first year burning dry wood

zambien · Sep 20, 2015

Hi all,

Last year I made it through by burning wettish wood (25+% MC) and mixing in some kiln dried wood. It worked OK until it got really cold. So this year I was determined to do a little better.

I just finished moving my first load of wood up from the sunny area on my property. Had 5 cords delivered back in June and used the solar kiln method to dry everything. Of that 4 cord of wood was delivered split and green. 1 cord had been sitting in the shade for a few months split already. The wood is about half black locust and the other half oak with some hickory and a little bit of hedge mixed in. Also in June I cut down a pine and small apple tree in my yard to get some more sun on the wood. I split that fairly small and it all dried out already. Here are some pics.

The wood on the right is black locust. Left side is the pine, apple, and a little wood left over from last year.

Here is how I got the wood dry. The pile in the back has the wood that had been sitting around for a few months prior to delivery. I haven't touched that yet but it is all well below 20% MC. The locust (front row) is right around 20% MC on average. All the oak that was green is still in the high 20s. Should be ready later in the winter but if not I think I have enough of the other wood to make it through.

Around November I'm going to try and get a log load delivered... 4-5 cord. The local arborist has some locust logs I'd like to get ahold of... they sure do split nicely.

begreen · Sep 20, 2015

Greetings and welcome. Fully seasoned locust burns nicely too. It can be a little slow to get started but once burning it's almost like coal. I use doug fir to start the locust fire. That works very well. Love the blue flames coming off of locust. Hedge is supposed to be the bomb, but I have not had the fun of burning that wood out here.

zambien · Sep 20, 2015

Thanks for the tip! I'll make sure to use some of that pine to get things started. From reading this forum I've heard locust can burn really hot. Before I get started this year I need to plug the EPA hole on my stove. Last year I was up late a lot of nights with it trying to run away from me (sometimes I used too much of the kiln dried).

Stove and dog pic:

Paulywalnut · Sep 21, 2015

Nice setup. Have no experience with kiln dried, but you'll love burning well seasoned wood this year.

blacktail · Sep 21, 2015

zambien said:
Thanks for the tip! I'll make sure to use some of that pine to get things started. From reading this forum I've heard locust can burn really hot. Before I get started this year I need to plug the EPA hole on my stove. Last year I was up late a lot of nights with it trying to run away from me (sometimes I used too much of the kiln dried).

Stove and dog pic:

View attachment 162060

It's hard to look at your insert when your dogs are trying to possess my soul!

BigCountryNY · Sep 21, 2015

Hello and welcome! Burning dry locust is one of my favorite types of wood to burn. The longest burns that I got out of my insert last year were when I was burning locust - really good stuff. Glad to hear that the solar kiln worked out for you! Looks like you've got a nice, sunny spot to dry your wood.

zambien · Sep 21, 2015

Burning kiln dried was a little scary at times. Had to close the damper all the way and still had the fan on high to keep the stove below 650. I think the ep a hole design on the regency Hampton line has something to do with that though.

Yeah the dogs are good at giving you the look. They know how to get what they want.

That spot in the yard gets about 8 hours of sun a day. Definitely was glad the solar kiln worked out. It would be tough to just stare at my wood for a year. As it is i can barely leave it alone. DW thinks something is off with me and my wood...

Prichan · Sep 21, 2015

zambien said:
Hi all,

Last year I made it through by burning wettish wood (25+% MC) and mixing in some kiln dried wood. It worked OK until it got really cold. So this year I was determined to do a little better.

I just finished moving my first load of wood up from the sunny area on my property. Had 5 cords delivered back in June and used the solar kiln method to dry everything. Of that 4 cord of wood was delivered split and green. 1 cord had been sitting in the shade for a few months split already. The wood is about half black locust and the other half oak with some hickory and a little bit of hedge mixed in. Also in June I cut down a pine and small apple tree in my yard to get some more sun on the wood. I split that fairly small and it all dried out already. Here are some pics.

The wood on the right is black locust. Left side is the pine, apple, and a little wood left over from last year.

View attachment 162053

Here is how I got the wood dry. The pile in the back has the wood that had been sitting around for a few months prior to delivery. I haven't touched that yet but it is all well below 20% MC. The locust (front row) is right around 20% MC on average. All the oak that was green is still in the high 20s. Should be ready later in the winter but if not I think I have enough of the other wood to make it through.

View attachment 162054

Around November I'm going to try and get a log load delivered... 4-5 cord. The local arborist has some locust logs I'd like to get ahold of... they sure do split nicely.

Nice wood. Just curious, do you keep it fully covered in plastic like that? Personally I just over the tops and a little drape on the sides in winter to keep the snow off. Otherwise fully exposed pretty much the all most rest of the year. Dries fine and gray, even in winter top covered I can just pull out dry wood. Found that too much moisture accumulates with the side coverage. Peace.

Little Digger · Sep 22, 2015

Prichan said:
Nice wood. Just curious, do you keep it fully covered in plastic like that? Personally I just over the tops and a little drape on the sides in winter to keep the snow off. Otherwise fully exposed pretty much the all most rest of the year. Dries fine and gray, even in winter top covered I can just pull out dry wood. Found that too much moisture accumulates with the side coverage. Peace.

