As you may be aware, we live in an urban environment. Firewood is at a premium and available conveniently at our grocery store and big box hardware store, but at a premium price. Big bucks for just a few 16″ pieces of lord knows what. mostly pine, but for the urban back yard burner, it’s premium fire wood.
At my work, a department receives heavy industrial kitchen equipment. they arrive safely on wood pallets of all sizes. The pallets are discarded shortly after arrival and placed near the dumpsters for disposal to the landfill.
I did my research and located several labels on the pallets. “HT” is what your looking for. HT stands for Heat Treated. This process basically places the pallets in large ovens and the temperature is raised to a certain degree to kill of any organisms that may be hitching a ride across the seas, or from state to state, or across the unprotected borders.
This pallet wood is completely safe to burn since no chemicals were used to treat for insects or organisms trying to invade our shores. We avoid any painted pallets or pallets that we cannot find a HT label. I don’t worry about the nails, they end up at the bottom of the pit and occasionally I scope them out and dispose of them.
So save some money and start burning pallets, that would normally wind up in the land fill.
