In a Pinch....Need Help Burning Not-So-Seasoned Wood?!?!?

Dune said:

In the first case, you deducted .18 instead of 1.18. In the second case you did it again. You still have to deduct the BTUs required to vaporise the pound of water, not just the fraction.

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The moisture meter reading is the source of my difficulty. My understanding was a reading of 18% indicated one pound of oven dry wood with 0.18 pounds of water along for the ride. You are saying the meter reading of 18% indicates one pound of dry wood with 1.18 pounds of water along for the ride. If that is the case, then my numbers are off.

Clinton MA huh? You sound just like someone I know except he has a ~3 year old as well and 2 stoves.

Anywho I was pretty much in your situation last year, my cord of "seasoned" hardwood wasn't seasoned enough. I ended up supplementing with lots of pallets like others have mentioned. Find some at Lowes/HD, or poke around Craigslist for companies trying to get rid of them. You'll need several pallet pieces and lots of air to burn the wetter wood but I think you can make it work.

Also, I've gotten about 3 cord of oak this year free by watching Craigslist and just asking folks when I saw a tree down. Now and then I've found people selling cheap or giving away seasoned hard wood. One ad a few weeks ago was out near Winchendon (way to far for me to drive) for 2 cord of seasoned split wood. The ad disappeared in about 30 minutes. Watch the "general" and "free" sections for anything tasty looking in your area, I bet you'll find some hits.

Good luck!

Excuse me if I missed it in the thread, but if you are starting fires with Oak it will not work that well even if it is below 20%, too dense a wood for that. I guess if you split them down to 2 inch or so they will work.

JimboM said:

Dune said:

In the first case, you deducted .18 instead of 1.18. In the second case you did it again. You still have to deduct the BTUs required to vaporise the pound of water, not just the fraction.

Click to expand...

The moisture meter reading is the source of my difficulty. My understanding was a reading of 18% indicated one pound of oven dry wood with 0.18 pounds of water along for the ride. You are saying the meter reading of 18% indicates one pound of dry wood with 1.18 pounds of water along for the ride. If that is the case, then my numbers are off.

Click to expand...

No, you are correct. Nice job on the BTU work-up as well. Only thing you forgot to explain is the latent heat lost from the failure to condense the water formed by combustion - about 0.54 pounds water/pound oven-dry wood fiber burned. This is three times the amount of heat lost by evaporating 0.18 pounds of water in the wood. But you did give the correct value of 8000 BTU/pound of dry wood fiber that is used to account for that loss. That figure is what is known as the "low heating value" (LHV), a value that must be used in calculating sensible heat gain when using any sort of combustible fuel. FYI the "high heating value" (HHV) of oven-dry hardwood has been determined to be about 8660 BTU/pound.

Thomas mentioned a key factor in the equation, and that is how you load the stove. Leaving plenty of space in between the splits not only allows more surface area, but it increases turbulence inside the fire zone. Turbulent flow is orders of magnitude better at mixing incoming air and fuel gases than laminar flow is. This is critical if you want to both maximize your heat and minimize your creosote deposits.

Once you get a good coal bed, keep it up. Reloads need to be timely when burning sub-optimal wood. Too soon and you get massive coal buildup, too late and you get a slow and smoky reload. Not fun, but you will keep the new baby warm if you pay attention and use common sense. And don't wait a month to check that flue. Inspect and clean every week for the first month to see how much gunk you really are making. After you are familiar with your setup, once a month may be fine, but learn it well. That's precious cargo in your home, don't want to leave anything to chance.

JimboM said:

Dune said:

In the first case, you deducted .18 instead of 1.18. In the second case you did it again. You still have to deduct the BTUs required to vaporise the pound of water, not just the fraction.

Click to expand...

The moisture meter reading is the source of my difficulty. My understanding was a reading of 18% indicated one pound of oven dry wood with 0.18 pounds of water along for the ride. You are saying the meter reading of 18% indicates one pound of dry wood with 1.18 pounds of water along for the ride. If that is the case, then my numbers are off.

Click to expand...

Nah, it was my misunderstanding. Sorry.

Battenkiller said:

...Only thing you forgot to explain is the latent heat lost from the failure to condense the water formed by combustion - about 0.54 pounds water/pound oven-dry wood fiber burned. This is three times the amount of heat lost by evaporating 0.18 pounds of water in the wood...

Click to expand...

So if you start with a bone dry pound of wood, the hydrogen in the cellulose, lignin and other constituents combines with the oxygen present to form a half pound of water. All the worry about water vapor seems overwrought considering that a pound of zero moisture content wood will send half a pound of water up the flue.

If I was to load twenty pounds of zero percent moisture content wood into the stove, burning that would yield 10 pounds of water. That is five quarts of water from twenty pounds of bone dry wood.

If the wood was a dry basis moisture of 25%, then twenty-five pounds of this normal wood would yield 15 pounds of water.

Seems to me that creosote formation does not come from moist wood, but from how we operate.

On wood curing...

