Firewood "Tips" according to the State Of Ohio

[FionaD]

I just stumbled across this thread and found it strangely reassuring in the light of a topic of my own started several weeks ago - https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/seriously-thinking-about-giving-up-on-burning-wood.149234/

The most recent posts in this thread, about the amount of wood drying space most folk (don't) have and the resultant need for kiln-dried wood are all exactly what we're facing here in the UK, since the (relatively recent, compared to you guys) practice of wood burning in stoves has grown rapidly here over the past five years or so.

More and more wood sellers here are setting up kilns for drying fire wood.. and yes, they are all fired by wood detritus... but it does make wood pretty expensive and so you tend to find that many wood burners over here either burn occasionally for ambience, or to suppliment central heating on the coldest nights, or becuase they really want to reduce their carbon footprint (that was my main reason.. And the fact I love wood . In short, wood burning over here is usually only a money-saving option for those few folk who are lucky enough to be able to CSS their own... and that's not many in the UK.

Where I'm seeing similarities in our two countries' positions is that there feels to me to be something ill thought out by both our governments. Over here people are being very, very actively encouraged to move from less Eco-friendly forms of heating to bio fuel, but the flaw in this, which is inevitably only discovered after one has invested in the shift to wood burning, is that it is incredibly difficult to find sellers who produce wood with a decent MC.. And that includes kiln dried.! As someone pointed out above, it takes at least a week for wood to get to 20% MC in a kiln and most producers try to cut their costs by heating faster and hotter, resulting in case-hardened splits that look great on the surface (literally!) with MCs of around 11-15%... Then you split the log and the MC at the core is close to 50%.

It sounds to me as though, on both sides of the water, we're soon going to be running into some sort of a wall created by ill-conceived short term thinking on the part of the EPA and our equivalent over here, DEFRA.

 

[Ashful]

It sounds to me as though, on both sides of the water, we're soon going to be running into some sort of a wall created by ill-conceived short term thinking on the part of the EPA and our equivalent over here, DEFRA.

Just got back from the UK a few weeks ago! Spent so much time on the road there, that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to go "right" around a roundabout, ever again.

The primary US demographic has been shifting from urban + rural to mostly suburban, over the last 40 years. Lot size varies with affluence and how "sub" your "urban" is, but 1 acre (4000 sq.m.) lots are very common. This does give many here the easy ability to process their own wood, and store a few years' worth on-site.

Add to that, our wood burning population here does lean a bit toward the more rural folk, evidenced in the Wood Shed photos you see here every day. It's not uncommon to see 5 - 10 acre (20k - 40k sq.m.) residential lots, when you are more than 30 miles from a city, which can be the case when you move away from our congested northeast and southwest coasts.

We do have members here in denser suburban areas, stacking wood on 1/4 acre (1000 sq.m.) lots, which is probably not far off from the standard "in town" lots in the GB towns I visited. Wish I made it over to Scottland, but maybe next year!

 

[gyrfalcon]

Fiona, thanks very much for the link to that earlier thread, which I had somehow missed at the time. (So are you now burning the biobricks? Did the deal with the neighbors with the kiln work out at all?)

The availability and cost of firewood varies widely here in the States. Where I am, in a rural, heavily (hardwood) forested Northeastern state, green wood costs around $175 a cord generally c/s/d: "seasoned" (the old-fashioned definition-- cut down in spring, pulled out and c/s/d to order in fall) around $200. I get 22 or 23 to 30 MC from my small kiln operation for $250, and the big lumberyard with the 20 MC wood charges almost $500! Friends in the inner Boston suburbs tell me ("seasoned") firewood there costs $300 to $400 a cord, and genuinely dry wood cannot be gotten for any price. A large house lot there is 1/4 acre, most are much smaller, so no room for stacking unless you devote your entire back yard to it. Heating with firewood is effectively not possible in practical terms.

Most people here have large house lots (mine is very small at 2 acres, the result of legacy zoning), and many also a woodlot, which they manage appropriately to give them an essentially infinite supply of firewood. Most local wood sellers are just guys with large woodlots who cut a few extra cords every year to sell to their neighbors. I'm one of only two modern stove users I know of in my area, so demand for dry wood is very low.

Although there's an increasingly urgent push in the States for biomass, the attention is almost exclusively on large-scale energy production, not individual home heating. As I said somewhere above, my sense is that our EPA has long been concerned primarily with air quality, so regulations on stove manufacturers are aimed primarily, if not only, on cutting back on particulate matter being emitted by stoves, not on encouraging wood-burning as a source of home heating.

Our stove sellers are no more forthcoming than yours about how you get to that magical 20 MC the stoves need (nor on the length of the burn in real world conditions or the amount of space that can be heated), so many, maybe most customers I see in the showrooms are soon going to be very frustrated.

The price and availability of firewood here from larger-scale dealers and kiln operators started to become more of a problem here last year, when several new pellet producers started operations and created a lot of competition for the dwindling number of loggers. (Pellet stoves are very big these days with farm people, who are very eager to be free of the near-endless lifelong chore of wood cutting and stacking and hauling required to heat drafty big farmhouses with inefficient old woodstoves burning nearly green wood.)

The price of heating oil (no natural gas lines anywhere here) has fallen so far this year that it's competitive with firewood as a heat source for everybody who has to buy their wood. That won't last, of course, but it's such a relative bargain right now that I decided to give my aging knees and back a break this year and use my woodstove only occasionally for what you call "cosmetic burning" after last year's struggle with a brutally cold and very long winter.

