Whatever happened to burn barrels? I remember that we had them when I was kid, everyone had them back then. It'd be either a purpose built construction with cinder blocks and an old appliance door or something on top, or just a rusty 55 gallon drum.

Every day one would put their newspapers, lawn trimmings, and various bits of flammable household refuse in it and light it up, then poke at it with a stick until it burned itself up. If you were handy, or fancy, you'd construct some sort of chimney out of more cinder blocks or more old appliance parts.

Then during the fall of course, you'd pile up all the fallen leaves and sticks and such against the side, set them sit and fester for a bit, then pour some gasoline on them and burn them up. (If it sat too long, all sorts of furry things would make a run for it, so best have a shovel handy. And don't use too much gas to get it started or you'll lose your eyebrows...)

Now I'm supposed to recycle my paper and cardboard and what not. Why? This just gives the company that picks it up money, and I don't get anything for doing the labor of sorting it for them.

I remember at some point it became technically illegal to have a burn barrel. But it was still legal to have a "camp fire" or any fire used for cooking, so you just had to take an old pot of water and set it out on the burner to boil...

Is this practice still legal anywhere?

We use them here. I don't mind when people burn paper, cardboard, etc., but the people next door throw every piece of garbage in theirs including plastic and it stinks up the neighborhood.

We generally burn our fallen tree limbs during a drizzly day. I have added paper documents that I wanted to discard but paper is usually a pain because it clumps together and you have to keep pushing it apart.

They are only legal in the offices of Senators and Congressmen. House rules say they are to be kept lit at all times ....Charlie Rangle neglected his burn barrel and let it die out.....that should serve as a warning to the rest.

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Thirty characters. Exactly...

I remember them from when I was a kid, lived in a small Kansas farm town. Had the required "Cat Lady" who lived two houses down, elderly, with about 40 cats, trees grown up all around her house, no lawn to speak of, more like a little clump of forest!

About once a month she would make her way out to the burn barrel with load after load of cat-pee n poop soaked newspaper and proceed to load it up. It never got a good burn going, just smoldered ALL DAMN DAY... the smoke was like a noxious fog that blanketed the neighborhood and of course smelled like what she was burning. Repeated complaints to the City had no results, an officer would talk to her and she'd run him off and do it again. I was sure glad when they put mandatory trash pickup into place, I tell you!

Still use them here. I cut the bottom out of a couple and put them over stumps, put the burnable trash in and, presto - no stump.

I have fond memories as a kid raking and burning leaves and yard debris during the fall! Many state and local fire codes now tightly regulate burning of any kind.

My Grandparents had a burn barrel and my Grandpa and my Dad always burned lots of stuff, and of course leaves in the fall. I think I was raised to be a pyromaniac.
Open burning is not legal in my city now, although you can have a "recreational" fire. Nobody really knows what that means. I live on an acreage that is in the city limits so I have to be careful. I always burn papers I don't want to throw away and have never had any problems.

I grew up on a farm and we did LOTS of burning(not just in the barrel either). I remember shooting drain holes in the bottom with Dad's old '03 Springfield sporter(they soon were plugged up with ash), and cutting a draft door along the side at the bottom. I'd turn the draft door toward the prevailing wind, load it up and boy would it roar. Great fun.

Andy

I think it has something to do with the value of metal barrels, and the fact that many barrels are plastic now.

Plastic burn barrels don't work too well.

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Lost it all in a boat accident

I have one right behind my driveway. Just loaded it up with feed bags today. Probably should recycle them, but don't. I recycle everything else, keeps the landfill a little smaller.

We do use it to burn wood for warmth at outside activities also. Mine even has a galvanized lid!

Munster

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GO NAVY!

I suppose burn barrels are frowned upon because of the tendancy to put plastic and all sorts of other bad things that produce carcinogens when they burn at the relatively low temps found in a burn barrel. Banned in our county and probably the whole state of MN. But, yes I do remember them in my younger days. Very handy.

