2022-2023 BK everything thread

[BKVP]

Interesting. So is there a direct relation between wood MC and room RH?
Reason for asking:
I have been away for the past three weeks. Before leaving I brought about 5 arm loads of 3 maybe 4 year old (css top covered) hemlock. I burned splits from the same stacks last year, definitely well seasoned. Now, when i am away the stove room RH tends to sit around 55% (much lower when stove running or HRV running). Is there a chance that those well seasoned, ready to burn splits are now above the 20% sweet spot?

My guess is you'd need an exceptional piece of equipment to validate the marginal change in an indoor climate.

 

[Diabel]

My guess is you'd need an exceptional piece of equipment to validate the marginal change in an indoor climate.

I just envisioned tossing wet splits out the door😜

 

[Ashful]

Interesting. So is there a direct relation between wood MC and room RH?

Yes, there is a relationship between RH% and equilibrium MC%, which would be relatively easy to calculate knowing the density of the two materials into account, if the time constants were known and if RH% were to remain constant long enough.

 

[stoveliker]

Woodworkers Source: Equilibrium Moisture Content [custom wws]

www.woodworkerssource.com

 

[Ashful]

Woodworkers Source: Equilibrium Moisture Content [custom wws]

www.woodworkerssource.com

Damn you... now I have no chance to show off my mad math skillz.

 

[stoveliker]

The point of math is that you should know how to do it, but if someone else already did it - why bother doing it again.
Bragging rights are given to those who do it first

 

[Ashful]

The point of math is that you should know how to do it, but if someone else already did it - why bother doing it again.
Bragging rights are given to those who do it first

Was only kidding, anyway. Not exactly difficult math.

 

[ajzzara]

Hi All,
I am proud to announce I have had the longest burn from my Sirocco 25 insert while at the cabin this weekend! 17 hours between loads, and there were still some embers to get a fire going. This is starting my second season with the stove, at a weekend cabin in PA. Last season the most I was getting was 8-9 hrs.
It’s amazing what some dry wood, and insulating the damper will do to the performance of these stoves.

Apparently last year the initially, installers didn't secure the chimney plate correctly won't was eventually blowing in the wind. I called the company who did the install and complained. To my surprise, the service manager came out and fix the chimney cap himself. While talking with him, we got in the topic of insulating around the insert andup in the flu around the around the liner. He said they do that for all if their installs so I asked him to pull my shroud and check to see if it was done at my house due to the short burn times I was seeing. Well sure enough his installer didn't insulate a damn thing, so this guy took care of it for me. Man what a difference! Then stove gets into the active zone in half the time as it did when I lit my first fire of the season a few weeks ago. The heat coming out of the blower was much more intense as well.
Thank you all for taking the time to post your experiences here. Without them, I would not have come to the conclusion on my own, and would be stuck with 8 hour burns cursing the Blaze King name.
I really do appreciate it!

 

[Crummy]

Thank you for pointing out wood is like a sponge! It can absorb MC for the air! All the more reason to cross stack wood, get it stacked on pallets and allow air passages on all four sides. The Woodway held a Wood Shed Challenge a few years ago there in FNSB. I was one of the judges and I can tell you some very, very clever designs took a great deal into consideration when designing their wood sheds.

While my woodshed provides excellent airflow while completely protecting the wood from the elements it does have some flaws. Biggest flaw is the last wood in is the first wood out as there is only one opening which is in the middle. Once the center isle is open I can get wood from the right or left side but it's not ideal. I'm thinking about cutting a opening in both ends so I can do first in-first out. Next winters wood is on pallet/bunks with the top covered so I suppose as long as I only put seasoned wood in the shed it would be ok but then again some wood may end up buried in the shed for years. It's all a learning process.

Thanks for confirming that the wood will draw moisture from the air. There was a possibility I was imagining things 😉. Looks like we are currently at 94% humidity.

 

[BKVP]

The winner of the Wood Shed competition was very creative. His wood shed had two wide sliding doors on each side. Imagine the doors on a train, his doors were on rollers. By having two sliding doors, he had divided the space into quarters. On the front of each door was a metal plate holder and he recorded the c/s/s date for the fuel behind each door. The shed held four cords. He also had rain gutters around the entire perimeter. The walls were made for 2 x 6 planks and looked like pallets with offsetting planks on each side. This permitted great air flow but also kept snow and rain off the fuel. He also had the shed elevated off the ground to allow for under floor air flow (until the snow would plug that) it worked great. Lastly, he placed the wood shed 20 yards from his house/garage to avoid having insects or furry critters take up home.

 

[Crummy]

Getting close to the Sirocco 20 not keeping up with the weather with 12 hour burns. Been getting into the teens at night and barely into the 20's during the day. Heading for single digits by the end of the week. Downstairs dropped to 65° this morning and upstairs was 70°. Went ahead and turned the boiler thermostats up to 65° but I've been enjoying the new woodstove so much that I may start doing a small load in the evening and full load for the night and morning. I was set on 12 hour burns and letting the boiler pick up the slack but now I figure why do that when cutting, splitting and burning is so much fun 😊

 

[Poindexter]

Do you have any trouble keeping the wood that dry?

I don't, but I see the challenge. Local to us we can split green wood onto the driveway in a sloppy pile in say March and it will be pretty well dry by July 4th. But the it starts raining on July 5th and the MC starts going up.

