In the past few years, the apartment complex where I live has been using this new type of wood chips to lay around the trees and bushes. Besides it smelling terrible, it seems to be real dry. So dry in fact that there have been small smoldering fires that have started because people are throwing away their cigarettes and they land in the chips.

It takes more than a couple of buckets of water to put it out. The residents have complained about that chips and have pointed out the fires. Is there some other types of chips to recommend to the manager to prevent the fires and what could be making it smell as bad as it is?

DCMerkle