Seasoning Firewood

[Magicman]

I have a couple of firewood oaks that I will fell next week.  I don't have time, plus it's too darn hot to buck it up and split, so I'll just let it lay for a couple of weeks with the limbs/leaves on it.  Maybe the leaves will pull some moisture out of them?

[doctorb]

Corley5

Do you use salt and pepper on that or just burn it plain?

Doctorb

[Corley5]

Salt and pepper to taste 

[Magicman]

I knocked those couple of oaks down.  They were both encroaching on a very productive pecan tree.  I'll just let them  lay for a while before bucking and splitting.   The one on the right was a stump growth tree.  That stump has fence wire in it, but I can get below the wire and saw it off a little above ground level.
 


These trees will be the start on next year's firewood.

[HOOF-ER]

Used to have greenhouses. They would be ideal for drying. You could make a small hoop structure and cover with clear plastic. (Plastic would have to be sunlight resistant. Regular Visqueen will not last a year. ) Leave the sides open a few feet up and both ends open. Would be a cheap thing to build.

[wood monger]

I try to get it split as soon as possible, and I stack it into a south facing lean-to. This is a steel roofed addition to my garage, very airy, and I stack the wood on boards, to keep it off the ground. I used to stack it and tarp it but this was a real pain, especially when a load of snow was on top of the tarp. The tarp also seemed to trap a lot of moisture. A friend of mine had a degree in forestry, he often talked of a solar kiln, where you stacked the wood then covered it with black plastic, leaving a couple of foot gap around the bottom for air flow. Apparently the black plastic absorbed heat from the sun and airgap let breezes dissapate moisture.

[stumper]

Just a few pointers that I have found from old timers.

1.  Never stack on the ground.  A pallet or parrel logs can be used as a base.
2.  Stack bark up if not protected from rain.
3.  Leave exposed to sun and wind.
4.  Stack should allow a mouse to run through the stack but not the cat chasing it.
5.  I use an open sided wood shed, but a trap suspened a couple of feet above the pile also works well.
6.  Trees felled and left with limbs on for a week will season quicker the those limbed imediately.
7.  Log length wood does not season, but does make a good home for bugs and fungus.
8.  Split wood seasons faster then unsplit.

[doctorb]

I heard one firewood guy once say that it takes a month of drying time for every inch of wood thickness.  Anyone else heard that or is it an ol' wive's tale?
Despite my best intentions, I just now finnished stacking my wood for this coming winter. Hope I am not too late for the E-2300 to work well.

Doctorb

[bandmiller2]

Ideal is to burn two year old wood,cut and split green, stack outside for a year.Next year move it into the woodshead for a year.Sometimes really dry wood will burn too hot and fast,like pallets.Myself I get wood when I can, split when I can, and burn when I need to,let the wood chips fall where they may.My outside wood burner has a masonry firebox, burns vicous hot, and cares little if I feed it greenish wood. Frank C.

[doctorb]

How many FF members use a moisture meter to test their firewood?  I do, only because I have found it interesting.  Does anyone know a reference for the moisture content of wood as it progresses from green to seasoned?

doctorb

[beenthere]

Drb
The moisture meter will measure the surface mc.  As far as the center being "seasoned", that will only follow after the outside is dry.

What does your moisture meter read depth-wise.  And what has been "interesting" from your data collection?

Drying rate will depend on temperature, air movement, and relative humidity of the air surrounding each surface of a piece of firewood. The exposure of the surface will depend on how the wood is stacked.

[SwampDonkey]

Just a general rule of thumb, the firewood is green if it still has an MC of 30 % or more. Moisture tables in the wood handbook and wood technology text use it as the fibre saturation point. A guess on my part, as I don't use those meters, would be that the meters use this MC % for a "gauge" as well. Maybe that's the cutoff for the meters.

[doctorb]

Beenthere-

I agree, the meter only reads surface moisture percentage.  That's why I was told to split the wood before measuring, and then measure on the inside (split) surface.  That way you get an idea what the moisture content is inside the wood, not just on the surface.

What I have found is that the difference in content where you measure can be profound.  I have recorded, over a period of months, the change in moisture content of my delivered wood.  You can often see the "drying" line, as the wood with the higher H2O content is a little darker. (I am talking about oak now).  In my covered shed, with the wood stacked 6 feet high and three rows of 18" - 20" long logs deep, you can detect the slow advancement of the drying if you measure every month.  It's pretty cool (sounds like I have nothing else to do, doesn't it?). 

For example, 10" round delivered 2 months ago, inside moisture content 30%.  Same wood delivery, (undoubtedly the same tree) 12" round split into quarters 6 weeks ago, moisture content 23%.  Oak delivered last March, same quartered size, moisture content 17%.

I am anxious to see how fast the split versus the unsplit wood drys under the same enviromental condiditions.  It may help me to decide which to burn first this winter, and which to let sit for later in the year, and possibly next year.  It may also help me to decide if I should split the 10" and 12 " rounds just once, to speed the process.

By the way, I had one experienced guy tell me wood does not dry in the winter.  I don't beleive this is true, as the relative humidity in the winter is much lower than in the summer here.  Maybe I am just thinking about this whole thing too much.  My wife once said that she was going to become a "fishing widow".  Now she says that she's become a "wood widow".

