4/8/2023 0 Comments Coppice firewood![]() ![]() Pallets are most commonly made of pine which is great for kindling or getting a fire going fast. Not only are we helping keep our town tidy, we’re working on our firewood stash for the next year, and having fun! Pallets Our family love to go on walks around our neighbourhood with a little trolley and pruning saw to collect fallen limbs post-tempest. When a storm hits your suburb, the aftermath can be a boon for the urban firewood forager. And we can be sure that they are untreated and safe to burn. Not only are these slow-burning, perfectly seasoned little nuggets pre-cut to size, they are diverting waste from construction skips into heating our home and cooking our food. We have scored virgin red-gum “notchings” from fencers in our local area. When a new fence is going up fencers must notch out posts to accommodate cross beams. So if someone is pulling a fence down near you, have a chat to the fencers who will know the provinence of the timber they are working with. While residential fence posts (the bits that go in the ground, not the palings) are often untreated too.įence posts are usually untreated hardwood (different species of gum or cyprus, depending on where you are in Australia). That said, most hardwood used for indoor framing is not treated in Australia. Technically you’re not supposed to burn construction timbers for fuel due to the risk of unknowingly burning treated wood, which is toxic to humans, animals and the environment. Keep a tarp in your boot, a pruning saw in your bike-basket and stay alert to the possibilty of dropping everything to get a load of logs. If you let folks know you’re on the hunt for firewood you are bound to get alerts from savvy friends and neigbours when a tree is comi Perhaps they’re overhanging a roof precariously, playing havoc with water pipes or simply look ugly. There will always be trees coming down in the urban neighbourhood for a variety of reasons. Prunings from other fruit trees make useful kindling, as do canes and vines that produce vigorous annual growth. Apple and pear wood are prized for fires. Growing your own productive trees can also be a good annual source of wood. ![]() ![]() Those numbers are based on the assumption that you will come back and coppice these trees in five year cycles so if you’re not planning on doing this then 12.5 trees per year per tonne is pretty conservative. Then we assumed that per tonne of firewood you use annually you need to plant 12.5 trees per year. We did this by weighing the average amount of wood we use each night, and multiplied this by the number of nights we usually have a fire over the five months of the year we need to heat our home to get our annual weight. In our household we have roughly calculated how many trees we will need to plant annually to offset the wood burned over winter. But the most important thing is growing something I can coppice on a fairly short rotations that will provide good firewood.Long-term thinkers might also get inspired to re-forest urban wastelands, verges and nature strips, that may one day prove a useful resource for future generations. I was going to put other species in to mix it up and hopefully create a nice little habitat for wildlife. ![]() My first thought is to use local Ash witch I can grow from seed to save cost however with Chalara fraxinea knocking around I don’t want to loose my whole stock. There’s lots of Oak, Ash, Sycamore of course, Hawthorn, Hazel and Beech growing around us with no problems. I’m on the southern edge of Dartmoor with a relatively sheltered site, the soil in good maybe a bit on the wet side but nothing to bad. I have a good understanding of coppicing but I’m really struggling about what to plant. I’m planning a small woodland coppice for fire wood for my own use I have a good arch to play with. Hi I’m new to Arb talk but I think that’s it great being able to draw on personal knowledge and how you can help people and discus things so easily. ![]()
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