In the column about burning wrapping paper, Cecil also mentioned that burning old Christmas trees is a bad idea too, giving as an example his poor uncle’s in-law’s house.
But he didn’t say exactly what it was about that type of wood that produces the danger. Anyone know?
P.S. - Speaking of wood not to burn: If you’re camping out in western US, don’t burn pinyon tree wood. The bark is rather flaky, and produces very ashy smoke. (A friend tried to cook his breakfast over such a fire. He just made sooty eggs. [And he laughed at my Sterno-powered mini-stove.])
There are a couple of reasons not to burn a Christmas tree in the fireplace. One is fairly minor. If you burn pine in a fireplace, the sappy wood leaves more creosote-type stuff in the flue. That’s no big deal, with just the one tree.
The bigger, more hazardous reason is that a pine tree with all its needles, that’s been drying out since before Thanksgiving, is extremely fire-friendly. It has many small branches and thousands of narrow needles. So, the combustible surface area is enormous. It doesn’t have a low flash point, but once it gets started, the entire tree is afire in seconds. The average fireplace has a flue hatch only about 2 feet by 4 inches, and the sudden foof of a dry Christmas tree can be more than the flue can handle. The fiery overflow can take away your eyebrows and your Christmas stockings. If you are lucky that’s all it will burn.
If you must burn your tree, do it outdoors. Be careful, folks. We need you here.
I see: it’s the creosote build-up that’s the problem.
We always used pine tree wood for our campfires at summer camp. But that was outdoors, where we didn’t have to worry about build-up. We also found if we loaded the firewood stack with pine cones and dry needles, we got a real hot, sparky fire.
It’s amazing Colorado didn’t burn down with us in charge of building campfires.
My chimney-sweep friend told me when I had a spruce tree cut down that I should mix other woods in with the spruce as we used up the conifer’s wood. A long run of conifer, he said, would build up creosote, and I’d have to hire him more often to keep from having a chimney fire.