This winter season we are in a house we rented related to a deal for restoring it from the condition former renters left it in. It has a zero clearance fire place with no insert, so it will do in emergencies, but barely. In anticipation of power loss, we bought several bags of pellets. They are not great for fire places and inserts, but with a little play, it's wood source, of sorts. During the summer, we pick up cheap candles at garage sales. Then we melt the wax in a double boiler (actually, a canning pot with another pot floating in water) and pour it over the pellets, mixing it in. Since the pellets don't cooperate with our scheme to burn them, this helps much.

An iron pipe (I presume about a six inch diameter would do) cut in half with the ends capped and several small air holes drilled in the bottom might make a good burn chamber for the pellets. It can be nested in the grate so air can flow through the bottom. They sell different things for this purpose and they are purported allow you to use pellets in your regular stove. We've burned the pellet- wax mix regularly and it does help. We throw a single piece of pallet wood on top and it seems to promote and even better burn.

Last year we moved into a place and all the wood we were able to buy was wet (surprise). As such, it took a cord of wet to get the equivalent of a fraction of dry. Of course wet wood is a horrible contributor to creosote build up. As such, we resorted to pallets. Too, truss building places and woodworking places like door stores had a lot to offer.

We left the wet wood on pallets out back and just pulled a tarp over it. Remember, this is the Northwet. Still it went a long way to drying the wood. However, it still wasn't worth burning until the next season.

It took a lot of time to cut up scraps from door stores and pallets into usable pieces using skill saws and a Sawsall. However, when I switched to using my band saw, it cut the time down to a minute fraction. I still had to use a Sawsall to cut the pallets into manageable pieces, but I could do in twenty minutes what took me two hours before. If you have a lot of scraps to deal with, it would be worthwhile to acquire an old sears band saw to dedicate to that function. Mine's a Powermatic and it's one of my babies, so it has to be carefully tended after each run of wet wood. On the other hand, a cheap Sears unit may be made of aluminum, and less prone to rust issues. One might be able to seek one off Craigslist.

We too burned pallet wood for a number of years. I tried to focus on oak pallets mainly due to greater btu and burn time. Worked very well for us and our chimney experiance was the same, very clean. Except for the little bit of gas we used and elec. to run the saw our yearly cost if we watched for nails carefully was the price of a saw blade. Used the same stove we built for nearly 18 years. I still have that stove in very good condition and hope to use it again some day.

Canine

Another source for free wood might be construction sites. Alot of contractors just dump or bonfire their wood ends and pieces. You might ask at construction sites if they would let you clean up a few times a week in exchange for all the scrap

UPDATE: I wanted to give an update on our chimney and fireplace insert. We had the chimney sweep in Monday and he inspected it from the top of the chimney to the bottom. He said it was VERY clean and free from build-up. I had read on another web site that when burning pallets they burn extremely hot -- the sweep's visit seems to confirm that burning pallets appears to burn up creosote.

We're fortunate in that our detached garage has a length-long covered "patio" on the side with a concrete pad. I have two rows of wood, one on each side of the patio with a path down the center. The left side is the "flat wood" I cut from pallets and the right side is whatever wood I can get. Our grandson has secured us a load of wood from a couple of cut-down trees and I have been splitting that and stacking it. That which is left is severely knotted and gnarled wood and I'm afraid I'm going to have to rent a power-splitter for it.

M.G.M. -- I stack my split wood up off the ground on some planks of PSP or pierced steel planks. These are 10 feet long by 2 ft wide and were originally designed and used to build runways with. The county ripped out an acre or so of these planks at the local airport , so I asked the crew chief if I could have a few. I place these on top of concrete blocks so thay the wood gets stacked up off the ground for better air circulation and to keep it out of the mud and snow. Less problems with termites and other critters by keeping it up off the ground. I built a 3 x4 foot insulated woodbox on the outside wall of the house next to the woodstove, and wheel the wood to the box and deposit it there. This is an efficient way of moving firewood, as you can stock it from the outside of the house without opening your doors or dragging into your house any unwanted debris from the firewood, or loosing any BTU's.
How do you handle yours?

Toepopper

I have no other choice but to burn wood. Can't afford to buy fuel oil and the delivery truck cannot get in during the winter, so oil is out as well as propane. No power here either so wood it is! We burn tan oak and madrone and sometimes some blown down doug fir. Madrone is the best. It burns longer and hotter than oak or fir. I use about 3 cords per winter and the older I get the harder it is to deal with the cutting and splitting. Sure is a good feeling to look at all that stacked firewood once its done. It makes me feel SECURE.

Toepopper

I had to do a 15 page paper on TBI's. That's pretty serious injury.
We had a variety of woods that we used for firewood when I was a kid. We just stacked them into rows, covered them with plastic and let them dry out for the winter.

See if you can get PEELER CORES. Those are trees with the bark stripped off.

Also, try getting shrub cuttings. It's still burnable!

Good luck.

-Bob

We have a fireplace insert in the living room and use it as our primary heat source during cold weather.

I hear pros and cons about this, but our primary source of wood is wood pallets that I cut up with a reciprocating saw. My son, who is a trucker, told us how to look out for treated pallets and not use them - they usually have the ends painted blue.

We have had no ill effects from burning pallet wood - and it's free.

There have been a couple times that I started sawing and I had a strong smell of turpentine or another chemical that might have spilled on the pallet, at which point I discarded it.

We already have wood to take us through the winter but I'm not going to stop gathering it.