Dave, you are so right - hedge (Osage Orange)is a really dense wood and has about the highest of heating value of all woods. In this area hedge is trash tree and grows abundantly. In the rural areas around here some people do a lot of their heating with hedge. Since our cabin has only a fireplace for heating it's great that we can readily get hedge.
Here are some energy densities for wood.
Osage Orange 33
Hickory 28
Oak 27
Ponderosa Pine 15
The first year of the cabin Scott and I tried to cut our own wood. We spent an entire day cutting hedge and got about 3/4 of a cord. Around here we can have hedge delivered and stacked for around $175 a cord so we each earned about $11 per hour. At that point we decided we would be better off sticking to our day jobs
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We build such hot fires that we had to have our grates custom made out of 1 inch square steel. We melt anything you can commonly buy.
