Horse chestnut firewood: BTU, weight and seasoning

Heat per cord

Horse chestnut is a hardwood. At 20% moisture, a full cord holds about 18.2 million BTU of heat (19.2 gigajoules). Wetter wood gives less, because part of the heat goes into boiling off the water.

That ranks horse chestnut 477th of the 558 species in our tables, from the hottest down.

Weight and density

A full cord of seasoned horse chestnut (20% moisture) weighs about 2,970 lb (1,350 kg). Freshly cut, the same cord weighs about 4,030 lb (1,830 kg): the difference is water you don't want to burn.

Its specific gravity, a measure of density, is 0.50. Denser wood packs more heat into each cord.

Seasoning time

Split and stacked off the ground, horse chestnut needs at least 12 months to dry to about 20% moisture.

Wood dries faster once it is split and stacked with air around it. A moisture meter on a fresh split face tells you when it is ready.

How it burns

• Ash: moderate
• Coals: moderate
• Burn time: moderate

We rate horse chestnut 2 out of 10 as firewood: it burns, but denser species give more heat for the same work.

Similar firewood

Other species to compare with horse chestnut:

• American chestnut: 17.5 million BTU per cord
• Sweet chestnut: 21.5 million BTU per cord
• Austrian pine: 17.8 million BTU per cord
• Jack pine: 18.8 million BTU per cord

Where these numbers come from

The heat and weight figures come from our firewood tables, worked out the same way for every species at 20% moisture. See how we calculate them.

Questions