They were cutting up a load of sturdy old benches at work today, so I snagged a car full with the intent of burning it in the woodburner.

Once I’ve hacked it up in to manageable lumps, how long will it need to stand before I can burn it? Benches have been out in the open for most of their lives.

Haven’t they been treated with some sort of chemicals? Not what I would want in my house.

Probably good to go, plus you get the scrap value of the memorial plaque donating the bench to someone’s loved ones…

andeh

how long will it need to stand before I can burn it? Benches have been out in the open for most of their lives.

They’ll burn right away then unless they’ve become rotten/sodden. As above though they might have paint or similar on them. Not ideal but only a problem if that was all you ran your stove on.

It’s a long time since they’ve been treated with anything, if they have at all, so I’m not too worried about that.

Benches are more like tables/picnic benches from the dining room courtyard (it’s a school) and have been replaced with those recycled/reconstituted plastic ones. No memorial plaques, unfortunately.

Thanks all, I’m new to this wood burner stuff.

I used to paint park benches for par of my job, we used to treat them every year and no I would not want to burn them!

Slight hijack – I have a log store full of wood going for free. Macclesfield area if anybody wants it? Our fire is currently out of commission and I’d hate for the wood to be wasted. Email in profile.

Sorry OP

That reminds me, I have to get some wood.

Basically air dried already.
Remnants of an oak bench fueled our fire quite nicely just before Christmas.
Always look for old oak posts when renewing fences, although any old fence post will do.

Tend to burn blagged wood 95% of the time but do make sure you get the flue / chimney / fire things regularly cleaned out in case you burn too much sticky icky shite up the chimney / flue lining – chimney fires are not cool (for you) although impressive to watch on YouTube :/

James

Currently we are suffering from occasional smelly tarry dribbles down the back of our fireplace. We can’t work out what’s causing the condensation in the flue because our wood is well seasoned; we think it may actually just be tar from some larch (also well seasoned) the farmer sold me. Anybody else had this with larch?