Season Firewood in 8 weeks?

I like his comment that some Douglas Fir wood was not green but just wet from rain and it was good in a couple of weeks. Rain does not hurt the wood as wood is really not a sponge and absorb water. It will be good even without plastic. And I believe the plastic will actually hold the water around the wood instead of letting it escape into the air. Green Houses are usually humid, do you really want high humidity around your wood?

Never tried that myself but there is a local firewood dealer that puts all his splits in full size green houses for at least a year then sells as seasoned. Never burned any of his stuff but he sells a lot and at a premium of $110 a face cord. He stacks the ends and sides to the top then uses an elevator to fill up the middle.

yea if you did that it may get really hot under it, but if there is no way for the moisture to get out it will just fill the Amount of air under the tarp to 100% humidity and then no more can evaporate out of the wood. Just like a 100% humid day water does not evaporate, the air simply can not hold any more water.

Not that I'm advocating this, but the only way to get that to work would be to tarp it when the sun shines and untarp it at night to let the moisture-laden air out. That's basically what we do with dad's solar kiln for the first couple weeks (except we just open the door instead of removing the plastic).

I did that with some paper birch a few years ago. I had some plastic sheeting I put over a picture window in the winter that had furring boards on two ends. 8 footers. Prolly 5 foot wide. I would toss the plastic off when I thought of it and recover after a few hours, letting the condensed water out. Burnt good after 3 months or so. But Birch split small will dry in 6 months anyway. I would do it again in a pinch, but I mostly burn year old hard maple ...

I think his idea there is that the moisture condenses on the plastic, then runs down the sides to be eliminated. Somebody oughta try that with Red Oak, if you take the drying time from 3 years to 1 you'd really have something. A C

I've never thought much about those theories about speeding up the drying process. Those folks will rarely get the opportunity to see what difference it will make by drying their wood naturally and leaving it with enough time to dry before burning it. Case in point is all the chatter about oak. No matter what is said, there will be those who try to burn oak before it is time....and they will never realize what a super difference an extra year will make. They are missing the boat big time.

Since you have plenty of dry, backwoods why dont you take a small truck load or so and cover it with plastic for a year and put the hype to an end.

The Guy here locally leaves the ends and sides open. I guess that would let moisture out

The ideal situation is of course to have all of one's firewood in a place where wind + sun + time can do its work.

I have seen setups online that use wastewood via a boiler with heat lines and air flow through a seacan/shipping container to "kiln dry" firewood.

This seems to me to be a waste of time and energy with the math being more than a bit messed up as far as energy in energy out.

At the same time I am planning to experiment one of these days with a combination of poly over a stack of wood paired with a box fan moving air through the ply "tunnel". I have done the math on the electricity I would burn through and in our area, at 6.5 cents per kwh it will cost less than 8 dollars to run the fan 24-7.

If wood that is marginal dries down to being epa stove friendly then it might be worth it. Of course this would depend on the volume of wood one is attempting to dry.

All that being said, time and energy savings gadgets and schemes are usually just that..... schemes.

K.I.S.S is still the best principle.

I've read where this will actually season the wood quicker. I also read 2 months or so. However you need to have a slanted top to keep rain from falling into tent and you need to leave the front of the top section open like a window. The bottom 2 inches of the tent is also left open. So when the tent heats up the air flows up and out the open window in the top and fresh air is drawn in at the bottom. Done this way the moisture is constantly removed from the tent.

Call me old fashioned, but I think I'll stick with what I know works -- sun, wind and time.

Sun, wind and Time ...I agree but someone pressed for time it might help. That's why I threw it out there.

Interesting discussion, fellas. Watch the video here, and instead of board lumber, imagine building it for a woodshed/kiln hybrid. If nothing else, just make it big enough for your oak stack. Worth some pondering IMHO.....

I have used two of my greenhouses to store seasoned wood in over winter, and it definitely helps get the moisture content down a bit more. But, and this is a huge but.......... if you just fill a greenhouse with fresh splits and heat it all up in the sun without any ventilation, you'll make a perfect environment for a mould factory. The solar kiln above would work well for a small amount of wood, but I'd beware of overfilling it. Of course, if you had one working in conjuntion with a greenhouse for storage after it was dried most of the way, you could speed up seasoning a bit. However, remembering the thread we had not so long ago on "How many times do you handle your wood", I can imagine many people just wanting to stack the their splits out in windrows and letting nature quiety take it's course whilst you spend the summer on the beach or out fishing

Sounds "to good to be true"
It's hard enough to get the wood CSS, then have to construct & cover & fight the wind.
But; if in a real bind with no seasoned wood for the coming winter, or limited storage space, it may make it burnable sooner.
I'd hate to try & get 6 - 7 cords ready for winter that way. But the article has some good points..

clemsonfor said:

Since you have plenty of dry, backwoods why dont you take a small truck load or so and cover it with plastic for a year and put the hype to an end.

Click to expand...

Na. I'll just let Mother Nature do her thing. I like working with Nature.