Drying wood?

use the search field - i have seen a few opine on this. what you'll find is, no one will say it's a good idea - but i'll bet you know this intuitively anyway The best answer (safety-wise) is - find another way to dry your wood.

The science to it? i'll leave that to the veterans here - they'll speak up shortly, no doubt

This is a saying that I like: "If you hang out in a barbershop you will eventually get a haircut."
How does this relate to your question. If you dry your wood on top of your stove you will eventually have a fire on top of your stove.

Spontaneous combustion occurs at 450ºF. If you get your wood that hot, on top of the stove, ............then I'd not do it.

The other obvious danger is random and radical sparks that come out and fly around, when you are opening the door of the stove to stoke the wood, or whatever.

When I bring in my armloads of wood each day, and place them in the wood ring which is within about 4 feet from the stove, I figure I get some drying time while they sit there. Would I put it on top of the stove..........not for long!

-Soupy1957

I don't put wood on the stove, but I've stood it up next to the stove to get radiated. I don't leave it there unless I'm close by to monitor how hot it's getting. I don't know if it's drying any faster than it would just by being inside but intuitively, you'd think so . An article I read on kiln wood drying mentioned something called "case hardening," which I took to mean that the outside layer gets too dry, too fast and slows down or prevents further evaporation. I'd assume that this applies to drying wood on or near a stove as well.
I'm going to attempt to dry some Ash inside with a fan blowing on it. It's generally only in the mid 60s in here with 38% humidity, but I'm hoping that I'll see some appreciable drying after a couple of weeks...

Bad idea. You can ask my Dad about leaving stuff on the stove "just to warm up". Just imagine what black paint looks like when it decides to blow out of a can...

I feel it is perfectly safe to put wood on top of the stove up to the point that it catches on fire.... and it will catch on fire, trust me. Even when you are 100% sure you are watching it closely :red:

Why not cross-stack it 3' from the stove? I will drop the same 15% or so in weight in about 4-5 days with no danger at all of starting on fire.

NATE379 said:

Bad idea. You can ask my Dad about leaving stuff on the stove "just to warm up". Just imagine what black paint looks like when it decides to blow out of a can...

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Ugh. And what did your Mom say?

Put me in the "This is a very bad idea" column . . . and to add to that list you can put in "Don't put your gassed up chainsaw right up next to the woodstove to make it easier to start the next morning."

NATE379 said:

Bad idea. You can ask my Dad about leaving stuff on the stove "just to warm up". Just imagine what black paint looks like when it decides to blow out of a can...

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I nearly did that to my in-laws kitchen... talk about a really bad thing... doing it to somebody else's kitchen... especially your inlaws.

They have a gas stove... I grew up with an electric range. I had no idea that the top of a gas stove gets so dang hot while baking something. MIL had the oven on and I set a can of black spray paint on the stove top (no burners were on at all) near the back in the middle. That happened to be right where the vent from the oven was so it got really really hot there. We were in the living room and heard a loud pop and the sound of something falling on the floor. I ran into the kitchen to see that the can of paint had fallen over and the lid got knocked off and it landed on the floor... I wondered just how that happened because nobody was in there at the time. I got to looking closer, and on top of the can, where the lid is rolled on and there is the little bit that is rolled down below the nozzle, that had "popped" up. Essentially the same thing that happens when you put pop in the freezer and the ends blow out but it doesn't rupture. I immediately proceeded to burn my hand grabbing the can... then I used a glove and ran outside with it in case it decided to let go... thankfully it didn't let go... man that would've been a really, really bad day for me... good thing my in-laws love me!

BTW, do you have pictures of your dad's incident? I'd be interested in seeing just what could have been my inlaw's kitchen...

NextEndeavor said:

Maybe not a new topic or idea but has anyone ever set firewood on top of a stove to dry it better?

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Ah, an educational example of situations that may have unrepresentative reporting--some of the people who have tried this may no longer be "online" to say it didn't go well.

As others have made crystal-clear, placing wood on top of stove = BAD IDEA, entry-point for Darwin'sList.

OTOH, stacking wood near stove (down to 12" away w/my stove) works great for drying the wood. (Stove wood cannot be too dry, ever.)

Over some days, as it dries from just-brought-in MC of ~12%, the end facing the stove will show higher temp to IR thermometer. As long as it stays below 200 F, all is well. (It stays there.) After some days, MC is pretty close to zero, for wood that's spent a year c/s/s covered above, outdoors, facing south, prior.

Needless to say, smoke detectors and extinguishers are handy, "collecting dust" so far.

(Curious) George said:

Ah, an educational example of situations that may have unrepresentative reporting--some of the people who have tried this may no longer be "online" to say it didn't go well.

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I'm one of the lucky ones who's still online....

Back about 20 years ago we moved into this place. I brought a cord and a half of good seasoned wood from the last place we lived in, then had another 3 cord delivered. Red oak so wet it was not burnable. I would get the fire going with the seasoned stuff then add the green stuff a bit at a time. Obviously, I ran out of seasoned well before I was halfway through the green wood. I started to place several splits around the stove every day to dry out a little. No problem. I worked full time in the basement where the stove was, right?

So one day I got the bright idea to put two large steel blocks on top of the stove and put some small splits lengthways across them to speed dry. I put two side-by-side, then one on top between them. The idea was to trap the rising heat and speed up the drying. Every half hour I would rotate them (they would be very hot), then when the stove got low, I'd toss them in, open up the air, and put three more on the stove. It actually worked pretty well and I was proud of my new system.

Then one day the phone rang upstairs and no one was home to answer it..............

Well, by the time I finally smelled the smoke, it was pouring up the basement stairs like fog. The smoke detector at the top of the stairs never even went off. I ran downstairs and saw my little pile of splits burning happily away like a campfire on top of the stove. Elapsed time was way less than three hours.

If you're going to do stuff like that, chain yourself to one of the legs of the stove. You will get careless as you get cocky with the system. Just like leaving the ash pan ajar or the door cracked, there is always the danger that you will be distracted by something. At least in the case of the cracked door the fire is contained inside the stove, but with wood on top you will have a fire right out there in the open. I learned my lesson and never again did anything like that.

I'm not condoning this at all but one night when I was reading one of these dry wood on the stove threads I took a crumpled up tissue and layed it on my stove top when it was 700 degrees. Left it on for at least on hour. All it did was darken. I have experiments before with saw dust on the stove. Same thing, it just darkened. In fact never did clean it off. You can walk into Earls shop and anytime the stove is covered in dust, still hasn't caught fire yet.

Why not bring a larger amount of wood and stack it near the stove? I have a wood rack about 2 ft from one side of my stove. It is beyond the distance to cumbustible materials specified in the stove manual, but close enough to get nice and warm. I am sure the wood dries out pretty well there. although it is pretty dry to begin with. I'd rather have any moisture from the wood evaporate into my house than in the stove.

She thought it was pretty funny actually. Was on the stove in his shop so not like she had to clean it up haha.

WhitePine said:

NATE379 said:

Bad idea. You can ask my Dad about leaving stuff on the stove "just to warm up". Just imagine what black paint looks like when it decides to blow out of a can...

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Ugh. And what did your Mom say?

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NATE379 said:

She thought it was pretty funny actually. Was on the stove in his shop so not like she had to clean it up haha.

WhitePine said:

NATE379 said:

Bad idea. You can ask my Dad about leaving stuff on the stove "just to warm up". Just imagine what black paint looks like when it decides to blow out of a can...

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Ugh. And what did your Mom say?

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If it would have happened in the house, she might have used a word that rhymes with "puck!"