another dry wood thread

[mikeyny]

I am not trying to be redundant about dry wood BUT, here goes. I am running a bit low on wood this season once again so I have dove in to my not so seasoned wood pile. It burns ok and heats the house. It seems like when you get involved with lesser quality stuff and you get used to it, you think it's ok, but it really isn't. Last week I removed a 100 ft long Hemlock beam from a 100 yr old building near me. ( It was old and sagging and no longer supportive) according to some young engineer, so we replaced it with some new laminated glued up junk. (Microlam beam). Hemlock is not the highest rated timber on the btu table but this 100 yr dried wood burns great. The locust I have is still a bit unseasoned and burns good but this hemlock burns almost twice as good as the locust. This is such a reminder that seasoned wood is far greater than green wood. The performance is almost twofold. Of course we can't all wait 100 yrs for our wood to season but 2 yrs seasoned seems to be the best.
Mike

 

[Nofossil]

I suspect that different boiler / furnace designs are affected by moisture in different ways. Dry will always deliver more BTU per unit volume of wood, but the difference may not be as big as you might think. In gasifiers, too high a moisture level can interfere with secondary combustion - especially when starting them.

I ran a pretty carefully instrumented comparison between wood at 20% and wood at a bit over 30%, and there was very little difference. It helps to mix some really dry with wetter wood.

 

[antknee2]

I found the same results with the Seton boiler , in the beginning of the season I tyred all types of unsplit oak with 50-60 percent moisture content . The boiler worked good and produced plenty of hot water I thought .Until I broke into some well seasoned oak , now I understand why boiler room members say more thermal storage is always better . Good dry wood is the best ! Anthony