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Comment by inasio | Hacker News Reader

Back in the day (1960s?) two relatives of mine had a prank battle going on. One of them posted an add in the local newspaper offering to buy old Christmas trees, at the address of their adversary. Half the city showed up, were told trees were not in fact being bought, and everybody dumped the trees at their door.

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Reminds me of the story in Pranks[1] (I got my copy at a garage sale V. Vale was having in SF years ago!) about an even more vicious prank - advertising for workers to help demolish a home - while its owner was out of town...

1: https://www.researchpubs.com/shop/p/pranks

Wasn't that one of the SF robber barons wanting to expand his palace and the home owner refusing to sell? Even calling it a vicious prank seems nicer than the action deserves.

V. Vale exists? I always just thought they were a cohort of sorts.

Heartily recommend that pranks book.

Yup, V. Vale certainly exists and sells his RE/Search publications pretty regularly outside of City Lights bookstore in SF! He has a table he set up on the sidewalk and is very friendly and full of great anecdotes.

Back in the Depression, my grandfather and a friend posted an ad. It claimed to be a medical laboratory who needed cats for an experiment, and offering $0.25 per cat if people would bring their cats to the local train station at whatever time.

Of course there were no lab representatives waiting at the appointed time, so lots of people just dumped their cats (or perhaps they were feral cats that they rounded up?) at the train station. The neighborhood was infested with them for some time after that.

Unusually for gramps, he actually proved that this particular story was true. He actually had a newspaper clipping that told the story.

Seems like a great way to stock up your firewood supply for the next winter, if you manage to target it in a way that doesn't cause half the city to show up, but maybe a little less than that?

Pine is really smokey and burns fast

It's worse than that. The sap in it will collect in the chimney and then cause a chimney fire. You really don't want to burn that stuff in a fireplace.

So use a rocket stove? Burns too hot and efficient to leave residue.

Yeah, let me just dig the old rocket stove out of the basement and fire it up.

They are fairly easy and cheap to construct, plenty of guides for rocket stoves, and rocket mass heaters.

Want to heat an entire garage 24h with a hand full of twigs? An ordinary oven can't cope.

I'd say that is a symtom of bad combustion (too little air). Not what kind of wood you use. Sap burns just fine.

It's both too low temperature burning leaving resiude in the chimney that can catch fire later, AND pine/spruce having way too much sap to burn alone. You should absolutley mix it with other wood when you burn it, same as oak.

Fair enough. Feels like you have more (possibly hard-earned) experience than me on this issue.

Here in Sweden at least, christmas trees are not pines but spruce.

These small ones with lots of branches - probably not worth the work effort unless you are desperate. And you'll get a lot of residue branches. You also want them to dry for a season before you burn them.

Other than that, they burn just like any other log. Maybe a bit less energy per log. Maybe more smokey than some, but smoke should go out the chimney not in the room.

In the US we use firs and spruce as well but often "pine" means some kind of conifer...

Occasionally you might see some white pine sold at Christmas tree lots.

Granved är ren skit. Förstör skorstenen o pannan, kåda o inge energivärde. Elda björk istället!!!

Mostly fir or spruce in the US as well, but those are often informally referred to as "pine"

Our land area consists of like 70% of either of those so I guess that makes it more important for us to tell the difference :)

I'll admit I can't tell a spruce from a fir, but pine trees look so distinctive that I can always spot them.

It's not. You don't want to burn softwoods; they're resinous and create a ton of smoke.

A pile of Christmas trees makes for a terrific January beach bonfire.

Every year our neighbors do this. We jokingly refer to them as The Bumpus family because they are loud and are always doing stuff like this.

We lit up a dead Christmas tree that had been sitting outside one summer. We were so sure the cops would show up when someone saw the two story column of fire that thing made. The good part is that it was all over in about a minute.

Properly dried they are pretty smoke-free

How dry are we talking? Because burning furniture-grade EWP offcuts (~6% moisture content) is smoky as hell. It isn't the wood, at least not entire - it's the sap pockets and other crap.

(I have a wood shop, these are things relevant to my interests!)

It reminds me of a newspaper ad I saw 20 years ago which read "Free monkey and 10 pounds of monkey food. call 555-555-5555". Well the gentleman that answered did not have a monkey for sale, and was quite rude about it.

And Wouldn’t monkeys eat regular human food?

Monkey bite your face off.

That number shouldn't work, right?

I am assuming OP is using 555 as a stand-in for whatever number was there at the time, however long ago.

Had a roommate in graduate school whose friend listed his car (and phone number) on craigslist for a ridiculously low price. His phone was ringing off the hook for like two days until he was able to get it taken down.

How do people find out who did these things though? Is there a big reveal where the cape is whipped aside?

Find the "friend" who can't look at you anymore without breaking into a fit of giggles / falling over laughing?

This is a great way to get free firewood

softwood is horrible to use. The resin in it burns up and gums up in the chimney and can cause chimney fires.

Ya its free but also burns quick and doesn't put out enough heat.

Brotherman, you burn what you've got. Doug fir and spruce are fine firewood and fine Christmas trees.

Edit: 'Chim-chimminey chim chim cheroo' Stop killing honest jobs

Chop it, split it, dry it for a year and it’s fine. I’ve burnt huge amounts of pine in my Jøtul.

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