31 Percent
- Thread starter thewoodlands
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SolarAndWood
Minister of Fire
Yep, logs don't dry. Just doesn't take that long for them to rot especially when they are lying on the ground.
ansehnlich1
Retired Hearth.com Member
hey zap, great pic. It kinda proves just cuz a tree is dead and down a couple years don't mean it's ready to split and burn right away eh!
ansehnlich1 said:
I thought it would be but the moisture meter proved me wrong, I'm going to split it then bring inside Monday night and see how long it takes to get it down around 20-22 percent.
zap
Cowboy Billy
Minister of Fire
Zap I cut down a white birch last fall that died because I was working around it with the dozer the year before. I was surprised to see that it was soaking wet. But it dried out fast. I have come to think we are dealing with two types of moisture in wood. One where the moisture is bound up in the cells of the wood which takes a long time to dry and the other is moisture around the cells but dries fairly quickly.
Billy
Billy
Danno77
Minister of Fire
that's 31% and was sitting on the ground. I bet standing up or laying off the ground would have it closer to burning than it was. maybe look around for one that's laying right on the ground and throw something under it to keep off the dirt. repeat the experiment in two years, lol.
Danno77 said:
I have a standing dead sugar maple on our house property that will come down Tuesday night, then I will test it for moisture content.
zap
Adios Pantalones
Minister of Fire
Have cut good sized oaks that were purposely girdled a year before- water squished out of the base rounds, but most of the tree was quite dry. The3 branches draw some water out, some sinks by gravity, and standing up like that gives good surface area for drying. On the ground is very different.
Adios Pantalones
Minister of Fire
Not sure if it would help or not. In the tree it has continuous fibers. The water has some tensile strength, so I would think that it has a weight the draws some downward. You might lose that effect in shorter pieces where there's not a taller "water column", but I dunno.
Bspring
Feeling the Heat
woodjack
Minister of Fire
Cowboy Billy said:
I think you're on to something.
I've split fallen dead oak that looked like it was dead for decades. Thought for sure it would be ready to burn immediately but my moisture meter told me otherwise (28-31%) - I was beginning to hate my moisture meter.
However, once split, the wood seemed to season in a fraction of the time as fresh cut oak with similar moisture content.
mikepinto65
Minister of Fire
ansehnlich1 said:
What about a standing dead tree %-P
Edit: Should have read the rest before posting :blank:
A live oak would be at 45% or better so you are dealing with 15% less moisture from the get go. Dead trees and logs are a crap shoot.woodjack said:
Lumber-Jack
Minister of Fire
We got between 18% and 24% on this one Zap. That is about as dry as I can find them lying on their side around here, even if they are up off the ground a bit like this one was.
The standing dead ones can be much lower moisture content because the rain sheds off easier and the bulk of the tree is more exposed to the wind and drier air.
As has been pointed out by Cowboy Billy, my experiance is that this tree will likely dry out very fast now that it's bucked up and split, because the water is not trapped in the cells as it is in green wood.
My son measuring moisture content.
A view from the other end.
Two sections of the wood shed ready for winter.
The standing dead ones can be much lower moisture content because the rain sheds off easier and the bulk of the tree is more exposed to the wind and drier air.
As has been pointed out by Cowboy Billy, my experiance is that this tree will likely dry out very fast now that it's bucked up and split, because the water is not trapped in the cells as it is in green wood.
My son measuring moisture content.
A view from the other end.
Two sections of the wood shed ready for winter.
Adios Pantalones
Minister of Fire
woodjack said:
Last year I bought a load that was cut dead and seemed sopping wet, I stacked it all in my basement in loose stacks near my furnace and it was ready to burn in about a week and burnt very well. So I buy that argument of dead not holding onto the moisture as well as green.
One other thing. Many fallen dead trees were once standing dead trees. Makes me wonder if they actualy draw in moisture once there down simply by being verticle. Even if there not in contact with the ground.
Lumber-Jack
Minister of Fire
Zap, BC is a nice place, but you can't see much of it from those pictures! lolzapny said:
Yeah it's dead Lodgepole pine, far too much of it around here to bother cutting much else. That particular spot I stumbled on to had a bunch of trees felled down already by someone last year. Normaly I would rather drop my own dead standers because they tend to be drier, but I also hate to see perfectly good wood lying on the ground going to waste too. There is another cord right in that area that needs to be cleaned up.
Uper
Member
I'm not a forester, but do know that trees translocate up and down in the xylem and phloem layers. I'm thinking that the bulk of moisture loss still occurs vertically and not out of the sides and through the bark. Though there would certainly be some moisture loss out the side over time. So, when we buck a tree up, that opens the ends up on a much shorter piece of wood allowing for quicker moisture loss. This might explain why a standing tree's base is wringing wet and the upper tree is drying (more moisture loss while leaves are attached), or a down tree doesn't seem as dry as it should. Also those down trees with bark attached can be pretty moist because there is such a long piece of wood to move moisture through. If you think of it on a cellular level, those translocating cells are structured to move water and nutrients through up and down, not out the side. So, the most moisture loss would be through the ends.
We have some standing dead 4”-5” whispy birches and beeches, plus a bunch that were downed the past winter etc. So I went out last weekend and cut up some of the dry stuff that was sitting around on the ground, most was in the 11-17% range, but the birch that was cut and left on the ground was about 30%+ (meter kicks off at 30%).
It is amazing what birch will hold for water content. Most of my seasoned wood for this year is in the 11-15% range.
I have mostly a bunch of those 4-6” rounds cut this year, not much worth splitting, but I’m now starting to get bitten by the bug and may look at a basic set up to split next year.
It is amazing what birch will hold for water content. Most of my seasoned wood for this year is in the 11-15% range.
I have mostly a bunch of those 4-6” rounds cut this year, not much worth splitting, but I’m now starting to get bitten by the bug and may look at a basic set up to split next year.
River19 said:
River19, 11-15 % I'll take that. I have a dead standing maple that I want to fell and take a reading on, maybe this week.
zap
zapny said:
Oh, take several readings.... progress further up the trunk to see how much difference the MC is between high and low. And maybe halve the pieces and take several readings from the center to the outer edge to show if inner wood vs outer wood makes much difference in standing dead trees.
Just an idea...
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