We're under a complete burn ban here. The field beside us was tilled today and there was minimal moisture when the harrows went through so i expect I'llbe looking at my brush piie until the fall.
It was around 10 hours over a couple of days. My back will only take so much. What made it easier this year is that I was strategic in how I placed the limbs on the pile. Took a little longer up front but it was worth it on the back side.
We're good to burn in the county at the moment. It was a near perfect day for burning with intermittent rain, mostly overcast, and green grass all around.
All the butt ends pounted one way helps, and cutting any crook or fork larger than an inch seems to be a good combination to prevent tangling and feeding problems with the WC-68. It doesn’t take long to chew up a LOT of brush. I try to make sure I cut the stumps off anything I uproot to minimize the dirt/sand going through it. If the pile has been rained on, spraying it with water to rinse off splatter helps too. If it’s really dry, same trick with the water helps keep the dust down a bit if you’re chipping dry brush, and lubricates the knives a little bit too. Dry stuff is a lot worse about shattering a throwing stuff back at you.
Interesting.... I burn a fair bit of micro lam, some OSB, and sometimes I joist scraps in my shop wood boiler here in Idaho, being in construction and tripping over the stuff daily, I sometimes haul some home. My home made boiler burns clean, and my neighbors are far away, 1/4 mile anyway, no pressure treated stuff ever. When I first started seeing the "manufactured" wood, OSB etc., some decades ago, I was assured by a Boise Cascade tech rep, that it burns "clean" and would present no particular hazard, other than the usual hazards with burning anything. I haven't paid a heating bill in over 40 years, between wood and solar thermal/hot water panels, so I pay attention to comments like yours, ESPECIALLY as you are in Montana, not in some back east city!
Wood burning stoves, boilers and fireplaces aren't regulated here as far as I know. There is a definition of a camp fire which is something like a fire of less than 3ft diameter, less than 3ft high and with wood that has a cross-section of 4" or less ... or something like that. Camp fires don't need permits but they are subject to burn bans.
The tributary showing on a map reminded me of a situation I had ancillary involvement in a few years ago. Land owner contracted with a grading company to flatten out about 5 acres that was shaped like a bowl with one end open so he could put up a commercial building and parking lot. It was visible from a public road. They were about done when a NC DEQ inspector happened to drive by and thought he recalled the area being on their maps as an intermittent waterway. He checked their records, saw he was correct, and things went bad really quickly for the landowner and contractor as neither had checked the maps so no permits to disturb a waterway that was, according to government maps, part of a major river’s watershed. They had to return the land to original grade, grass to prevent erosion, $10K/day until complete, $100K one time fine on top of the $10K/day. After all that was done ($400K in fines later) DEQ issued a permit to flatten the land for the land owner’s intended use.
