The big problem with those bricks is I'm having a difficult time finding seeds to grow them on my property :-) If I could just find those seeds, I'd be a big fan of the bricks, easier to store, no cutting them up, way less sawdust to deal with, and zero splitting. That would be one source of fire wood that only heats you once, vs. heating your when your cutting, splitting and burning it. Nice video, love how you try your best to keep everything real and consistent. In my house I burn 12" split firewood. I built an Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) house and it's so well insulated I don't need much to heat it, or keep it warm. To that end when doing my research I had to find a wood stove that didn't produce much in the way of BTU's so I got one that goes into an RV or tiny home. When doing the manual J calculations for BTU's needed to heat my house it came up to 29,000 btu's, and most wood stoves are rated at way above that. Enough rambling, love your channel. Thanks for doing the comparison.

As an engineer, I love to see these types of tests and data sets.

For next tests I'd suggest to also weight your inputs, as energy in wood is almost proportional to weight; 10 pounds of pine/maple/oak/sawdust/whatever should give pretty much same output; only difference would be volume/burn/reload time and amount of ash produced

Nice video. I think something like this is nearly impossible to quantify. I love my wood stoves and in my experience there are just too many variables to have a direct comparison, every fire is slightly different. The shape of the wood, the size, the way you load the stove, the humidity, even the wind outside makes a difference. I burn many different types of wood, it’s all good, whatever u got, burn it! Saving the big heavy pieces for overnight or long days at work when no one is home, and the smaller pieces when u want quick heat, that’s pretty much my strategy! Good video, thanks!

Great video! We recently did a video cutting up and bucking hickory. Not only is it a great burning wood, it’s also a great looking wood. Hickory is so strong that it rarely comes down in our woods. It grows tall and sold while other Cherry, maple, and oak trees sometimes come down in big wind storms-like last night. So we don’t get much hickory to burn.

GOOOOOOOD MORNING EVERYONE!!…very interesting. Thanks for putting in the hours to bring us this info. Catch y’all on the next one Have a day

I burn mainly Osage Orange because of its BTUs. It has a lot of sparks so a stove or boiler is required. I burn in both. I’ve found that as long as you hold to larger sized pieces and limit the smaller overloading it’s fine. It can get a bit over heated if you put lots of smaller limb wood pieces in together. But what I see as your split wood size is as the smaller pieces of Osage Orange to about twice that size. There’s no reason to get worried about over heating your stove

Great comparison video Adam. Answers a bunch of questions for viewers yet we know no comparison is the ultimate answer. Thanks.

I burned a lot of hickory when I first moved to my current house ten years ago. All I remember it was a PIA to split. Very string and you always had to put the splitter completely through it. After your video, I’ll be going around to harvest some more of my hickory trees around my property. Thanks for another great video!

Hey Adam, nice test n results. That's a lot of time to test but was worth it. Keep the videos coming!🔥

Howdy Adam,have a great weekend,enjoy the weather and God Bless!!!❤😊

I grew up in rural Western Washington and while we did not have ready access to the hardwoods of the North East and Southern USA, we did have a lot of firs, cedars, alder, and the occassional fruit tree species. I can tell you from experience that kiln dried mill ends may burn fast, but wow, can they get hot. We heater exclusively off wood. We once had our Timberland Wood Stove insert (3/4 inch plate steel top and sides, with heavy cast doors, approx 30 inches wide, 46 inches deep, and 30 inches high) glowing so hot that the kindling sitting a foot away self combusted. You get these forge like temps by force air feeding the fire. Thankfully, we never experienced a chimney fire, but as a firefighter, I can say that a well controlled chimney fire can clean a chimney quite well.

Sunday morning viewer here ~ Love this testing and data video. Thank you ADAM!!!

South Mississippi here. We’ve had our Buck Stove about three years now. I still get nervous when my thermometer hits 400 degrees. I usually run it around 350. It’s set up in our master bedroom so much more than that runs us to the other end of the house. The blower system is everything. We burn mostly water and red oak. I’ve gotten my hands on some good pecan at times. I split my wood in 16 inch lengths and 2x2 in diameter. My moisture meter readings are less than 10% when I burn. It’s because of the way I split it for sure. Thank you for sharing your experiment. Hugely helpful!!

Nice content - good thing to know about types of firewood to use. Stay safe.

Osage orange is great firewood. I would be cautious burning it inside because when you open the door and air rushes in, sparks fly all over. Works great in an outdoor furnace. I mix it in with other kinds of wood. Nice comparison. I think it shows that using multiple kinds of firewood is helpful. The other day I tried putting a bottom layer of cottonwood then beech then maple. - worked good.

