Is anyone growing coppiced willow for fuel? I'm about to move into a house in Wales with a bit of land. Everyone round there is planting willow with a view to stopping using gas or oil for heating asap given rising prices etc. i'd be interested to know if anyone has any experience of growing, processing and burning it - varieties, harvesting, boilers etc.
when chopping/burning willow it has that kinda odd asprin smell, cant say Im all that fond of it because of that..
The thing is, it grows fast in the mild damp conditions in the Welsh hills. People are beginning to grow a lot, because you can get more heat per acre per year from willow than anything else. If you cut it back, it grows 14 foot long branches in a year...
I don't grow willow, it just grows...and grows. Cut it down and it grows back. Willow, however, it not the best wood for fuel. The for or five varieties we have in the willow grove we live in don't really get very big in diameter and don't have the same characteristics as say birch or oak. I will certainly burn it in my woodstove, but find it more productive to cut and process other types of wood.
Willow is some of the worst wood to ever try to split let alone burn, corkscrew willow is the worst and the only thing I can think of worse than willow is cottonwood which is very similair. But I also understand you need fuel to burn.
It isn't at all my favourite wood to burn in log form, for all the reasons you all mention. Ash would be the one for me if it was from mature trees. But the thing with willow is, it gives the most BTU's per acre per year. What you do is cut it back and just harvest all the shoots, ten feet long and as thick as my thumb or thereabouts. Then you chop them down to short lengths and burn them in these purpose-built boilers.
My ancestors are Welsh, they have the last name Forrester, are there any Forresters around there, might be related. Ended up on the west coast near the columbia river and willow is everywhere. I don't use a fireplace but I heartell the creosote off the wood can start a chimney fire.
All properly seasoned wood has pretty much the same BTUs per pound. The weight/density makes the difference. Willow weighs 2100 lbs per cord providing 14.5 million BTUs per cord, while Ash (white) weighs around 3600 lbs per cord for 23.6 million BTUs per cord.
Has anyone mentioned that willow doesn't burn well? I burn what I cut, & I eat what I kill. But some things aren't very good. If you're living in wetland, it might be better to discourage the willow and burn birch...another fast growing tree. Popular is another fast grower that does well in wetland. Popular pops a lot though, you'd need to keep a screen in front of the fire. I burn pine though, maybe you won't want to listen to me.