Here in the Heart of Dixie, I routinely put up my green oak for the coming winter in March/Aprri, when the Spring storms bring lots of deadfall. (And, on 4/27/11 we had, shall we say, TOO much deadfall?) Granted, we have a longer curing season that you will, but most of the wood I burn had leaves one when I cut it. The crucial condition, I find, is not so much to expose it to lots of sunlight (although you must) or to cover it (although you must) but to put it where LOTS of air can circulate in and through it. If you have the space, consider a criss-cross stack like a log cabin. A tarp is the minimum I would use to cover it , but it that is all you have, elevate the tarp above the stack on some supports.....i.e., don't "wrap" the stack. For a loaf of bread, that is good, but you want your wood to get good and stale! Spilt it as small as you can, short of matching matchsticks. By doing these things I can get my wood down to -10% moisture. As I like to say, "Unless you are buidling furniture with it, that will do..."

For the pile you have, I'd definitely get it under an elevated cover, stacked with plenty of daylight between the splits. By the time Jan/Feb rolls around, you might have made a significant dent in the moisture content.

Congratulations to you and the missus too. A new baby in winter (and I've had two), and a nice warm stove is hard to beat for contentment.

I have been in your shoes. Once colder weather comes you will be kindling fires less and less which means there will be a big bed of oak coals to get the next load going. Oak is tough to start but once you get the coals going it will burn. A good trick which is unfortunately more work is to throw a short stack on your basement slab against the wall for a week and replace as you burn, it works but PITA.

Your biggest problem will be cold nights......in the morning you and your wife will want to get things heated up fast and with all this semi seasoned oak it will be tough. You should expect night feedings for both the baby and the stove. Your wife will learn to like this I can see it now.......honey as long as you are getting up anyway to stoke will you feed the baby?

Most important is the kid........a home does not have to be 75 degrees for a baby to live, believe me a baby is capable of surviving just fine in a 60 degree bedroom. Now I do remember waking the family up one bitter cold night and getting everyone out in a big family bed in front of the stove (a franklin in the beginning). We lived to tell about it!

We had your problem two years ago. I would load the basement each week with a week and a half worth of wood. I run a dehumidifier in our basement and the wood was next to our stove. So I had wood drying for a week before use.

We had no problems.

Last winter similar issue but old VC stove so not as big an issue. But our wood was outside in the snow and rain on the ground. All the worst things you can do. We simply brought in wood each day and kept it close to the stove while we were awake and near it. Everything dried out and burned fine.

Since you can't afford more wood I'd try these tricks and those posted to get you through this year.

This whole thread drives me nuts, 23% on the inside of the splits is not too wet, its fine and you need another type of wood for shoulder season and starting fires, I have burnt mainly Oak for 30 years and its too dense (like me) for starting fires and small quick fires plain and simple. I love Oak but if it was the only wood I had it would be a PITA.

I agree, if your wood is 23% on the inside (immaculate seasoning of oak in 7 months) you really don't have a problem with your wood. Peaple use much worse!

It's been said before, but it's worth repeating . . . pallets.

They're usually free . . . a pain to process . . . and you don't want to scatter the ash all over your driveway unless you enjoy plugging car tires . . . and you may have to load more often . . . but they can help bail you out of this sticky situation by allowing you to bring things up to temp and drive the excess moisture out of the oak . . . and you can even just burn the pallets if you're careful and don't load the firebox to the gill with all small stuff.

As others have also said . . . just keep a close eye on your chimney . . . take a look at it every month or so to get an idea of how well you're burning.

Finally . . . have faith . . . you will survive and get through this winter . . . and in the meantime if at all possible start scrounging wood now for next year.

Can someone put me out of my pain here and tell me why 22% in the middle of a split is too wet of wood, I have some oak that is 25% in the middle of the split and am going to burn some just to see how well it burns, you cant start fires with Oak very well no matter how dry. Am trying to make this point clear to the OP so he knows he needs some other type of wood to get the fires going, ash, maple, pine, boxelder, cherry, elm, pallets will work in a pinch but much better to have at least two types of wood better with three.

http://boston.craigslist.org/nos/for/2672682030.html

1.5 cord in Lynn, well seasoned for $300 OBO. That's a good deal if it's a full 1.5 cord, will last you half the winter or so if you're burning a lot.

i got kids running all over this place too! gotta love the little buggers.

Free cord in Swapscott - cut pallets etc? http://boston.craigslist.org/nos/zip/2672702669.html

OK, so I looked through everything, and first, l'd like to wish you and your new family well. And complement you for your hard work to see that they have everything they need to be safe and warm. As a happy wife and mother of three, I have to say I love a wood cutting man! (Gives great shoulders too!)

I saw a long discussion on wood moisture levels, spilts and pallets. Maybe you need to look at how you are loading and lighting this wood as well? I live north with birch and spruce so am not familiar with the types of wood you are using, but you might be a candidate for top down burn. That's made start up so much easier for us. After our stove has been running for a while, we heap the coals up in a V in front of the air supply and stack NS around that. It makes a difference for quick starts and hot burns. For slower, colder burns, we go E/W, still heaping the coals up.

Best wishes to all of you!

It takes a brave guy to come on here and admit they are going to have to burn some unseasoned wood.

I know I've done it in the past, and the few tips I have might help.

I resplit the splits smaller, and bought some indoors and had a small stack a few feet away from the fire, about 2 days worth.

I burned chopped up pallets some of the time, and when the hardwood seemed dry enough, I put some on with the pallets.

Even having the surface of the wood warmer and drier helped it burn, it was not like putting huge lumps of cold damp wood into the stove.

And as others have said, sweep the chimney regularly.

Shame I live so far away, I'd offer to swap some of my dry wood for some of your wet wood.

My way of saying congratulations on your newborn........

Make sure you check for rust with wood that wet!