I'm no envrio-nazi (I believe in burning coal to make electricity), but I know recycling as much as possible is good for the environment, even though someone may be making a buck off of it.

Clean Air Act of 1970 was the main reason most outdoor burning was stopped or at least more closely controlled. Gave the States & Local Govts more power to enforce rules and regs with emission and overall air quality standards.
It's been updated many times since w/higher standards.
Earlier Federal Clean Air Laws set goals more than regulatory measures. They go back to the mid 50's.

Gone were the days when in the fall of the year everyone raked the piles of leaves to the roads edge in long rows and burned them. They burned and smoldered for days but that was the way to dispose of them.
Burn barrels in alot of yards even in the suburbs. Not too bad till they threw the daily food garbage in there too and plastic food wraps became more common.

They still allow the 'recreational fire pits' in most but not all localitys around here but they get fire dept responses for '(heavy) smoke in the area'. It's not uncommon.
People are just not used to seeing or smelling smoke outside in the summertime anymore other than a BBQ.
And they still try to use those things as garbage disposals!

I grew up in Albany, New York and back in the fifties a couple of dirty guys driving up and down the city streets in an old dump truck. They would empty the ashes from your burn barrel for fifty cents. I also remember people using the cinders from their coal furnaces to cover the icy sidewalks.

What a mess people must have tracked in to their houses!

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TomD

Everyone has them around here. I get them for free to $5. Non recyclables get thrown in there. I figure it's better to burn it than to let it sit in the dump.... plus I don't have garbage pick up.. sooooo.......

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- The Federalist #46 -

Leaf burning was outlawed in NJ in the 1970s and the shift from rural/low density suburban living to high density resulted-I think-in greater restrictions on outdoor fires. Most businesses I know of use a shredder for old paperwok they want to dispose of but wish to keep secret.

We stopped about the third time the field caught fire

I have a friend who swears she's gonna have her husband cremated when he passes so that at least for once she can get him to do something useful around the house.

They're not legal in Tennessee but a lot of people outside of the cities still have them. I don't have one, but I do burn my cardboard and newspapers in my fire pit, and I burn leaves every fall -- truckloads of leaves.

I took down 10 trees this summer, so I have a big brush pile to burn this fall also.

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VIVERE MILITARE EST

In WI, burning barrels are allowed (with restrictions, of course), and only dry, unpainted or treated wood or NON-recyclable paper or cardboard. EPA claims that a single burning barrel (paper only) puts as much dioxin and furan into the atmosphere as a well-regulated industrial incinerator serving thousands....

A recreational fire is one that you don't start building by putting an old tire in the middle

Maybe so, but they don't rust anywhere near as fast as the old metal ones do

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Forum consigliere

We had one growing up. There were a couple of rent houses down the road a little way, and every time they would get a new renter, we'd have a fire in the pasture behind the house. No matter how many times the landlord cautioned them against putting aerosol cans in the fire, they still did it. Once it came close to getting our house, and did burn an outbuilding that was falling down anyway. The fire truck from town came out for that one. It wasn't long after that that the county said we couldn't burn our trash anymore.

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Insert short witty words here

In many places the EPA and clean air regs happened. Some places will not even let you light up a barbque. Our taxpayer dollars at work, enforcing guvmint edicts.

Many places have outlawed em' as people are stupid and burn things not meant to be burned, such as other people's property.

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I’m your Boogie Man, uh huh.

We burn anything paper in our barrel. Except for that almost empty hair spray can that accidentally got tossed in there last spring. When that thing blew, it was kind of startling.

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Southern Conservative

I'm smack dab in the middle of KY and visit mine daily.

Just the mention of "burn barrel" gives me flashbacks of singed field jackets and melted ponchos from trying to stay warm in the freezing rain in basic training.

We can have recreational fires here, and I get branches dropping every so often from the trees on the property, so I took a steel barrel and cut it in thirds to make rings, set one in a square filled with cinder rock, threw a few lawn chairs around it and go out every so often and fill it with broken up branches and drink a beer... voila! Recreational fire!

