pallets for firewood

D

Diamond Dog

Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
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Hey all I was wondering if pallet wood is okay to burn? I mean is it treated with any chemicals that may smell or is it just plain old plywood? If so I always come across wood pallets and never know what to do with them. There are these real hefty pallets with some blue painting on them, maybe the maker or something but to me they seem like they wood be an excellent source of firewood. Good to keep around or take on camping trip in the winter or if there is alot of wet wood around. What are your thoughts about this.
 
Plenty of people use them at our local beach fire pits, and they sometimes stack 5-10 pallets and soak them in lighter fluid then ignite them. So I'm not sure if they are really safe, but maybe if you are outside. with great vent.
 
There is no good answer. Pallets are made from whatever is cheapest and most readily available. It's unlikely to find treated wood, but it is possible. Painted wood seems more common IME. Look em over, use your judgement and when in doubt don't burn or at least avoid the fumes.

I use a fair number for building/rebuilding compost bins and some of that compost ends up back in my vegetable gardens - in those instances I'm real careful about looking the wood over for any signs of chemical exposure.
 
I would avoid burning any painted, press board or treated pallets, they may well smell and release harmful chemicals when you burn them. Plain (untreated/unpainted) pine pallets should be ok... and if you can find ‘em, oak pallets are even better for giving off a lot of heat without much smoke.
 
Besides not breathing a lot of the smoke from pallets made of unknown materials, I think of more concern would be to avoid cooking directly over the resulting flames or coals, like toasting marshmallows or roasting hotdogs.
 
Not to go against the grain (no pun intended) deliberately, pallets are about the best firewood I've ever run across, period. That being said, all the ones I've used are roughsawn lumber. Depending on where they've come from, you might be able to scrounge some decent hardwood from them. The planking is usually garbage but, from the middle pieces, I've gotten oak, mahogany and even teak.
 
Hey Guys...

I have to agree with Deadeye...

We are under a transporting firewood ban in our area because of the Emrald Ash Borer, so we are somewhat limited to what we can take camping as far as firewood goes...

One option is for us to collect pallets.. alot of people bring electric chainsaws with them and just cut it up as needed..

I usually just take a chainsaw and hack them up into bite sized chunks and toss it all into the pickup for transport..

Alot of the pallets we find here are pine, with some mixed unkown hardwood..burns great,, no problem at all...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
I've found some pretty good handle material hiding in pallets as well,good cheap practive material,and as others have said Firewood!
 
I wouldn't burn the painted ones. I've had pretty reliable access to broken/scrap pallets for quite a few years since I've been doing warehouse work, and I have made shelves and work benches out of some, and burned quite a few. I've even cooked over some that I could tell with fair certainty were untreated pine, but as a general rule I usually don't cook over them. The only thing that I would add that hasn't been mentioned yet is to be aware that you're going to have a lot of nails left in your fire pit after burning a bunch of these. Most places that probably won't matter much, but it can be a bit of a pain if you have to pick all of those nails out and remove them from the sight for some reason.
 
Salamander, you reminded of a suggestion...I've got a couple skids (pallets, not crackheads) downstairs that I've turned into workbenches. They are decked with plywood because they are from shipments of Corian and Surrell (solid countertop). Using plywood products in a cooking fire is probably not a great idea, given that it tends to burn blue when the glue starts to cook.....
 
here in Hawaii alot of ignorant people use them to make bon fires at the local beaches, the reason i say ignorant is because they dont bother to pickup the million and one nails that are left behind after the burn. it becomes a hazard for the unknowing folks who like to take a stroll or the ocasional sand rider.
 
Pallets are usually hardwood but more and more they are being replaced by plastic.I have a plastic one and it seems very rugged. If the pallet comes from overseas it will be treated with pesticide to keep out foreign bugs .Unfortunately the Emerald Ash Borer , from China about 15 years ago, is already established in some states like OH ,IL, PA.
 
In our home, heat is provided by a woodburning stove. The kindling used to start the fire each night is....pallet lumber. I collect them from the newspaper office, lumber yards, WalMart, anywhere where they'll let me have the imperfect ones they toss aside.

The slats are, like DeadEyeLefty said, made of oak, walnut (yes, walnut), birch, poplar, fir, and pine. The rails are usually 1-3/4" thick and usually made of oak. I stack them all summer 'til fall (pretty soon now), then I cut them up using a jig saw and a reciprocating saw...both with the coarsest blades available. The slats are then taken in and cut in half lengthwise on the bandsaw. Then they're split with a hatchet into strips about 8" x 1/2" and used for kindling.

Point is.....very few that I've run in to use treated lumber. That isn;t to say I don;t occasionally have to toss some treated stuff, but it's rare.....relatively.
 
I noticed a lot of discrepancies with pallets. I know some of them are pine just by the smell and are fairly light weight. Some pallets are very heavy and I do not know what wood that is oak? I just assumed they were all like pine or plywood. So the rails are the better of the burning wood then the slats? I find that most places just toss the pallets, there has to be a better way of disposing of these. Is there anyway of telling what kind of wood it is?
 
DeadeyeLefty said:
Salamander, you reminded of a suggestion...I've got a couple skids (pallets, not crackheads) downstairs that I've turned into workbenches. They are decked with plywood because they are from shipments of Corian and Surrell (solid countertop). Using plywood products in a cooking fire is probably not a great idea, given that it tends to burn blue when the glue starts to cook.....
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I've got a table on my patio made from one that was made extra heavy duty. . . the slats on top are right up against one another instead of having spaces in between and are about the same dimensions as the rails on standard palets, and the rails are 4x4s I think. This is one tough SOB of a pallet.

And, yeah, I agree. . . plywood isn't too good of an idea for burning either.

rctk1, I hadn't thought about beach fires. . . I'm an Indiana boy, not many beaches around here. That is one place a responsible burner should DEFINITELY remove nails from. As Esav suggested, a large magnet would probably do the trick. I've been known to just cut the slats so that the ends with the nails are still attached to the rails, and just burn the slats if I didn't want to worry about leaving nails behind.
 
lotoblades said:
I've found some pretty good handle material hiding in pallets as well,good cheap practive material,and as others have said Firewood!
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Good point, much of the wood from pallets come from tropical rain forests- unfortunately at the expense of the environment. Some of this wood is decent handle material, but one has to look for it. If it is really heavy it is worth a second look, cut and grind it to see what kind of grain it has.
 
Dr. Mudd said:
Besides not breathing a lot of the smoke from pallets made of unknown materials, I think of more concern would be to avoid cooking directly over the resulting flames or coals, like toasting marshmallows or roasting hotdogs.
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+1...+2 even! This is outstandingly good advice!
 
Just remember this, if you don't use new pallets, you can't be sure what they were used for before, pallets are reused all the time to carry everything from drums of liquid chemicals to produce, I've worked in chemical refineries and I've seen chem spills directly on the pallet and the wood soaks it up like a sponge so be careful, most large commercial food plants are usually the first stop for new pallets but check with the shipping and receiving departments they can usually confirm this.

Just remember burning pallets of unknown origin means you could be breathing the residue of everything that's ever been carried on it, now if all the pallet had was sacks of potatoes that's great, but what if it had TCE or any number of other carcinogens, is it really worth the risk?

Just something to think about before the next bonfire.
 
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