Outstanding video Adam! Well done cheers 👌🏻🔥🇨🇦

It's a really interesting test! An other interesting indicator could be the average temperature weighted on the time it took to burn

I live in Northern Montana and this last week we where dipping into the 35-40 degrees below zero F at night and about 10-15 below zero F during the day. Where we live there isn't much for hard woods mostly burn lodge pole pine.

That was interesting!! Great video, as always! Hope y'all are staying warm. We're supposedly going to be 18° - 19° Tuesday night!! 😳 That's so rare here in South Louisiana!! We think we're prepared!! God bless y'all!! 🙏♥️🙏

The chemistry of one variety of wood versus another is so similar (cellulose and lignin) that what really matters the most to the firewood BTU chart is dry matter density. Different woods have different burn patterns and need different care to get them to burn completely but with a good woodstove and a good install you can make do with any variety and if it comes down to buying compressed bricks or cordwood you should compare the weight and moisture to the price.

Great video Adam. Always enjoy your content. Would like to see a btu test on black locust

My Dad worked at a Draper corperation sawmill in Tupper Lake,ny. They made Hard Maple bobbin blanks that would hold tread for their looms in the textile industry. Hard Maple logs were cut into 8/4 lumber that cut into 4' long boards that wenthrough molders making round dowls that were cut into 12" long round blanks. Spring time My job was hauling 8/4 16"X6" slab wood home with Our little 7hp L&G tractor and 5'x8' trailerpiling it in the back yard. When fall came around We'd fill the basement without hitting the basement window casing! After dark go help Mom pile slabs for winter use. Dad would go down and stack the slabs in the boiler. Making a solid 16"square inch cube of wood. The old boiler had no fan or circulators. It would heat the no insulation home for 10-12 hours. On sub zero days Mom could burn odds and ends. We were never exposed to split firewood until I got married.

Oh on a sidenote: if you ever can get some "Osage Orange" you'll wanna make sure that you can see examples of live trees or cut it yourself, its often that people will sell Mulberry as Osage because it looks VERY similar and the wood itself is nearly indistinguishable from Osage wood.. Mulberry is like the soft maple version of Osage and is far less BTU but many people either don't know the difference or intentionally mislabel their firewood. (Just a word of advice from me)

We mostly burn oak around here,but hickory is good. Cypress is probably the hottest burning wood I've used in a fireplace. Thanks Adam for the curiosity

One of the first winters I had my wood stove I got super lucky and stumbled upon an Osage tree on a guys property that he wanted taken down. I didn’t know anything about it but I took it down and processed it. I looked it up later and found it was the best firewood you could get. I can attest to that statement, I have burned everything and nothing has been as good. You don’t need to worry about over firing as long as you have good air and chimney damper control. I will say it’s best mixed with other woods though.

You should use excel to calculate the area under the curve. That would show total energy of each material. I'd be interested in weight as well.

That's a great test, very interesting. The problem is now you've really opened a can of worms. We all know you have access to lots of sawdust, and plenty of different species of wood sawdust. So now you have to make your own sawdust bricks of different varieties and test them. Different sizes, different stages of compression, or even different mixes of sawdust. You're welcome!

Great test Adam I burn about 3 to 4 full cords of wood a season in my fireplace which by the way was built in the early seventies the opening is 42 inches wide I uae a 30 inch grate i can burn wood up to 36 inches long, the hottest wood I've ever burned was Red Elm after one face cord the grate had a hole melted in the center thats hot, my usual wood is different types of Oak Cherry Ash Elm Hard Maple which all burn great thanks again for the very informative video!

@2:25 The only way to do this test is by mass. You should burn an equal weight of each item. Then you can make comparisons about cost with some simple math. Volume is a worthless metric in this instance since it only matters when you're storing the material.

My favourite video Pt.2!

My favorite is Bradford pear. It's an invasive species and burns hot like hickory.They are easy to spot in the spring as their white blooms line the woods edge.It's not ideal for wood sales due to the many branches/crotches, but it does help the ecosystem.

Another way to look at it may be the "area under the curve". Temp on the stove surface is likely to be proportional to heat coming off the stove (hotter = more BTU's coming off the stove). Integrate that temp by the time (e.g. total area under the curve) to get total heat from your stove. Or for the accountant way of thinking (business calculus vs engineer / physics calculus), temp = unit cost, each time increment = a unit, so it would be a computation of total cost of the production run.

Awesome

Red oak, white oak and hickory are my favorites. Ash and Mae are plentiful and also burn well, just not as long.

Love burning hickory. Smells great. Cherry smells the best though.

Yes. I will burn Osage. I just mix it with other woods. Don't burn a full stove load of it. A couple of pieces with other woods, will make a nice fire. Never had an issue with the stove overheating.

