Tradition has it that family kept their yule log burning until this night, the 12th day after Christmas, marking the end of the Christmas season. The burning of the Christmas trees symbolizes the end of the holiday season.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. When wood burns, the carbon dioxide is released, only to be absorbed again by young trees. Because trees recycle carbon dioxide, wood-burning just warms you, not the globe.

Burning wood helps conserve fossil fuels. Wood is essentially a waste material if it is just left to rot, and so with this in mind, and if you are using wood from sustainable forests you are being green and considering your environment too.

Today, burning of wood is the largest use of energy derived from a solid fuel biomass. In the case of burning wood, stored potential energy (in the form of chemical energy) in the log is released due to heating by other excited atoms.

Burning wood is not CO2 free; it releases carbon, stored over the previous decades, in one quick burst. For an equal amount of heat or electricity, it releases more CO2 than burning gas, oil and even coal, so straight away we have more CO2 in the air from burning wood. This should be reabsorbed as trees regrow.

Wood burning has been in the media regularly over the past couple of years, particularly in regards to pollution and its impact on the environment. In fact, burning wood is a far more environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas.

Only because it turns out they are a huge cause of pollution and illness. Pardon? A study has just forged a link between open fires and dementia, showing that elderly people who had been exposed to open fires throughout their lives showed greater cognitive impairment than those who hadn’t.

To sell traditional house coal (also known as bituminous coal) you must be registered as a member of the Approved Coal Merchants scheme. All sales of traditional house coal will be banned in England from 1 May 2023.

Burning wood may be humanity’s oldest way of generating heat—and in the home it definitely creates a nice ambience. But it has its downside. Wood smoke is also bad for the outdoors environment, contributing to smog, acid rain and other problems.

Wood is made of fiber (cellulose) and minerals (metals). When wood is burned, oxygen and other elements in the air (mainly carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) react to form carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere, while the minerals turn into ashes. Thus the carbon is left to turn into charcoal.

When carbon bonds with oxygen, it produces carbon dioxide — a colorless gas. When hydrogen bonds with oxygen, it produces water vapor — even as the wood burns.

Which Types of Firewood Burn The Hottest?

• Osage orange, 32.9 BTUs per cord.
• Shagbark hickory, 27.7 BTUs per cord.
• Eastern hornbeam, 27.1 BTUs per cord.
• Black birch, 26.8 BTUs per cord.
• Black locust, 26.8 BTUs per cord.
• Blue beech, 26.8 BTUs per cord.
• Ironwood, 26.8 BTUs per cord.
• Bitternut hickory, 26.5 BTUs per cord.

The Fire Triangle. Three things are required in proper combination before ignition and combustion can take place—Heat, Oxygen and Fuel. There must be Fuel to burn. There must be Air to supply oxygen.

Hardwoods such as maple, oak, ash, birch, and most fruit trees are the best burning woods that will give you a hotter and longer burn time. These woods have the least pitch and sap and are generally cleaner to handle.

10 Things You Should Never Burn in Your Fireplace or Woodstove

• Wet wood. Wet, or unseasoned, firewood can contain up to 45 percent water.
• Christmas trees.
• Painted or treated lumber.
• Any type of paper with colored print.
• Plywood, particle board, or chipboard.
• Fire accelerants or fire starters.
• Plastics.
• Dyer lint.

Black Locust wood contains natural organic compounds that resist rot for 100 years or more, which makes these trees an extremely valuable and environmentally friendly tree. It is the perfect wood for fence and deck posts.

Seasoning Black Locust In general, firewood will take at least 6-8 months to fully dry, and for denser hardwoods this process can take even longer. You should expect it to take 1 year or more to season Black Locust firewood.

The Black Locust inner bark, roots, and twigs are poisonous to livestock, especially horses, and can be fatal. The seed is poisonous to humans. Today the Black Locust is primarily used to stop soil erosion and it is also important in bee keeping.

Widely used for erosion control and reforestation, black locust is ideally suited for woody biomass plantings, and commercial energy production may eventually become one of its primary uses in the U.S. Its virtues include nitrogen fixing ability, inexpensive propagation by seed, rapid vegetative propagation.

Bark and Thorns: The black locust tree has bark of a dark color with a pattern of furrows that look like rope that’s intertwined. Honey locust trees, on the other hand, can have brown or gray bark, and you’ll see clusters of red-brown thorns among the branches or single thorns lining each stem.