I have done quite a bit of reading on this but I am by no means an authority.

To kind of answer your question, the entire wood pile is surrounded by plastic and that includes the bottom. To simplify, the moisture leaves the wood during the daytime hours when it is warmest, then condensates on the inside of the plastic when the temperature is coolest and runs down the sides to the bottom where it eventually will leave the stack through weep holes (previously cut). The basic principle is that once the moisture leaves through these weep holes, it can no longer re enter the stack. Being covered on the bottom also keeps a significant amount of ground moisture out of the stack. In this way drying time is reduced significantly.A plus would be that it would also limit and potentially eliminate the amount of insects and rodents from living in your stacks.

The key element I believe is the weep holes or slits on the bottom plastic. Without the bottom plastic, your essentially creating what I like to call the "tea cup effect." To get the basic gist of that, take a tea cup, a handful of toilet paper and a saucer. Fill the saucer with water about 3/4ths of the way. Then put the TP in the tea cup and light it on fire. Turn the tea cup upside down and place it in the saucer. What happens or is supposed to happen if done correctly, is the water is sucked up into the teacup as a result of air pressure and heat. The same thing happens with ground moisture if you just cover the sides and top of your stack.

I would have used this method for the last batch of firewood I processed but I was lacking in pallets at the time and had part of an old shed I had intended to tear down available. So I stuffed all the wood in there after I split it. It is literally stacked to the roof! I still had to stick some in the garage. Now that I have some pallets, I'll remove the wood I stuck in the garage and get started with this process of kiln drying.

Little Digger · Sep 22, 2015

Zambien: Welcome and I love the looks of your stacks, especially the ones in the kilns.

zambien · Sep 22, 2015

Little Digger said:
you keep it fully covered in plastic like that? Personally I just over the tops and a little drape on the sides in winter to keep the snow off. Otherwise fully exposed pretty much the all most rest of the year. Dries fine

Little Digger said:
I have done quite a bit of reading on this but I am by no means an authority.

To kind of answer your question, the entire wood pile is surrounded by plastic and that includes the bottom. To simplify, the moisture leaves the wood during the daytime hours when it is warmest, then condensates on the inside of the plastic when the temperature is coolest and runs down the sides to the bottom where it eventually will leave the stack through weep holes (previously cut). The basic principle is that once the moisture leaves through these weep holes, it can no longer re enter the stack. Being covered on the bottom also keeps a significant amount of ground moisture out of the stack. In this way drying time is reduced significantly.A plus would be that it would also limit and potentially eliminate the amount of insects and rodents from living in your stacks.

The key element I believe is the weep holes or slits on the bottom plastic. Without the bottom plastic, your essentially creating what I like to call the "tea cup effect." To get the basic gist of that, take a tea cup, a handful of toilet paper and a saucer. Fill the saucer with water about 3/4ths of the way. Then put the TP in the tea cup and light it on fire. Turn the tea cup upside down and place it in the saucer. What happens or is supposed to happen if done correctly, is the water is sucked up into the teacup as a result of air pressure and heat. The same thing happens with ground moisture if you just cover the sides and top of your stack.

I would have used this method for the last batch of firewood I processed but I was lacking in pallets at the time and had part of an old shed I had intended to tear down available. So I stuffed all the wood in there after I split it. It is literally stacked to the roof! I still had to stick some in the garage. Now that I have some pallets, I'll remove the wood I stuck in the garage and get started with this process of kiln drying.

I didn't wrap the plastic under the wood. It just hangs down at the bottom. This was mostly because the plastic I bought wasn't wide/long enough. I did wrap some string and duct tape all around the bottom though to prevent a lot of air movement. Probably because of this the wood in the top half of the stack is dryer than the wood at the bottom. Fully wrapping the wood probably would have yielded better results and my green oak might have been ready to burn already.

Little Digger said:
Zambien: Welcome and I love the looks of your stacks, especially the ones in the kilns.

Thanks! I got my ideas on how to stack from this forum.

zambien · Dec 3, 2015

Here is an update on the drying. I cut around the plastic on the back row and front row of my kiln dried stacks in October so it was all just top covered. The biggest BL (front row) splits were all below 20% MC (averaging around 17%). The other wood (back row) was around 20% on average.

The wettest greenest wood I had was the oak which is in the middle stack. I just cut the sides off of that stack last Saturday and then split a bunch of the larger splits to check MC. I got readings anywhere between 21% and 25%. The smaller splits were all right around 20%. So I figured I can mix the BL and the Oak for decent burns. I have tested this and it is working out well.

Haven't had any wood delivered yet this year (for next year) but I figure I'll solar kiln dry it again next year since it worked out so well.

Toomb · Dec 4, 2015

Zambien.....really like the look of that stove....beautiful!

STIHLY DAN · Dec 4, 2015

Why plug the secondary's? That's where you get your heat.

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first year burning dry wood

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