What I've been doing the last several years is buying that 23-30 MC kiln-dried wood a cord at a time starting in early summer, moving the driest stuff-- smaller splits of lighter-weight wood -- to my home's enclosed, attached woodshed, and stacking, sometimes further splitting, the rest close together on pallets on one of my few flat places out back to dry some more over the summer months and on into our quite dry winters as needed. That gets me fairly close to that 20 MC ideal by the time the heating season rolls around. (I burn about 4 cords a year)

I don't remember what size splits you generally use, but smaller ones do dry faster than large no matter how they're dried, and I wonder if you could strike a deal with a kiln operation to pay them a little more to sell you only smaller splits, or to dry your wood a few days longer than their other customers. If you make a guarantee to buy X amount over the season and to pay them up front for the whole year's worth, they might agree to accommodate you. Developing a relationship with one good steady supplier can make a big difference.

 

[jatoxico]

The good news is that all of the wood in my stacks is officially seasoned.

Apparently so are the trees growing in my yard.

 

[FionaD]

Thanks for these responses. It's been great to get the wider picture with regard to wood supplies over your way and to see that, all I all, it's not really that much different than here for folks who aren't able to CSS all their own wood.

Fiona, thanks very much for the link to that earlier thread, which I had somehow missed at the time. (So are you now burning the biobricks? Did the deal with the neighbors with the kiln work out at all?)

I've haven't given up on the neighbours with the kiln. Our wood here usually gets sold by the cubic metre builders bag.They sold me two of those a few weeks ago, much cheaper then most kiln dried hardwood over here.. £80 (approx $120) per bag. Most people charge closer to $200 for the same amount. I reckon a cubic meter must be around a 1/3 or a 1/4 cord?

Anyhow...I asked them to take one of the bags back right away as the average sized splits were around 30% at the core... They are selling wood under the 'Woodsure' accreditation we have over here,that I mentioned in that earlier thread, which, it turns out, states that seasoned wood must an average of 25% and kiln dried must be an average of 20%..(better than Ohio, then! ) Anyway, this was kiln dried, and they're keen not to lose there newly got accreditation...so the wetter bag was taken back with no quibbles.. The other bag is actually great! 16" splits that are, to be honest a little over 20% in a few of the thicker splits, but nevertheless it's the best wood I've ever Found for sale over here. The downside is, the reason this wood (mixed hardwood, ash, oak, beech and a little birch) is so good is that it was CSS in early 2014 and ALSO kiln dried this year - I think they threw it in the kiln as their first batch to play with it all... In other words, it's a one-off dream bag that they won't be able to reproduce.

The other bag was sub par, they say, becuase they are still learning how to use the kiln; how to stack the wood right, to get the whole load to dry evenly. I belive them, because I can see they're worried about it, having invested thousands in this fancy big kiln. I really want to support them and naturally hope they'll get it all worked out, if only for selfish reasons. I have asked them to let me know when their next batch of 14 or 16" wood gets dried.

....and you know what? If it turns out their wood is still a little dodgy, I Think I'll do what you've suggested and offer to pay them a little more for an extra few days in the kiln, that's a great idea.

So yes... At the moment I'm having the time of my life with the best burning experience since I got my stove.! I really hope I get more similar wood form them in January, when I will need to buy some more.

I also found a cooperative in Dumfries - around 100 miles away- who by large amounts of biobricks and sell them to their members for pretty much wholesale price.mthats also great news. I will be ordering some of those too, as a back up.... But I guess folk here understand, I just prefer the real splits.

We are in a rural area here... A small village on the edge of the Highlands. But like many European villages, the land that belongs to each wee cottage is not much. The bigger place next door to mine has loads of land they don't manage at all... I asked if I could buy or even rent some, but they weren't interested... So there you go.

I need to move out into the more remote glens...that'll be my next bit project.. But not for a few years, I've done so much to this place and I want to enjoy the fruits of all that for a little while longer.

Just got back from the UK a few weeks ago! Spent so much time on the road there, that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to go "right" around a roundabout, ever again....... Wish I made it over to Scottland, but maybe next year!

I know that roundabout feeling! I've driven in the US a few times and it really messed with my brain! If you ever get to Scotalnd, you'd better bring a suitcase of lovely low MC Philadelphia hardwood with you!

 

[hamslam42]

I reckon a cubic meter must be around a 1/3 or a 1/4 cord?

With a little help from google, looks like a cubic meter is about .275 of a cord. (1 cubic = 35.3147 cubic feet, 1 cord = 128 cubic feet).

 

[Oldman47]

Fiona, just as a point of reference, your cubic meter of wood is just a little short of 1/3 cord or of a face cord. If it is loose thrown and not stacked you can figure at least another 10% penalty because by definition a cord is tightly stacked. At £125 for a cubic meter anyone on here would be running for the hills to avoid the deal.
I spent much of this morning researching solar kilns after reading through this thread https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...to-store-and-dry-wood-working-awesome.129149/ and it looks like it might be an answer for me. It can fully season a load of wood to burning moisture levels in 3 to 6 months and estimates are that you could build one big enough to season 6 cords in a summer for a little over $1200 which would be £800 if material costs actually translated based on the foreign exchange ratios. We both know that is not the case. My bet is that in the UK it would cost £1200 for the materials to build it. Dollars and pounds seem to be worth about the same every time I am in the UK, but the foreign exchange rates never seem to reflect that reality. Most of the internet resources for building a solar kiln are best found by looking for hoop house greenhouse plans and illustrations. A solar kiln is basically a green house with terrible summer ventilation so it gets way too hot for plants with internal temperatures as high as 140ºF, 60ºC.

 

[FionaD]

Yes... If I had the space and also could tuck it away where I didn't have to look at it, I'd for sure build something like that.