mm wrote:
A neighbor moved and gave me some old firewood. Really old it seems,
maybe 10 or 15 years old, and it was outdoors in the rain all these
years. In the fireplace, if there was a fire near it, a lot of smoke
came out the ends, and maybe the edges glowed, but there were never
any flames. When the other wood was burnt up, this wood smouldered
for a couple hours longer and turned into a little pile of ash.

Before I put it in the fire, the wood weighed a lot less than a normal
piece of the same size. Maybe half or less.

Is this typical, and do you know what happened inside the wood to make
it like this?

Is it the age, that it was kept outside, that it was kept uncovered,
or in the rain? Any way to store firewood succesfully for periods of
greater than 10 years?

Here's what happens when wood - or anything else - burns...

1. The material heats up

2. As the material heats up the volatile materials in it begin to out gas

3. The gas ignites and *that* is what you see as flames - the burning gas.

4. Once all the gas has been burned, the material continues to burn as you
described.

In your case, either the wood contained very little volatile material to
begin with - oak is one that doesn't, southern yellow pine does - or it had
been mostly destroyed by age/weather/insects/bacteria.


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dadiOH
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