Doctorb

[beenthere]

.......By the way, I had one experienced guy tell me wood does not dry in the winter.  I don't beleive this is true, as the relative humidity in the winter is much lower than in the summer here.  Maybe I am just thinking about this whole thing too much.  ......
Doctorb

Outdoors, cooler weather will have higher relative humidity. The air temp is the key. Indoors, relative humidity is lower due to heating systems.
So, the "experienced" guy probably was close, in that little drying takes place in the winter (outdoors).
And you are right, splitting the wood and checking the split face is a good way to learn what the mc is. And remember, the mc meters usually don't read accurately above 30% mc.

[doctorb]

beenthere-

I am no meteorologist, but warm air can nold more water vapor than cold air.  We have relative humidities in the 90% range here in th Mid-Atlantic during the summer, sometimes for weeks on end.  Why is the relative humidity higher in colder times?  Am I nuts or do those cold, clear dry days of winter have very low humidity?  Confused

Doctorb

[SwampDonkey]

Cold air is dryer. Relative humidity lets you know how close precipitation (saturation) is about to take place at a a given air temperature and pressure, when dew point and air temp converge (your actually looking at vapor pressures). Dew point temperature gives a much better indication of water vapour, but not how much. But, dew point of 20° is a lot dryer than at 60°. The higher the dew point the more water vapor, more sticky feel to the air. Cold air cannot hold as much water vapour as warmer air. Sure cold air can feel damp, because your air temp is near a colder dew point temp. -20 dew point and -20 actual gives 100%, just as 80 dew point and 80 actual are 100 % at a specific pressure. There is no way -20 dew point has the same water vapor capacity as 80 dew point. It might be snowing but it's a mighty dry powder and would require about a foot to make an inch of water.

In drying of wood, that water has to be vapourized, requiring heat, to pass through cell walls. Thus, in winter mostly the surface of wood in the direct sunlight gets dried and not very deep. Wood is a poor conductor of heat.

[beenthere]

DrB
Did SD clear that up for you?  

I am no meteorologist, but warm air can hold more water vapor than cold air.

What you said is true. And cold air therefore can't easily get more of the water vapor from the wood to help it dry during the winter.

Keep in mind it is the Relative humidity that is key to wood drying. Outside in the winter at 0° F, the RH is normally very high. That same air inside a house at 70° F is a much lower RH.   We always hear about how dry the air is in a house in the winter time, but it is just inside the heated house that it happens.

[RSteiner]

This is our 36th heating season using only wood for heat.  I have tried for years to find the "perfect" wood drying method that was also less labor intensive.  Wood sheds are nice if you fill them with fairly dry wood.  I would start to fill mine in the spring and finish by the middle of the summer.  The problem was the wood the was the dryest was in the back of the shed.  The solution would be to have a shed that you could load from the front to back.

I have found out that a pile of spit green wood covered with plastic does not dry well.  The moisture from the wood condenses on the insdie of the tarp and drips back on the wood under cover.  Wood piled on the ground picks up moisture from the ground and doesn't dry well.

I have tried to round wood piles, very labor intensive to build and a pain in the neck to take wood from without it tumbling down in a heap.  Single rows of wood piled bark up not too tight facing south with a sheet metal cover to keep the rain off works well if you have the room.  As the wood dries it shrinks and the piles will start to lean and may even fall over without a little straigthening now and then.  Putting all your wood in cribbed piles is very effective for drying but takes a lot more room and time to construct.

The method I have been happiest with so far is a 20 foot long row of pallets.  I cut all my wood 18" long, piling random length wood is a pain.  I start out making cribed ends at the four corners on my 20 foot row.  Then I plie the wood in between starting the pile on the outside edge of the pallets leaving about a foot air space in between the two rows.  Once I have made the pile about 4 feet high I make a 8"-10" high pile right down the middle of on top of the two rows tying them together.  On the outside edge of each row I lay a line of pieces of wood end to end perpendicular to the piled row.  This outside row is about 4" lower than the inside stack holding the tops of the rows together.  Then I construct a shingle type roof with a couple of rows of wood down the whole length of the pile.  Just before snow I cover with plastic.

Being on pallets there is plenty of air flow from the ground up and the air space in between the rows alow air to get to boths sides of each pile.  The "roof" top keeps the rain out and also ties the piles together making it a stable mass. 

For the last 2 years I have managed to keep two years wood ahead.  Burning wood that has dried for 2 years makes a huge difference.  I try to have 8 full cords of wood ready for each year.  This amount of wood takes up some space.  Once the winter starts I put about 2 cord of wood on the back porch, this is very close to thhe stove, and I refill the pile as needed.  I keep my main wood piles a couple of hundred feet from the house.  This works for me, every bodies situation is a little different.

Randy

[pineywoods]

What has made the biggest improvement in drying firewood for me is this. I cut live trees, usually red oak. After felling, leave the entire tree lay where it falls for a week or so or until the leaves turn brown. By then, the trunk will be nearly dry. Old timer says the leaves will suck the moisture out of the trunk first, then the limbs. Then cut, split and stack in the barn. 2 or 3 months in the barn and it's dry enough to burn in a gasifier stove.

[beenthere]

pineywoods
Hate to be the one to break the news to you, but it is a myth.  
The old timer didn't really know.
But if one believes it works, then it at least feels good.

Similar beliefs were (are) about/regards curing logs before sawing lumber.


Randy
I'm about the same number of years (started in '74) of burning wood full time. And have gone through the similar route of the open shed first (raccoon wouldn't leave the wood alone) to now splitting and stacking on pallets and keep two years ahead for the best dry wood. It is "seasoned" the first year but dry for burning the second.  Stack it green on the pallets and it stays there until off-loading at the wood burner (inside water boiler/heater).