I’m confused. I have read about people weighing their loads but doesn’t weight vary on moisture content? So a cord of freshly c/s/s will weigh more then the same one a year of two later? How does weighing wood help?
Yes, weight varies with MC. Sometimes freshly cut weighs more than twice that of bone dry wood. "Seasoned wood" means, or should mean, wood at or about 20% MC. Not bone dry, but feeling very dry to the touch and by appearance. And wood at 20% MC burns very well in a gasification boiler, wood stove, or anywhere else.
Wood at 20% MC has available heat content of 6050 btu/lb when burned at an internal stack temperature of 400F. This is a pretty good approximation of what should happen in a well functioning wood stove or gasification boiler. Now, if the stove or boiler is 82% efficient in delivering available heat to the environment or water, etc., that equates to delivered heat energy of about 5000 btu/lb. But pick your own %.
So, with my Tarm and 1000 gal of storage, if the water in storage is at 140F and I want to burn enough wood to end up at 185F, I now know I need to burn this much wood by weight: (185-140) x 8.33 x 1000 / 5000 = 75 lbs. That's what weighing wood is all about in my case. I always weigh my wood, have an easy scale setup, and it tells the truth on how much wood I actually am burning. I guess I might be a geek on things like this, but it only is fun for me.