Wood - Wood is certainly the most common fuel for stoves and fireplaces. Wood is usually the most readily available fuel and can be the least expensive. If you have access to standing wood (trees), you can stockpile your wood supply inexpensively. It is also good exercise and lots of fun to spend the day in the woods cutting firewood! There are good books available about cutting and splitting firewood for those interested. If you are going to cut down trees, make sure you have the permission of the landowner. In many areas it may be possible to have a truckload of logs delivered that you can cut and split into firewood. This eliminates the need to haul the wood from the forest to your home and still provides significant cost savings over buying "ready to burn" wood. And finally, you can order your wood, cut and split, from a wood dealer. See section on "Buying Firewood".

Let's look at some interesting figures about firewood. Bone dry, wood has approximately 8600 BTU's per pound. This figure varies little from species to species. However, firewood is never bone dry. The ideal moisture content for firewood is between 15 and 25 percent. Assuming this, firewood will actually have a BTU potential between 5500 and 6500 BTU's per pound. Since the actual heat potential of the wood is determined by weight, the more dense hardwoods contain greater heat potential when compared to an equal size piece of soft wood. In other words, a cord of oak contains more potential BTU's than a cord of pine. More moisture in wet or green wood requires more BTU's to maintain combustion. This results in less available heat since many of the BTU's will be used to disperse the moisture instead of providing heat.