Eh, how do you expect to keep the mosquitoes away without burning a few tires?

burning tires or old oil is a sure way to run off the bugs!!

When I had my apartment in NJ after I came off the farm and lost my burn barrel, my future husband bought me a shredder when he caught me burning bank statements in the kitchen sink.

Now there's the other use for a burn barrel - books of check stubs are a pain to run thru a shredder, as are bags of archived tax forms and backup data. It's much quicker and more fun to burn the stuff.

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VIVERE MILITARE EST

Ah the memories! Standing around the old burn barrel in the winter while enjoying Spam and Thunderbird wine while wrapped up in whatever you could find to keep warm.

A burn barrel is a requirement for just about any outside, winter-time, get-together down here. Usually we're "mindin' the hawg". We're burnin' wood though,with the occasional beer can thrown in.
f.t.

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South Carolina-God's country

Here's a "burn barrel" that I built....

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'Merica!

Best bonfire I ever built was when I was a boy at my grandfather's farm. He made me start with am old tire and then we piled stuff on it until it was about 10 feet high. That sucker burnt for a day and a half. I'm not sure whether it was the tire or that quarter cord of lighter wood he had forgotten was in the brush pile we built the fire around

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Forum consigliere

We used burn barrels on our department ranges to dispose of empty ammo boxes, used targets and worn out target backers. I think we quit burning them because some folks couldn't resist tossing in an unfired cartridge every so often.

Still use 'em here, you have to be careful when it's dry, pretty easy to get a grass fire going. Have to cull the aerosol cans out of the trash, but the best part is taking the new (well, old) barrels out in the desert and shooting holes in the bottom and sides for drainage and aeration, don't you know.

This community has a weird trash system. We can pay a fee of $40 per month for a once a week trash pickup, we can carry our trash to a compactor about two miles away, we can burn it or we can combine a combination of these features.

I had a burn barrel and it was more trouble than worth so I built a burn pit. No more loading a barrel. I just gather as much stuff as I want on the burn pile, get a burn permit (free), pour some diesel fuel for starter and toss a match. The kitchen trash goes to the compactor along with the other household waste. But my burn pile gets used for banking statements, bills, business reports, cancelled checks and yard waste. About once a year, I empty the ashes into a creek on the back of the property.

Burn barrels are acceptable to use in rural counties of Florida as long as they have a metal mesh lid on the top to keep burning material inside the barrel. I have responded to quite a few wildfires over the years that were started by unattended burn barrels without lids on top; usually it was the result of aerisol cans exploding and spitting fire all over the surrounding vegitation.

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"Life is short, hunt hard"

I abandoned my country roots long ago. Now I'm a city dweller. I have friends who still enjoy the farm parties with the bonfire. Or call it a burn barrel if you wish.

But a few years back I had a big die off of trees here. I lost maybe 4 or 5 that year. So I got out my handy-dandy chainsaw and cut them down. Then I proceeded to cut them up. I had a lot of slash. To me, the way to get rid of it was to burn it, the same as we'd always done. Right on the stump it grew from. That got the engine company here in short order. But I was friendly with the Lt. I had a dalmation. Firemen and dalmatians just go together.

So he gave me the hot tip. You can't burn trash, slash, scrap wood etc. But you can have a cooking fire. Those are totally unregulated here. So my tactics changed. My stump burning required some props. If it was a nice evening and I felt like becoming one with the outdoors, I took a tray table outside. On it was a pack of hotdogs, buns, mustard, and my wienee roasting stick. I'd get a good fire going and sit back in my lawn chair. Waiting.

First few times I got visited again. But each time, be it a pumper truck, the red car of the chief, or a patrolman, I'd just offer them a hot dog. Pointing at the tray table. They stopped coming around.

These days you can find the equivalent of a burn barrel at almost any patio supply firm. They just call them firepits. Some are gas fired, but many have the screen sides and top. Just fancy things to satisfy our primal urge to see fire after dark. For all of recorded history, and probably before it, people sat around a fire. It provided them with warmth, light, and security. The firepit doesn't care what you ignite inside it.