This is less dramatic in a slat sided shed with a covered roof. As has already been ably pointed out, the relationship between air temperature, relative humidity and the moisture content of wood stored in that air can be predicted by looking at a table of EMC values. Equilibrium Moisture Content. The US Forest Service has published many of them over the years, for a wood stove user any of them should be close enough. If you were trying to build a clone of some antique highboy that you already stole from a museum so you could sell the fake and keep the real one you would want to choose your EMC table a little more carefully.

I am using passive solar on my wood stacks to capture sunlight to run the temperature inside the kilns up. This keeps the rain off in the rainy season, but also sorts of thins out the humidity because the air inside the kilns is warmer than the air outside the kilns.

I like to see my stacks around 12-13% MC at solstice knowing they will creep back up to 14-15% during the wet season before freeze up. I have never yet seen a piece of cordwood dry noticeably at below freezing temperatures. However, with enough wind exposure it might be possible, if not economical, to use high volume flow of very dry air to pull a measurable bit of moisture out of a frozen split.

 

[Nealm66]

I’ve heard a few guys say that wood will dry quicker in the cold here and had suspicions it wasn’t correct

 

[Crummy]

my stacks around 12-13% MC at solstice knowing they will creep back up to 14-15% during the wet season before freeze up. I have never yet seen a piece of cordwood dry noticeably at below freezing temperatures.

That's what my wood has done so I guess it's normal. Just didn't know it would pull in that much moisture in a covered shed.

As far as freeze drying in years past I have had firewood covered on pallet bunks over the winter and the next spring they have seemed to be much dryer than they were in the fall. This was before I had a woodstove and moisture meter as the wood was just for outdoor burning so I guess it very well could have been my imagination but it sure seemed much lighter. At that time I had a little BX tractor and it would struggle with 1/5 cord of unseasoned spruce but in the spring when I brought the pallets back out from behind the shop it picked them without a struggle.

 

[stoveliker]

While low temperature will slow the diffusion of water to the wood surface (where it can evaporate), in freezing conditions the RH is often quite low. Given that ice can sublime (go from solid ice to the gas phase) quite easily, drying can occur in *low RH* freezing weather. Hence surface drying of splits will likely occur. Internal drying maybe less so, as transport from the inside to the surface is slower.

If it's freezing, with low RH, AND the sun shines on a piece (in the lower 48), warming it up, water transport to the surface might be possible.

Finally, freezing of wood could increase the distance between fibers (as ice expands). It might be (scientifically) interesting to see how much of that additional space remains after thawing. If some remains, then that would facilitate water transport to the surface after thawing.

 

[Crummy]

While low temperature will slow the diffusion of water to the wood surface (where it can evaporate), in freezing conditions the RH is often quite low. Given that ice can sublime (go from solid ice to the gas phase) quite easily, drying can occur in *low RH* freezing weather. Hence surface drying of splits will likely occur. Internal drying maybe less so, as transport from the inside to the surface is slower.

If it's freezing, with low RH, AND the sun shines on a piece (in the lower 48), warming it up, water transport to the surface might be possible.

Finally, freezing of wood could increase the distance between fibers (as ice expands). It might be (scientifically) interesting to see how much of that additional space remains after thawing. If some remains, then that would facilitate water transport to the surface after thawing.

That's all a little scientific for my redneck mentality but considering the fire pit wood that appeared to have freeze dried was fairly small splits it would not be far for moisture to be transported to the surface.

 

[Ashful]

Internal drying maybe less so, as transport from the inside to the surface is slower.

If hundreds (thousands?) of posts to this forum about shared anecdotal experience mean anything, I think this must be the dominant factor. We've seen so many members and posts to the effect that wood doesn't dry in winter, eg. "only count the summers", that whatever the mechanism... I believe this is the case.

 

[shgRUSS]

Our weather always gets bad for wood in fall. Right now we have entered our usual cloudy humid time. Can be 10*C or -30*C but no sun. Can last 2 weeks or 2 months. My seasoned wood picks up moisture to some degree. My very unscientific but effective way for removal of moisture and snow in/on the wood is to set my next reload below and in front of the Princess. 8-24hrs later the wood is bone dry again. Problem solved.

 

[Ashful]

Nothing that unusual, for folks living in regions that require wood stoves. Case in point, it has been raining here almost continuously since Sunday afternoon, a special annoyance to me, as I had spent Sunday morning re-sealing a driveway with waterborne sealer, based a forecast showing no chance of any rain until Thursday.

 

[shgRUSS]

Nothing that unusual, for folks living in regions that require wood stoves. Case in point, it has been raining here almost continuously since Sunday afternoon, a special annoyance to me, as I had spent Sunday morning re-sealing a driveway with waterborne sealer, based a forecast showing no chance of any rain until Thursday.

I did not really want to accent my weather, but more the fact about we can’t do much about it. If you have a storage system with airflow the wood will gain humidity. What I can control is a predry that is simple and effective.

 

[mcguiver7]

@BKVP, can you DM me? I'm retiring my 86' RHT 2200. Local BK dealer here in chapel hill, NC is none responsive and a full voicemail.

 

[BKVP]

BKVP is elk hunting. Returning Monday next week.

 

[Ashful]

BKVP is elk hunting. Returning Monday next week.

In the meantime...

Dealer Search | Blaze King Industries

www.blazeking.com

 

[kennyp2339]

Temps now again suppose to dip sub 35deg f next few nights, gona grab some princess cat food and do a relight

 

[Diabel]

Heading to the cottage tomorrow. Will be lighting up the Princess. I will likely put 4 or maybe 5 loads of hemlock through it by Monday afternoon.