Which firewood burns best, and how long to season it.

Two things matter, and only one of them is species. Dry beats dense every time. A wet split of hickory is worth less than a dry split of poplar, and it will cost you a chimney cleaning on top. Get the moisture right first, then argue about oak.

Heat per cord is mostly a question of weight

A cord is a fixed volume, so the heat in it comes down to how much dry wood mass fits in that volume. Denser species pack more fuel into the same stack. That is the whole explanation for every firewood chart you have ever seen.

Penn State Extension publishes heat values in millions of BTU per cord for wood air-dried to about 20 percent moisture. The species most likely to turn up in a load around here:

• Hickory, 28.0. The most heat per cord of anything commonly sold. It is also heavy, slow to dry, and hard on a maul.
• White oak, 25.7. Excellent, and famously slow to season. Two years is not an exaggeration for a large split.
• Red oak, 24.0. The most common good firewood in this part of the state. Fresh red oak can be 60 to 80 percent water by weight, which is why it needs the time.
• White ash, 23.6. Very good, and it splits easily and dries faster than oak. If someone offers you ash, take it.
• Red maple, 18.7. Fine wood. Roughly two thirds the heat of hickory in the same stack.

Below that sit the lighter hardwoods and the pines. Yellow poplar, sweetgum, sycamore and the softwoods all burn perfectly well, they just carry less heat in the same four by four by eight feet, so you go through more of them. They are useful for shoulder season and for getting a fire going. Sweetgum has a reputation for being miserable to split by hand, and it is earned.

Pine is not the villain it is made out to be

Somebody tells everyone who buys a stove never to burn pine because it causes creosote. There is loblolly and Virginia pine all over Floyd and Cherokee counties, so it is worth being clear about.

Creosote comes from smoke condensing on a cool flue. The Chimney Safety Institute of America names the three things that accelerate it: restricted air supply, unseasoned wood, and cooler than normal chimney temperatures. Resin content is not on that list. What is true is that pine is often burned green because it is easy to get and quick to cut, and green wood makes creosote regardless of species.

Seasoned pine, burned hot, is fine. It burns fast and it pops, so it is better as kindling and as the first hour of a fire than as an overnight load. Unseasoned oak will put more in your flue than seasoned pine will.

Twenty percent is the number

The EPA's guidance is short: wood burns best at a moisture content of less than 20 percent, and wood should be seasoned for at least six months.

Six months is the floor, not the answer. Penn State puts the realistic range at 6 to 12 months to reach that 20 percent, and large oak splits routinely want longer than that. The practical schedule, working backward from a fire in January:

• Cut and split in late winter or early spring. Split first, then stack. Wood dries through the split faces, barely at all through bark, and a round left whole can sit for two years and still be wet in the middle.
• Stack by May. That gives it the whole summer, which is the part of the year that does the drying.
• Buy next year's wood while you are burning this year's. This is the habit that solves the problem permanently, and September is the month people finally do it because the stove is on their mind again.

Split it smaller than feels necessary. Two splits dry in less than half the time of one round of the same volume, because you have roughly doubled the exposed surface.

How to stack it

The EPA is specific and most people do the opposite: store wood outdoors, off the ground, with only the top covered. Covering the sides traps moisture in.

A tarp wrapped around a woodpile turns it into a humidifier. It stops rain, and it also stops every bit of moisture leaving the wood, so the pile sits at the same moisture content in October that it had in May. Cover the top, leave the ends and sides open, and stack it where the wind can get through it. Off the ground means pallets, rails, anything. Wood in direct contact with soil wicks water up and rots from the bottom.

One more: not against the house. A woodpile stacked against siding is an insect route indoors and it keeps that wall damp. Keep it away from the building and bring in a few days at a time.

Telling dry wood from wet, without buying anything

A moisture meter is the honest answer and they are inexpensive. Split a piece and test the fresh inside face, not the weathered outside, because the outside of a wet split reads dry.

Without one, four signs together are reliable, and none of them alone is: radial checking on the end grain, running out from the center; gray dull color and bark that comes loose; weight, because green wood is startlingly heavy once you have carried both; and sound, since two dry splits knocked together give a sharp clack where wet ones give a dull thud.

The other test is the fire itself. Wood that hisses at the end grain, refuses to catch, blackens the glass within an hour and needs the air wide open to stay lit is wet. That is not the stove.

What a cord is, legally, in Georgia

This is where money gets lost, and Georgia has a definition.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture defines a cord as the amount of wood contained in a space of 128 cubic feet, when the wood is ranked and well stowed. In practice that is a stack 4 feet high, 8 feet long and 4 feet deep. Ranked and well stowed means stacked properly, not thrown in a heap, and that phrase is doing real work.

What you will actually be offered is often a rick, a face cord or a truckload. A rick or face cord is usually 4 feet high and 8 feet long, so it covers the same face as a cord, but its depth is only the length of the splits. At 16 inch splits that is one third of a cord. At 24 inch splits it is half. Same words, different amount of wood, and the seller may not be trying to mislead you.

So ask two questions before agreeing on a price. How deep is the stack, and what length are the splits. Then get a delivery ticket or an invoice that says what quantity you bought. If you think a delivery came up short, the Georgia Department of Agriculture's Fuel and Measures office takes those calls at (404) 656-3605.

Ask about split length for a second reason, which is your firebox. Most firewood in this area is cut at 16 inches. If your stove takes 20 inch splits you want them, and if it only takes 14 you need to know before the truck arrives.

Do not haul it far, and do not take ash west

Georgia repealed its statewide emerald ash borer quarantine on June 15, 2021, after the federal quarantine was lifted that January. So moving ash within Georgia is no longer restricted.

Two things still apply. The Georgia Forestry Commission notes that restrictions remain on moving ash material to Florida and Alabama, while it can move freely to South Carolina and East Tennessee. Rome is about half an hour from the Alabama line, so for anyone here that is a real border rather than a theoretical one. And the general advice has not changed: buy or gather firewood near where you will burn it, and burn all of it rather than carrying leftovers home. Insects and disease travel in firewood better than they travel on their own.

What never goes in

The EPA's list: household trash; painted, coated or pressure treated wood; driftwood; plywood, particle board and anything glued; wet, rotted, diseased or moldy wood; plastic, rubber, asbestos, manure.

Pressure treated wood and driftwood are the two that catch people out, because both look like firewood. Treated lumber carries preservative chemicals and driftwood carries salt. Both put things through your flue and into your room that should not be there.

Where this leaves you

The summer burn ban in Floyd and Cherokee counties runs through September 30, and it is aimed at yard debris rather than at your fire pit or your stove. Once it lifts, everyone remembers the chimney at once and the service calendar fills. Two things are worth doing in the same month: book the annual service, and buy the wood you will burn a year from now.

If you are still choosing the appliance, sizing it to the room matters more than the square footage on the tag, and the split length your supplier delivers is one of the things that should decide which firebox you buy. Come see the stoves and inserts burning live in Rome or Canton, or send us the details.