drying wet seasoned wood

A couple years ago I had a half cord of dead, down White Ash that I stacked in the house. It was split small, and it took 2 weeks to go from 25% to 20. The humidity in the room went up about 10-15%, so I think the dehumidifier will definitely help. Be sue to check your chimney often....don't want to be heating your house with a chimney fire!

You might be able to do a bottom up clean on the flue.

j7art2 said:

I wish. My clean out is about 4-6 inches square, about 10 inches off the ground of my basement tucked behind my normal furnace. I might be able to get one of those chain pulley systems to clean out the chimney that mount to the clean out. I forget the name. I saw them, but they're a good $300-400.

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Would a sooteater get in there?

j7art2 said:

I got about a cord of 2-3 year seasoned wood with all of the bark on it, and the moisture was REALLY held in there well. I'm not sure the type of wood, either box elder or ash -- since it's so wet, I'm going to likely guess box elder. Anyway, the ends are nice and split like they should be, but this wood is WET, maxing out my moisture meter (which caps at 70%)

I stripped all the bark off and I've had it in my basement next to the wood furnace stacked for about a week, and have an oscillating fan on it, and some pieces are getting down to 55%.

I'm wondering if there's any quicker way to do this. I've got about a face and a half down there, and am half tempted to get a shop fan instead. I've been wanting one anyway, and this gives reason to. Lol

Suggestions?

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I can't believe that wood seasoned that long could be that wet, bark or no bark. I don't know box elder though. But even my red oak that is freshly cut and split seems to top out in the high 30's to low 40's. I've never seen anything over 50% even on green wood. Are you sure your meter is accurate? And ash is supposed to be fairly dry even when cut. And seasons very quickly.

Is the wood all small rounds? It sounds like it wasn't split at all if it still has all the bark on it. I'm not sure I understand

Sounds like you're working you butt off & I bet you'll be in a much better spot a year from now.
In the meantime I'd suggest looking for dead Standing trees (especially Ash). That wood is likely to be much drier than dead and down.
Not the best time of year to tell live from dead, but if the bark is falling off then of course that's a sure sign it's been dead for a while. Tops are usually much drier than the lower trunks.

I wouldn't run a dehumidifier just to dry wood faster. They use a lot of electricity$$ & it might not pay off versus burning propane (especially considering the time & work invested). If your house is old & drafty you won't need to worry about it, but if the house is built tight and the wood is raising humidity too much I'd not have so much wet stuff inside. You really don't want to start mold growing anywhere.

I've been through this more times than I'll admit, and I've used my little electric to split as small as an inch to try and catch up. If it were an emergency, I'd take the saw and cut them in half, and each split now has four sides to breath out of instead of two. The short ones will dry faster than the long ones.

An electric splitter set up between the woodpile & boiler is a very handy thing to have. Resplit small& that stuff will dry quite a bit in 2-3 weeks with a box fan blowing on it.