It’s that Firelog time of the year

It has been a great summer right on the heels of one of the best spring stretches of weather in recent memory. We should get another few weeks of this treat but winter IS on its way. Time to start thinking about rain, clouds, sleet and snow. Cold winter high pressure systems, weeks of blue skies and freezing temperatures. It’s that firelog time of the year. Mill Out Lumber is the place to get yours. Full Tons of 696 bricks are and convenient  boxes of 8 are including a couple of wax soaked fire lighters.

Tacoma firelogs contain no waxes or binders and are held together entirely by high pressure. At 3 pounds each they are just under 52 # per cubic foot which is denser than Madrone or  Red Oak. They are made in Tacoma so you will not be helping to pay for trucking from far away places like Idaho, Spokane or Montana.

The Tacoma Firelogs are a combination of Hemlock, Douglas fir, Sitka Spruce, Alder and Cedar with the heaviest proportion to the first 2 types of wood, pound for pound they will be comparable to any pressed sawdust log with the exception that some logs have wax or binding agents to hold them together which may add to the BTU’s available but also to contamination in the flue and burning device. I don’t think there is much difference between softwoods and hardwoods when you look at them pound for pound, hardwoods do burn hotter and longer but that is more a function of their density than any other characteristics.

Some comparisons of wood weight per cubic foot, seasoned.

Alder                     26#

Doug Fir               33#

Cedar                    23#

Madrone             45#

Maple                   39#

Red Oak               45#

Apple                    41#

The softwoods average about 28.25#, while the hardwoods are more like 42.5# so it makes sense that you will get 50% more energy out of hardwood raw log, but when you compress softwoods to densities exceeding that of hardwood it also makes sense that you will get more heat per cubic inch from a compressed log.

Once they are ground to fine dust and compressed to the same density all wood contains approximately 8600 btu heating units per pound and actually it is the pitchy softwoods like pine and Douglas fir that push the top end of the scale up to 9100 btus per # because of the higher energy density in their pitch

So with all that said sawdust is pretty much sawdust and the more Important detail is what does it cost per pound and how convenient is it to store and use. Tacoma Firelogs are the answer!