I'm using a modified '76 Fisher woodstove and have found that each wood has its own kinda personality, Hickory does burn really hot but the fire only lasts a shorter time, whereas some old Black Locust from long dead standing trees doesn't put out the same level of heat but will burn for twice as long.. it likes the intake air to be very little and burns very clean, slow, and pretty hot. I can get a hotter fire temp wise from even something like soft maple and just leaving the intake air open really far but thing is that wood'll be consumed within a hour, with the locust if you open it up full it won't even really burn much faster but more of the heat will just escape out the chimney so you actually get less heat with more intake air with that wood. It's kind of funny its only the locust thats been standing dead for many years, it becomes almost like petrified, color changes to dark orange and it gets harder, and a live cut tree doesn't burn like that, it's only the long dead standing ones.. in a few days its supposed to get really cold here in the Northeast so I'll be breaking out my Kiln dried Hickory and Mulberry for most of the day/night and then loading on the petrified locust before bed.

With the sawmill you should do a video of you making your own bricks in different ways and burn and see results

I tried the bricks, and they work great, only issue is they are more expensive than seasoned firewood which I also use. When I want a quick fire I'll use some bricks with kindling, if I have plenty of time, I use the hardwood off the woodpiles.

wished when you were doing your moisture test you would have split the piece and checked the m.c. inside. Great test

Ive found I never get a good coal bed with bio bricks. The next test might have to be from a cold stove to a cold stove. In your test the bio bricks might be getting a little boost with the nice bed of coals they got to sit on.

I’m 75 years old when I was a kid in Kansas we heated our house solely with wood. most of the wood that we used were softer, wood Cottonwood was one of the main woods along with some Oak and Elm On occasion, dad would get out a bunch of Osage orange cut and we use it but we had to mix it due to the fact when we burnt mostly Osage orange it would turn the elbow on the stove, cherry red. We had an old house with a masonry brick flu, and it burnt the flu out (hod to repoint the chimney flu) we had to quit using that type of wood.

Your bundle is 20% air. The next time you get a large round, cut it down to 12”x12”x12” and then split. I think the result will burn much closer to the compressed pieces. I enjoyed the video.

We burn Beech and Ash mainly as that is what we have locally and it's free. One of the other way to assess the benefit of the wood is by comparing the area under each curve - probably taking 300 as your baseline. Always an interesting debate.

Where did you find those dimension crates? Please advise. I like the single stack option/size.

Great video man! What brand and model is that wood stove? Also any chance you could to a Red Oak, White Oak, Maple, Pine comparison? These Are the primary wood species I think most of us burn. I really like your analytical approach to burning wood. Dig the wood burning content! Jeremy from MN

Interesting test.

If you are going to do the test with oak. I think it would be interesting to compare strait grain nice pieces vs. the knotty pieces that people claim to be the “all nighters”

Btus are determined by bulk density. Wood that weighs more per cord has more btus. Pound for pound, every type of firewood has the same btus. I burn everything in my OWB.

Hello, just wondering if you’ve ever thought about doing a collaboration with “Lumber Capital Log Yard” ?

This was a cool watch. I appreciate the graphs, program did you use to make them?

Adam, where do I find a sawdust block tree here in Canada? lol great video, we burn standing dry white elm and Tamarack. hotttt

Keep in mind that most stoves are only tested with cord or crib wood. The compressed sawdust blocks can over fire the stove and they may use chemicals to bind the sawdust and those chemicals could corrode the steel of the firebox leading to inefficiency and possibly co leakage. Don't forget the glass is also tested to a certain temperature, so if you crack that, your going to be in trouble.

The accountant in you is coming out in this presentation, but most people will not consider the details at this level.

Black locust is the hottest 🔥 wood that I've used in Pennsylvania. It's difficult to cut as it dulls the chain quickly.

I read that limb wood has more BTUs than trunk wood. This is do to closer cell structure needed to support the limb in its typical cantilever position. Interesting concept but not sure how much of a difference it makes.

Cant beat osage orange wood for BTU, but you definitely need a heavy duty stove. I usually age it for three years and when I make up my firewood bundles I combine it with oak, maple, elnm and walnut. I won't sell straight osage orange.

Hey Adam, on average how much do you make at the firewood stand? My son and I are going to be making one soon. I know a lot is dependent on I’m how much traffic you get. Thanks!!

Seems to me it's like the took the wood pellet to its extreme. It is more space efficient to store and probably more consistent, but in a SHTF scenario you'll run out of bricks before trees.

We burn cords of Osage inside every year. Yea, you can get some sparks when you open the doors. That’s what the hearth is for. People act like you’re cutting steel with a plasma cutter. Not near that bad. As long as you remember how much heat it has in it and don’t put too much in each load, you’ll be good. Ps if I could get loads of hickory, I would love it!

