How to Burn Maple Firewood

Maple produces a lot of heat and a relatively small amount of smoke. Always ensure that your maple firewood is properly seasoned, or dried, before burning as wet wood burns much less efficiently and results in increased smoke and pollution. The best types of maple for firewood are red maple, sugar or black maple, silver maple and Norway maple. Most are difficult to split, but all burn relatively well.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

Kindling
Matches
Axe or maul

Step 1

Split the maple with your maul or ax. Quarters of maple burn easiest. Silver maple is easiest to split, but gives less heat than sugar maple or red maple.

Step 2

Build a foundation of two logs side by side, separated by 6 inches. Fill the space between them with a nest of kindling such as pine needles, wood shavings, newspaper, pinecones or other easily burnable material.

Step 3

Place two or three logs on top of the foundation logs. Use thinner logs, as maple can be hard to light.

Step 4

Light your kindling with a series of matches. Add kindling as necessary until top logs are lit, then add logs as needed.

Tips & Warnings

Split your wood to a variety of thicknesses for ease of lighting and maintenance of the fire.

Always use wood that has been seasoned, or dried, for at least nine months.

If you can't get kindling, make some by slivering off pieces of logs.

Do not overstack logs as a dislodged burning log can cause signigicant injury.

Article Written By MarcosB

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