How long for hard maple to dry?

[jensent]

Have cut ,split and stacked a pile of storm damaged hard maple. Tree was green when it went down. I think it should wait until fall of 2012 before we try to burn it. That would allow two summer seasons to dry it. We have plenty of dry wood for this winter season. What do you think? Are we waiting long enough or too long?
Thanks
Tom

 

[NordicSplitter]

2 full summer seasons is plenty of time. Enjoy.

 

[lukem]

Are we waiting ... too long?

Two years is undoubtedly NOT too long.

 

[firefighterjake]

1 year should be good enough . . . 2 years and you will be loving it.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Have cut ,split and stacked a pile of storm damaged hard maple. Tree was green when it went down. I think it should wait until fall of 2012 before we try to burn it. That would allow two summer seasons to dry it. We have plenty of dry wood for this winter season. What do you think? Are we waiting long enough or too long?
Thanks
Tom

Tom, what is too long? Is my 8 year old wood no good? Methinks not! It burns great. I've seen 10 year old wood burned and it too burned great. I've heard of some folks burning 20 year old wood and one fellow out in Texas burned wood that nobody seemed to know how long it had been there. Gave a good hot fire too.

I agree that for the 2012-2013 season this would be great firewood.

 

[lukem]

Have cut ,split and stacked a pile of storm damaged hard maple. Tree was green when it went down. I think it should wait until fall of 2012 before we try to burn it. That would allow two summer seasons to dry it. We have plenty of dry wood for this winter season. What do you think? Are we waiting long enough or too long?
Thanks
Tom

Tom, what is too long? Is my 8 year old wood no good? Methinks not! It burns great. I've seen 10 year old wood burned and it too burned great. I've heard of some folks burning 20 year old wood and one fellow out in Texas burned wood that nobody seemed to know how long it had been there. Gave a good hot fire too.

I agree that for the 2012-2013 season this would be great firewood.

When I moved into this house, there was some old wood out in the barn. I don't know for sure, but it was at least 15 years old. Maybe more. It burned good...but you had to keep the load small and the air dialed back otherwise it would get close to overfire. In the end you burned less wood for the same amount of heat, just had to adjust your habits a little.

 

[Battenkiller]

If you look at a standard lumber drying table for air-dried woods, you can get a good estimate. For 4/4 lumber (1" thick planks), hard maple will take anywhere from 50 to 200 days to dry to 20% MC in average drying conditions in most areas of the U.S. Since the average split is about four times as thick as that, it would take between 200 and 800 days to dry to 20% if it was a 4" thick board that was very long. Since wood dries from the ends 10-15 times as fast as it does from the faces, firewood splits will dry significantly faster. Still, I think a year would be the minimum to get hard maple down to 20%.

It really all depends on how much water was in it originally. If you have the means to find out it's initial MC, you can make a much better guess. No moisture meter can accurately tell you that, you will need to use the oven-drying method to determine the starting MC.

BTW 4/4 red maple dries to 20% in only 30-120 days, so if you are in a hurry, best to cut soft maple, even though the BTU content is lower than for hard maple. Those extra BTUs won't do you much good if you can't get the stove up to the temp needed for the wetter wood to burn well. If you have both, start the stove with the soft maple and only feed in the hard maple after you have a good blaze going and lots of coals.

 

[CTYank]

Have cut ,split and stacked a pile of storm damaged hard maple. Tree was green when it went down. I think it should wait until fall of 2012 before we try to burn it. That would allow two summer seasons to dry it. We have plenty of dry wood for this winter season. What do you think? Are we waiting long enough or too long?
Thanks
Tom

One of the fun parts of scrounging & burning is running your own experiments, with prep based on others' experience, on how to prepare wood.

Evaluate results by trying a stick or two from a given batch as a sample. It's good to have too much in the stacks, to have good options.

Then too, you might burn so-so wood species before fully dried, but not the primo stuff. No rush on that- no such thing as waiting too long.