Sweet birch firewood: BTU, weight and seasoning

Heat per cord

Sweet birch is a hardwood. At 20% moisture, a full cord holds about 26.8 million BTU of heat (28.3 gigajoules). Wetter wood gives less, because part of the heat goes into boiling off the water.

That ranks sweet birch 241st of the 558 species in our tables, from the hottest down.

Weight and density

A full cord of seasoned sweet birch (20% moisture) weighs about 4,360 lb (1,980 kg). Freshly cut, the same cord weighs about 5,230 lb (2,370 kg): the difference is water you don't want to burn.

Its specific gravity, a measure of density, is 0.74. Denser wood packs more heat into each cord.

Seasoning time

Split and stacked off the ground, sweet birch needs at least 11 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: low
• Coals: very high
• Burn time: very long

We rate sweet birch 6 out of 10 as firewood: a good choice.

Similar firewood

Other species to compare with sweet birch:

• Alaska paper birch: 22.3 million BTU per cord
• Downy birch: 22.8 million BTU per cord
• Gray birch: 20.4 million BTU per cord
• Paper birch: 22.3 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