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by meibo 1386 days ago
Seems like a great way to stock up your firewood supply for the next winter, if you manage to target it in a way that doesn't cause half the city to show up, but maybe a little less than that?
2 comments

It's not. You don't want to burn softwoods; they're resinous and create a ton of smoke.
A pile of Christmas trees makes for a terrific January beach bonfire.
We lit up a dead Christmas tree that had been sitting outside one summer. We were so sure the cops would show up when someone saw the two story column of fire that thing made. The good part is that it was all over in about a minute.
Every year our neighbors do this. We jokingly refer to them as The Bumpus family because they are loud and are always doing stuff like this.
Properly dried they are pretty smoke-free
How dry are we talking? Because burning furniture-grade EWP offcuts (~6% moisture content) is smoky as hell. It isn't the wood, at least not entire - it's the sap pockets and other crap.

(I have a wood shop, these are things relevant to my interests!)

Pine is really smokey and burns fast
Here in Sweden at least, christmas trees are not pines but spruce.

These small ones with lots of branches - probably not worth the work effort unless you are desperate. And you'll get a lot of residue branches. You also want them to dry for a season before you burn them.

Other than that, they burn just like any other log. Maybe a bit less energy per log. Maybe more smokey than some, but smoke should go out the chimney not in the room.

In the US we use firs and spruce as well but often "pine" means some kind of conifer...

Occasionally you might see some white pine sold at Christmas tree lots.

Mostly fir or spruce in the US as well, but those are often informally referred to as "pine"
Our land area consists of like 70% of either of those so I guess that makes it more important for us to tell the difference :)
I'll admit I can't tell a spruce from a fir, but pine trees look so distinctive that I can always spot them.
Granved är ren skit. Förstör skorstenen o pannan, kåda o inge energivärde. Elda björk istället!!!
It's worse than that. The sap in it will collect in the chimney and then cause a chimney fire. You really don't want to burn that stuff in a fireplace.
I'd say that is a symtom of bad combustion (too little air). Not what kind of wood you use. Sap burns just fine.
It's both too low temperature burning leaving resiude in the chimney that can catch fire later, AND pine/spruce having way too much sap to burn alone. You should absolutley mix it with other wood when you burn it, same as oak.
Fair enough. Feels like you have more (possibly hard-earned) experience than me on this issue.
So use a rocket stove? Burns too hot and efficient to leave residue.
Yeah, let me just dig the old rocket stove out of the basement and fire it up.
They are fairly easy and cheap to construct, plenty of guides for rocket stoves, and rocket mass heaters.

Want to heat an entire garage 24h with a hand full of twigs? An ordinary oven can't cope.