Seeing all that wood was sure scary. If the wood is bad does that mean it can't be burned. Forgive the dumb question however not ever having a fireplace or wood stove I have no idea of  good or bad wood.

About half of the bad firewood was rotten and some had mold, the rest has serious bug damage and a lot have carpenter ants in it still.  Also they included some pine and aspen (which are “soft wood”) when we paid for all high quality “hardwood”.  All of these issues means the wood will burn up very quickly and not produce much heat, the bugs will have to be sprayed for and put our other wood at risk, and the soft woods increase soot build-up in the chimney (especially a problem in our extra tall chimney pipe).

The bad wood can still be used, but is almost more trouble than it is worth.  I am glad to say the guy did finally refund the money for the half that is bad, but I will still need to burn up the bad wood first and deal with the bugs/mold/soft wood and try to separate it from the good wood.  Annoying to say the least.

Now I understand all the problems. WOW! Once the bugs are killed, maybe some of the wood could be used for emergencies only.  It is wonderful that you know so much about this stuff and can avoid any danger that might have happened.

I think the best idea will actually be to burn up the bad wood as quickly as possible.  Then I won’t have to worry about continued bug issues or rot.  It can be quite a problem with bug wood though since any bugs still alive will actually crawl out of a fire if it isn’t hot enough before putting in a log.  When I was a kid we had a really big log that was suspected of still having giant ants in it and mom & dad threw it on a just started fire… ants actually came out ON FIRE!  We all freaked out except my grandmother who calmly grabbed a broom and started sweeping them out the front door.

sure wish you had some of our good oak. We still  have probably 5 or 6 cords in the yard. We don't burn much when we go up but for exercise we get more every summer.

Yeah.  We got so spoiled from the 4 cords we bought from a guy that was hauling wood from Illinois (or Indiana or somewhere).  He would load up a big goose neck with four cords and pay for his vacations back home by selling the wood when he got back to Colorado.  It was spectacular with Osage Orange, white oak, black locust, and two or three others right down the list of the hottest burning woods.  Was really great, but now the guy moved and we can't get more.

So we are stuck ordering from around here.  However, I think the next time we need wood I will pay the more premium price to get really good wood instead of the lower priced junk we ended up with.