I was sorta fun dragging, pushing and lifting those root balls into the fire pile. The root balls were cleaned of mud last year using a pressure washer and dried out since.
About every half hour I compact the pile and turn the blower on it. It gets super hot.
An hour ago I had a sudden downpour that didn't phase the fire a bit. I expect that by sunset I'll have it mostly done.

 

[Highbeam]

Don't forget that when burning tires you will end up with a pile of steel belts that were inside the tire. The evidence of tire burning lasts long after the black smoke goes away.

 

[chucko]

true you do have the belts to deal with

 

[bustedtplnk]

The trick to having a good fire is to stack all of your branches, limbs and logs parallel to each other otherwise you get a donut burn and you have to keep pushing your pile together. I cover the piles with kraft paper or plastic visqueen to keep them dry then burn them at the end of fall afters the rain has started.

 

[davitk]

who needs tires? I have an old mattress I've been saving for a special occasion

 

[Eagleview]

I use petrol to get them going , if a fire dont go WOOOF it's no fun . I let one go in a gully once , the fumes of the petrol i threw on the timber had settled on the gully floor , i wet a piece of wood with petrol , lit it and threw it in WOOOOF My wife said i looked like Forest Gump running out of the fireball .

 

[Pushing_Tin]

I've burned a lot over the past year and have found that the propane weed torch is the way to go. Even one some rainy days with some green stuff that torch got the piles going.

Burn season just ended here and doesn't start again until October 15th.

 

[N80]

Rich, just be careful. Its real dry around here. I did some larger piles a few years ago. Big clearing. Misty rain. Cool outside.

Still got way hotter and way higher than I was comfortable with. And when it gets that hot anything on the ground is fuel. So you need to be down to bare dirt.

I had no serious problems, but even in the misting rain, I got real real nervous several times. And as dry as it is now, anything that blows up off of the fire can set a blaze somewhere else. It was during the dry spell when I did mine and even though the light rain was helping, I still had to run to put out a couple of little start ups way away from the burn pile.

 

[SCRich]

MAN, did I get a discussion going! I never got a reply notification and have had internet problems at home so with some spare time now in the truck with a good internet connection I thought I would check out the site.

Great suggestions, and yes even though we have had some rain over the past few days it does not look like it's going to get better and with the week of 100+ temps the little hope I had to burn I think is now gone.

Yes EVERYTHING in the area is down to bare dirt/rock, or as I like to call it now DUST. I feel good about the cleared area but I have no control over an ember that may catch a thermal and go up and over to some other place who knows how many hundreds of feet away.

It's frustrating, all of this carp is going to make my projects a big PIA. I am seriously considering hiring out a 18 wheeler and a grapple to haul the stuff away once and for all. I got a grapple also but if I work along with a 2nd larger one we can probably rotate 2 trucks and get it done in a few hours.Time is money and it would take a lot of weekends of burning, like several months worth to get a handle on it. Burning season is also hunting season and once the end of August comes about I try to stay away from many of my areas other than a quick trip to check on the camera's or fill the feeders.