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Dick Burg

Heres my latest burn barrel complete with "ventilation holes".

I really do look forward to venting my new barrels.

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I learned to shoot a 1911 Colt shooting at the barrels in our back yard. I had a heck of a lot better group than that, too.

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Georgia On My Mind

I have one, but I just don't use it. It's too hot to be outside in the summer, and it's seems much easier to just take branches to the local "green" dump. When I was a kid, I would always save all the empty aerosol cans for the burn barrel, the hair spray, and WD-40 were great.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

You're a sick puppy! If you play with aerosols, it needs to be a wet day, one where you can't catch the entire county on fire. Two instances come to mind.

When I was just out of high school, I worked the summer in a warehouse. I went where they needed me. Often it was shipping when a lot of stuff was finished. One day the truck pulled in and waited. We had a shipment of product that needed to go that day. So the trucker sat and waited. Finally some of the product started coming out on fork lifts. But it was clear it would be another hour or two. So the trucker started sorting **** he had up in the front of the truck. One box he'd been unable to deliver for a month. He was pitching it. Into the trash barrel it went. I looked, it was an oxygen cylinder maybe 5" in diameter and maybe 18" long. Nicely packed in shreaded wood, looking like hay.

A few hours later he was on his way and the superintendent came along and told me to haul all the trash barrels out to the fire pit and dump them. Who was I to question a man of such authority? We did that every day and the embers smoldered foreever or till we got a good rain. The shipping barrel was the last to go. By then the heat had started the first one smoldering pretty good. All it would take was a small breeze or gust for them to erupt into flams. So on the pile whent the shipping barrel contents. I then was a good boy and returned all the barrels to where they came from. About a half hour before quitting time the explosion hit. It was so spectacular we got a mushroom cloud! Maybe 75 feet or so in the air. The building was new and every corrogated steel panel rattled. No windows broken, but ash from the prior few weeks was drifting down wind. Luckily not toward the plant or parking lot, but over the nearby woods. It was summer and no fires started!

They even asked me what the hell I'd dumped. After a quick look at the shipping manager, I said I didn't know. Just the contents of the barrels. Wasn't my job to look. They assumed it was just some solvent in a aerosol can. New rule: I had to sort of sift thru anything I was dumping on the fire. It was OK with me. It made a 15 minute job into an hour or more task. Outside, in the sun. I could handle it.

The second instance of fire fun was a buddy who was a pyromaniac. We were helping load bales of hay on the wagon. A thankless job. And a big field. After a few hours we were beat, the wagon was full, and we needed a break. So we went back to the barnyard. The friend vanished, I dumped a bucket of water on my head. Then got a big glass of cold water. It was time to head back up to the field, and the vanished friend reappared, carrying 2 huge trash bags, fully inflated. I didn't know, but I figured we'd see soon enough.

He built a little house out bales, 2 high then catecorner across them. and one on top. The bags were inside He'd stuck a cannon fuse out one corner, and it was long. He lit it and then lit out toward where we were going. I jumped on the hay wagon and the guy driving took off, too. Then the explosion came. Who knew oxygen and acetlyene would go off like that? Worse, the hayfield was afire. We spent the next hour putting out as many blazes as we could, with the help of the rural fire department. That ended my career as a pyromaniac. Now I sit back at a deniable distance and enjoy others play.

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Dick Burg

My ex father-in-law had one to burn some stuff at his country home. On a side note we did have a burn pit when I was in Iraq in 04-05. I did find out that there is a difference between a burn pit and a revel fire and that you shouldn't dance naked around it. Don't ask!

Just kidding about the last part

We used to have a burn pit lined with bricks in the back yard. I used to burn everything as a kid I learned at a young age that everything and anything will burn. The most fun we had was filing down an old set of magnesium rims and burning holes in everything. I don't really burn things to often anymore since it seems like the earth is already burning itself.

..don't burn the meat.

Hi Barb,
What worked for me was using lighter fluid or cooking oil between every few pages.