Dry wood = less adjustment?? another praise the dry wood thread.

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.

ckarotka

Minister of Fire
Sep 21, 2009
641
Northwest PA on the lake
You can read about it, but until you experience it for yourself, you have reservations. Last year, crappy wood, struggle, struggle........ fast forward to this year "real" dry wood. I've only burned about 1.5 months in my nc-13 last year so still a newbie to her.

This year I've noticed that I have to adjust the air less than before. What I mean is steady burns and of course longer times. So does having truly seasoned wood = having to fiddle with it to get it set?

i.e. Tonight I load it over half but not full and being warmer out the air is open more than in January but holding a nice flame and temp. It' holding this temp without me playing with it like last year. Is this because of the fuel??

Charlie
 
Yep, good dry fuel helps the stove do it's thing, in style.
 
ckarotka said:
. It' holding this temp without me playing with it like last year. Is this because of the fuel??

Yep. Especially with hardwoods. The first year with my 30 a load on hot coals would go nuclear. Or choke if I turned down primary air. Six month dried oak. Pain in the butt to try to level out the stove. Using two and three year dried oak it is a steady burn start to finish.
 
Wow, my English was really bad in my OP. BB and BeGreen can obviously read through my unfinished thoughts, thanks. For those that can't, I don't have to adjust the air up and down and babysit the fire to obtain a steady burn like before.
 
I have been fighting a bit with mine. I split some of it today to measure. Toward the ends it's 15-18% but right in the middle it's 23-26%. It is all birch that was cut, split and corded last year. It's all I have so I'm going to burn it, but I think it needs to be 20% right in the middle to really be dry. Another year of sitting would make it perfect.
 
NATE379 said:
I have been fighting a bit with mine. I split some of it today to measure. Toward the ends it's 15-18% but right in the middle it's 23-26%. It is all birch that was cut, split and corded last year. It's all I have so I'm going to burn it, but I think it needs to be 20% right in the middle to really be dry. Another year of sitting would make it perfect.

NATE, you must have some dead standing spruce or pine around your area dont you? Or a couple hours away that you could load up a trailer and your dually with.
 
Little bit in the wood behind my house but it would take me a week of work to cut maybe a cord out of that. It's all little "sticks" like 6-8" around at most.
 
I'm in the same boat, first year with really good dry wood. Also first year with an EPA stove and I thought it was going to be a hassle. Last night first night I really loaded up the nc30. It hit 700 stove top way faster than I thought it would so tamped it down to almost shut and it still burned really well all night in the 450-550 range. Only thing I am having trouble adjusting to is the baffles in the top, I can't just chuck as much wood any way I want in it like the old smoke dragon.
 
It's been said many times and in many ways . . . but truly dry, seasoned wood = pure burning bliss. More heat, cleaner burns, ignites more easily and as you noted easier to run the stove . . . I thought I was doing well in my first year of burning until I started running my stove in Year 2 and discovered that I could actually close my air control all the way "shut" and still burn cleanly and maintain a nice secondary burn (actually, truthfully it was more intense).
 
NATE379 said:
Little bit in the wood behind my house but it would take me a week of work to cut maybe a cord out of that. It's all little "sticks" like 6-8" around at most.

Sounds like perfect size to me. Split them into 4s and you will have pie wedge pieces no larger than 3"-4" wide at their backside.
What are the sizes of that pre-split birch? If you collect an extra cord or so, that will give you another month and a half minimum drying time for your other stuff. If your pieces are bigger than 6" at the largest dimensions then I would re-split. This will make a big difference in a month or two to burn it and get the results as the original poster has noted in this thread. Try some dry wood scraps and you will see a differant stove.

EDIT: Dead standing poplar/cotton wood works awsome. It may have a shorter burn but when its dry it will out preform improperly seasoned birch any day. I got some birch out of Watson lake and it needed 2 yrs.
 
Nice, dry wood can make a smaller stove do a fine job heating the house. I use slab, which seasons well in 6 months in the sun, for winter heat. In this shoulder season, I use 2 year seasoned pine cord wood, and it takes the chill off quickly. You can have the most expensive and fancy stove made, but if your wood is not up to par, it means nothing.
 
The last couple days I have been burning 25 year old oak flooring, has 3-4% moisture and it's burning about the same as my birch so I think it's more the stove/operator vs the wood.

I usually don't split stuff that is smaller than 6" round.


north of 60 said:
NATE379 said:
Little bit in the wood behind my house but it would take me a week of work to cut maybe a cord out of that. It's all little "sticks" like 6-8" around at most.

Sounds like perfect size to me. Split them into 4s and you will have pie wedge pieces no larger than 3"-4" wide at their backside.
What are the sizes of that pre-split birch? If you collect an extra cord or so, that will give you another month and a half minimum drying time for your other stuff. If your pieces are bigger than 6" at the largest dimensions then I would re-split. This will make a big difference in a month or two to burn it and get the results as the original poster has noted in this thread. Try some dry wood scraps and you will see a differant stove.

EDIT: Dead standing poplar/cotton wood works awsome. It may have a shorter burn but when its dry it will out preform improperly seasoned birch any day. I got some birch out of Watson lake and it needed 2 yrs.
 
NATE379 said:
I usually don't split stuff that is smaller than 6" round.

Start splitting smaller if you want your wood to season in time.
 
I agree with North of 60. If the time is not there for the wood then you definitely need to split smaller and give it lots of air. Also, wind is much more beneficial to you than the sun for drying wood.

