Heat dried wood?
- Thread starter Maggiemae
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Kiln-dried would be good. Get yourself a cheap moisture meter and go split a piece that seems heavier than the rest (you have to re-split to get an accurate reading of the inside.) If it's around 20% it's getting pretty dry.
Heat dried wood. What will they think of next to sell unseasoned dictionary chord wood!
Gets pretty hot around here in the summer.....lemme think....need to come up with a new marketing term on craigslist...sun is plenty hot...the 100 cord pile of wood is in the sun......whammo! Heat dried wood!
It means heat treated which is not kiln dried. The wood has to be held at a certain temperature for certain time. Most pallets have to be heat treated to be shipped now as well as firewood shipped a certain distance. It doesn't mean a guaranteed moisture content just that all bugs,fungus,and mold is dead.
Pennsyltucky Chris
Minister of Fire
Heat dried wood works. I was getting poorly seasoned cords for $110. I would use my seasoned wood in my wood stove, and stack the wet stuff all around my stove. after 2 days sitting in 110-120 degrees, it would burn right up.
Paulywalnut
Minister of Fire
Yep a lot of the adds are saying seasoned now some with particular numbers, man I could have fun in small claims court with these and likely win 98% of the time., so I guess we need to be more specific by saying: Properly dried to a moisture content of 20% or less on a fresh split inside face at an ambient temperature of 55 degrees.Wood must be at or above 55 degs. on inside face.
Got one add claiming everything they have is going to be 18% or less go on to say it was "seasoned in the round" for a year prior to being split. Then a picture of a big pile and that they are not a tree service but buy logs for firewood. or another that says theirs is best because it was cut 18 mo. ago & that it is a dry, Oak and Cherry ( depend on when split maybe the cherry, no way on the Oak) the list goes on.
Got one add claiming everything they have is going to be 18% or less go on to say it was "seasoned in the round" for a year prior to being split. Then a picture of a big pile and that they are not a tree service but buy logs for firewood. or another that says theirs is best because it was cut 18 mo. ago & that it is a dry, Oak and Cherry ( depend on when split maybe the cherry, no way on the Oak) the list goes on.
We can all complain about scamy, unregulated, misleading firewood sales pitches but when the day comes when you all pay sales tax on your wood you will truly have something to cry about.
Think about it..
How many suppliers can afford to spend the time/money/fuel to produce the firewood and then let it sit for a year all the while knowing they won't get the money for it competing with all of the other suppliers of " dry" wood.
How many suppliers can afford to spend the time/money/fuel to produce the firewood and then let it sit for a year all the while knowing they won't get the money for it competing with all of the other suppliers of " dry" wood.
Jon1270
Minister of Fire
It's best to assume it means nothing at all. Such terminology is not regulated or standardized; it's just something some guys standing around trying to figure out what to call their product thought sounded good. Maybe they apply some heat somewhere along the line, and maybe that heat drives off a little moisture, but so what? All that matters is how much moisture remains in the wood, and they're not telling you that. They're trying to say their wood is better than the next guys', without making any promises you can hold them to.
Welcome to the forums Maggie, I see this is your first post (hopefully not the last).
As the others have indicated, the term ``heat dried wood`` likely does not mean that the wood will be properly seasoned (dried). Almost nobody actually sells properly seasoned firewood, and if there was a rare firewood dealer that might happen to have some to sell, the only way to confirm it would be to use a moisture meter and sample random pieces of the wood they intend to sell you. So what you would need to do is get a moisture meter, pull out random samples of wood from the pile they intend to sell you (dig deep), SPLIT those pieces in half with an axe or a maul and stick the probes into the wood on the freshly split sides and see what the meter reads. For it to be properly dried it should read less than 20% moisture content. You could get away with wood up to 20% - 25%, but it will not burn as well in your stove, and anything over much 25% would not be worth buying and burning if you plan to use it right away because the water content in the wood will suppress the heat output so much that you`d probably be further ahead find some other way of heating your home. Electric space heaters maybe? If you can get a good deal on the wood and want to let it sit and dry for a year or so, that's another mater.
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