Fire up on the good stuff
Seasoned or dry? Pine, ma¯nuka or macrocarpa? Here’s how to choose the best wood for your winter fire for the best price, writes Kylie Klein-Nixon.
It may not be the most ecofriendly sentiment, but there’s just something special about a real log fire I love. In my family, Mum is the hearth master. No-one builds a fire within five feet of her without her bustling in and giving them a 10-point presentation (with flow charts and diagrams) about why they’re doing it wrong and how they can do it better.
Air flow, she reckons. Wood types, when to turn a rager down or boost a fizzler up, my mum has an opinion about all of it.
I can’t fault her on any of it, either. Our wood fires have always been one of the cosiest parts of winter.
So, as we inch towards the coldest, darkest months, I bring you the ancient wisdom of my firestarting mum, among others, in the hopes your winter will be as toasty as ours.
Which wood is good wood?
By God, it’s cold out, which is why it pains me to tell you if you’re a fireplace newbie and you’re just thinking about ordering your winter wood now, you’re about six months too late.
For the best bargains, you need to buy seasoned wood – that’s wood that’s only about half dry – and store it for about six months so it’s ready for winter.
But don’t worry, closer to winter you can buy dry wood ready to go straight on the fire, it’ll just cost you more.
Which wood you choose depends on what you need it for.
Hutt Valley retailer Farm Firewood Direct deals in three main types of wood: pine, gum and macrocarpa, which each have different properties and uses in the fireplace.
‘‘Pine is your cheaper option and burns faster,’’ says owner Rebecca Tunbridge. That makes it good for kindling or starting a fire.
‘‘The other two are your harder burning woods, which produce a lot more heat, so they’re more efficient.’’
Mum says:
Order a cord of seasoned wood in September for the following winter.
A cord, a unit of measurement usually reserved for wood when it’s been chopped and stacked, works out to about 3.62m3, or a pile about 1.22m x 1.22m x 2.44m.
How well that lasts will depend on a couple of factors: how often you fire that sucker up, how dry the wood is and what type or varieties it is. It’s a good idea to get a mix of soft and hard woods.
Consumer New Zealand has a good guide to how much a cord could cost.
Prices may vary following lockdown, but you should be able to arrange a safe delivery of fully dry wood now.
Hot and long is best
One rule of thumb is that the harder the wood the hotter and longer it burns.
The hotter a wood burns, the more eco-friendly it is, creating less creosote to gum up your fireplace and releasing less smoke and fewer nasties into the air to cause inter haze and pollution.
According to woodfire makers Firenzo, the longest hotter burning wood in Aotearoa-New Zealand is gorse, however it’s also hard to come by making it a lot less cost-effective.
Wattle, macrocarpa, gum and native ka¯ nuka have great thermal value, with long burn times, and are more easily available.
New Zealand lifestyle block enthusiast Nadene Hall rates ma¯ nuka as her No 1.
‘‘Ma¯ nuka self-sows, grows fast, copes with everything – drought, frost, cold, wet, acidic conditions, shade – isn’t palatable to stock, gives you a gorgeous honey, and doesn’t grow too tall, plus it’s excellent as a pioneer shelter tree (its natural role in native bush).
‘‘You can split it when its green, use the flaky bark for kindling, and enjoy a very hot fire with little ash.’’
It’s important, however, to source your wood from reputable sellers – especially if you’re buying native timbers to burn – to ensure the wood is being ethically sourced.
Mum says:
Building a great fire is a three wood process.
You start with kindling – usually pine – followed by something like a hot-burning-butquick-to-catch ma¯ nuka to get the undercarriage really going. Finally chuck on the big boys, the mighty macrocarpa and gum logs that will burn for hours.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what wood you buy, as long as it’s dry.
Dry it if you have it
In woody parlance ‘‘dry’’ refers to how much sap and pitch has been leeched or dried out – a process Tunbridge says can take up to a year.
‘‘From September through to December we sell seasoned wood, which are trees that have been felled, generally six months to a year prior to that, but still have around six months of drying to do,’’ says Tunbridge.
‘‘It needs to be stored in an open, ventilated and dry area, which produces wood just before winter that’s ready to burn.’’
You’ll tell when the wood is ready because it will be lighter than it looks, have a bleached out look and the bark will peel off easily.
Mum says:
No log of wood is really ‘‘dry’’ until it’s been out in the elements for months and months.
Our wood is stacked on a pallet and left open to the elements to do their worst until it’s needed in the winter.
Then it gets restacked (a gruesome, spider, slater and weta covered job the kids dread, but what’s the point of having kids if you can’t make them do the grotty jobs like this? Right?) in a more sheltered spot near the back door for easy access.
Smells good
In the United States, hickory, apple and cedar are popular fire woods on account of the aroma they give off as they burn.
While it might be possible to source apple wood here, you’re unlikely to come across the others for fire wood. Besides, you don’t often smell the fire with modern, eco-friendly wood burners.
You can still get the cosy cabin aroma by stacking a few logs next to your woodfire place while it’s burning.
‘‘You can smell the difference in the wood before you even burn it,’’ Tunbridge says.
‘‘Pine, gum and macrocarpa all have different smells and a very different look to them too.’’
Mum says:
You can’t beat the sappy, tea-tree smell of a ma¯ nuka fire.
Happy fire-starting!
The hotter a wood burns, the more eco-friendly it is, creating less creosote to gum up your fireplace and releasing less smoke and fewer nasties into the air to cause inter haze and pollution.