I also agree 100% with the thought that good dry wood is pure bliss when it comes to heating your bones. You burn less wood, have less problems with the fire, do not have to clean the chimney as often, etc., etc.
 
BrotherBart said:
The first year with my 30 a load on hot coals would go nuclear. Or choke if I turned down primary air. Six month dried oak. Pain in the butt to try to level out the stove. Using two and three year dried oak it is a steady burn start to finish.

I won't doubt your observations, but I have to ask, "Now, why was that?" Was it because you needed to give the stove so much air to get it to burn? Or maybe you learned how to run the stove better after a while?

I've always associated burning wet wood with just the opposite. Slow ignition, sluggish burn (or no burn at all), low temps and therefore, lots of smoke. You can get it to go nuclear, but you need a pretty raging fire to do that, and then it will burn pretty clean once you get it there. Most old timers used wet wood to slow the fire down, not to speed it up. Why do I keep reading about folks who say that wet wood disappears much faster yet makes a lot less heat? Just doesn't make sense to me. If the wood burns too fast, it has to generate more heat, not less. It's just basic thermodynamics.

Now if folks are referring to a smoldering fire in a non-cat stove, yes, there will be potential energy lost as smoke going out the flue, but it's pretty hard to smolder away 50 pounds of wood faster than you can burn it in a hot fire, isn't it?

Seriously, I've been confused about this for a while, because I've just never seen it occur in my burning, and I've burned a lot of marginal wood in my day.
 
Battenkiller said:
BrotherBart said:
The first year with my 30 a load on hot coals would go nuclear. Or choke if I turned down primary air. Six month dried oak. Pain in the butt to try to level out the stove. Using two and three year dried oak it is a steady burn start to finish.

I won't doubt your observations, but I have to ask, "Now, why was that?" Was it because you needed to give the stove so much air to get it to burn? Or maybe you learned how to run the stove better after a while?

I've always associated burning wet wood with just the opposite. Slow ignition, sluggish burn (or no burn at all), low temps and therefore, lots of smoke. You can get it to go nuclear, but you need a pretty raging fire to do that, and then it will burn pretty clean once you get it there. Most old timers used wet wood to slow the fire down, not to speed it up. Why do I keep reading about folks who say that wet wood disappears much faster yet makes a lot less heat? Just doesn't make sense to me. If the wood burns too fast, it has to generate more heat, not less. It's just basic thermodynamics.

Now if folks are referring to a smoldering fire in a non-cat stove, yes, there will be potential energy lost as smoke going out the flue, but it's pretty hard to smolder away 50 pounds of wood faster than you can burn it in a hot fire, isn't it?

Seriously, I've been confused about this for a while, because I've just never seen it occur in my burning, and I've burned a lot of marginal wood in my day.

That is because those old timers had different stoves than what we have today. But just because they did it that way does not make it right. Hey, I've been called an old timer...
 
Backwoods Savage said:
That is because those old timers had different stoves than what we have today. But just because they did it that way does not make it right. Hey, I've been called an old timer...

Not saying it's right at all, just saying wet wood should burn slower, not faster. That's the part that confuses me. I don't see how wet wood could go nuclear but dry wood will not in the same situation.
 
With dry wood, you reload and set it to your desired rate. With wet wood, you reload and open it up just to keep it burning at all. Then, get distracted, get distracted by something else, etc and come back to the inferno that you may or may not be able to get under control.
 
Battenkiller said:
Backwoods Savage said:
That is because those old timers had different stoves than what we have today. But just because they did it that way does not make it right. Hey, I've been called an old timer...

Not saying it's right at all, just saying wet wood should burn slower, not faster. That's the part that confuses me. I don't see how wet wood could go nuclear but dry wood will not in the same situation.

I've got to agree, Batten. The thermonuclear does not line up with my unpleasant wet wood experiences. I suppose you might HAVE TO make it go thermonuclear to get it to burn at all, and for that reason its all or nothing, raging or smoldering. I dunno, but I hope never to find out again cause I'm finally gonna burn some dry wood this year!
 
fire_man said:
I've got to agree, Batten. The thermonuclear does not line up with my unpleasant wet wood experiences. I suppose you might HAVE TO make it go thermonuclear to get it to burn at all, and for that reason its all or nothing, raging or smoldering. I dunno, but I hope never to find out again cause I'm finally gonna burn some dry wood this year!

Well, dry certainly is the way to go, Tony, 'specially in a classy stove like yours. ;-)

Been burning that good dry yet this year?
 
To summarize:

When the stove is loaded with wet wood, the temperature in the stove will drop, because it takes a relatively large amount of heat energy to convert the water in the wood from liquid phase to vapor phase (steam). Much heat goes into boiling off the water, rather than heating the room. Secondly, until enough of the water near the surface of the wood boils off, the wood will not get to a high enough temperature to combust, so the fire slows down further. Putting wet wood in the stove initially results in a net loss in heat energy- lost as steam up the chimney. To compensate for the loss of heat and dieing fire, the natural tendency is to turn up the air supply. Eventually, enough water is boiled off and the new wood begins to combust and produce heat. The danger is, because the air supply is turned way up, the stove can end up over-firing if the operator is not paying attention.

Dry firewood has much less drastic swing in burn characteristics. Even though there is still some water that will need to vaporize, it will start to burn and produce heat very soon after being put in the stove, without the big rollercoaster ride.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.