Don’t get me wrong, I love piñon.
For those of you who don’t know, it’s probably the most common firewood in these parts, and I’ve never known anything quite like it. It’s a highly resinous sort of pine, but very hard and dense. No way you would ever call this a “softwood,” and the portions that are heavy with pitch burn like napalm. (I have literally touched off large chunks with a single match.) You can put just a couple of sticks of the right sort in your stove, and the combustion will be so intense that you can’t use the damper on your stovepipe without forcing smoke out through the seams and gaps. It would be like trying to contain a petroleum storage tank explosion.
I have to clean the chimney (myself) every six weeks or so, but it’s worth it. There’s more heat for less wood-hauling energy — more bang for the buck — with piñon than with any other firewood I’ve ever used. It also smells like incense when it’s burning, which is nice. But you have to be careful!
For instance: what I usually do to rebuild a fire going is lay fresh sticks of firewood atop the glowing coals from the old fire. That way it starts again all by itself. But if I have too much of the potent stuff on there, the pieces I call “gasoline wood,” they can ignite all at once with a spontaneous “WHOOMPH!” When that happens, it blows a mushroom cloud of dense blue smoke right into the room and can even pop the firebox door open, if it isn’t latched real tight. I swear, it’s like someone left a grenade in there. Exciting stuff!
Yep, happened again this morning.
I’d just added new wood to the fire, damped the pipe a little, and gone outside to meet the septic tank guy. When I came back inside, the whole house was filled with smoke. It was 31 degrees outside, but I had to open all the doors and windows, and when the septic tank truck started pumping, the smell of something else poured into the house!
All back to normal now, except it’s freezing in here. Time to, uh, refuel the stove…
(Watch out!)
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