I run a tree care business and also sell firewood. I save out the best hickory annually and I dry it for a year or two. I tell people hickory is actually dangerous. I literally keep a half gallon high volume spray bottle near my stove to get it cooldown if needed. I also soak logs in water to put them on overnight because the stove will start to WOOF if you know what that is. It’s more like burping. It’ll blow out smoke and spark and ash because the fire is starved for oxygen. Be careful with hickory folks. It is by far the best fire wood.

Don't have enough hickory to cut for fire wood.i do cut some branches for hammer handles n such.never worried about the best wood.just cut dead standing trees n throw in more if your cold always worked as long as you had plenty.

Wood, the only fuel sold by volume using some vague stacking criteria. Wood should be sold by weight so the customer knows exactly how many BTUs they are purchasing.

I know the volume comparison isn't all that useful, but where you thinking of volume in terms of storage or energy? If it's energy, I think you'd have to submerge each log in the bundle to get it's true volume, since there's a lot of space between logs.

Adam.... would love to see you and Doug fabricate a hydraulic press to use your own sawdust for fuel... That would be Epic!!

I burn mulberry. Here in south eastern Arizona. It dries fast and burns long and hot. Average moisture level is less than 6 percent.

Live here in the Missouri Ozarks so all we really have red oak white oak and hickory I burn all 3 love them all

Why not weigh it? That would be the most accurate way since you can calculate density

and now we know how a "Clip Show" comes to be

Yeah Osage Orange I sold some to a few guys told both of them only put one piece at a time in your stove neither listened I don't know what happened with the one guy but he said he almost burned his house down the second guy had a four story a frame he turned the stove pipe cherry red up the third floor

My dad got a king stove red cherry hot from useing to much oak. An it busted the brick in the flew

Looking at the chart, hickory looks to be far superior... It has an even heat for a long time, as does oak. For a certainty, the type of wood makes a huge difference.

24 million BTU is sugar maple… red maple is down around 18. Maple isn’t created equal! With respect to overfiring, that’s mostly based on operator draft control and secondarily the fuel load. The difference between cherry and oak is about the same as oak to hickory on BTU. It’s mainly noticeable for me on burn time. No hickory here, but I like a mix of wood because the denser stuff (oak, beech, sugar maple) goes longer but can tend to smolder, and the less dense stuff burns faster and keeps the fire going nice, particularly early in the burn. Plus I can keep the average BTU per cord around 22 million by mixing species (red maple = 18, cherry = 20, ash = 23, oak/beech/sugar maple = 24 million BTU per cord). I put out a video on characteristics of species I burn in my area a couple weeks ago 🙂.

Why not test from a cold stove? I feel like the inclusion of the previous burned wood is bias towards the bricks.

I burn Douglas Fir and Tamarack. It produces amazing heat.

Where’s the pond update?

My favorite firewood to burn comes from the guy down the street that wants someone to get the tree out of his yard. 😂 I don't burn for heat, just a firepit, so species is not a factor. But cost is, since it's an ambiance thing...

👍

Is a kiln to dry your sale firewood in your future? I see content potential. 😄

So are your hickory bundles going up in price? If they are better than the more expensive stuff…maybe they should??

How much moisture is in the bricks? 😂

You should do the comparison by weight...

Pound for pound all firewood has roughly the same btu

Look at area under the curve…

Why not normalize your data based on the weight of the wood?

Did you lose your knife already??😂

You are comparing the bulk price of the bricks to the most costly type of firewood ( bundles). There is no easy way to compare the two different types of wood!

Not sure anyone wouldn't buy either of those options by the chord or pallet so this video really makes no sense to someone that actually heats with wood. Chord wood of the same size bundle would be 1/3 the price and the better value.

First :-)

Good morning Adam, nice revisit test. I’d be interested in finding out, what is the content of the biobricks. Are they made of a random mixture of junk wood or a consistent baseline of a certain type of wood. Questioning the consistency of the brick to brick comparison. But I still think the kin dried known consistency of log wood is the way to go. Thank you for making this test. 😀👍🪵👍🪵👍🪵

Adam for in a pinch 🤏 the compressed sawdust bricks 🧱 would be a nice 👍 thing to have for someone who’s not able to lift pieces of wood 😮😊❤

I’m going to sell hickory and about 4 types of oak regardless but these test are very interesting to me because I can broaden my choices based on your findings. These people down here only want oak(it’s all they know) so if I can convince them there’s other wood out to burn it would be great for me. I sometimes run across cherry and other local not so popular wood but pass on it, people don’t want it. Thanks for all your hard work. 🪓