Impact of Rainwater on Seasoned Firewood

[Ashful]

And if it wasn't bad enough, 6" of snow on Thursday, followed by just enough rain to soak the already wet snow into a slushy sponge on top of all the stacks. Even the stuff on the porch would have been soaked, had I not covered it. And, the weather into the forseeable future appears to be custom designed to keep the ground a soupy mess. Not warm enough to melt it all away during the day, then down into the 20's at night to freeze what's there.

I have parts of my yard that have not been mowed since July 4, which still need to get done. I also haven’t even started my leaf clean-up, those areas are too wet to enter.

 

[weatherguy]

I have parts of my yard that have not been mowed since July 4, which still need to get done. I also haven’t even started my leaf clean-up, those areas are too wet to enter.

Might have to wait til spring the way things are looking.

 

[Slocum]

I mostly top cover everything. I did a test on honey locust that was css last January. I stacked a cord inside my pole barn which is closed up 6 days a week through the week and it gets very warm in there. Then a cord under my Quonset hit, a cord in full sun but top covered and I filled a ibc tote but didn’t cover it. The cord closed up in my pole barn was the driest. It went from 30% to 23%. The ibc tote that wasn’t covered dried the least at 25% moisture. We did not have the relentless rain that a lot of you to the east got. The stack I had in full sun and top covered was almost to 23%. It’s obvious to me I need to top cover everything cause every bit of moisture your wood gets on it makes a difference in the end.


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[Easy Livin’ 3000]

I have parts of my yard that have not been mowed since July 4, which still need to get done. I also haven’t even started my leaf clean-up, those areas are too wet to enter.

Yep, we got in one short weekend of leaf cleanup, still have one more long one to finish. Need em to mulch the garden.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Wet this year.

North slope of a "mountain" near the top, but not at the top. Quotes are because it's a Pennsylvania sized mountain, which is nothing like a Colorado sized mountain.

Only a couple of good sunny spots, but it can be pretty breezy. Lots of still, humid days this year.

Even in single row stacks, I was growing fungus in the sapwood on barkless pieces, and cambium layers, on bark-on pieces.

I knew I was in trouble in early September and started top covering, but removing the top for sunny stretches.

Oak, birch, hemlock, walnut, ash, tuplip poplar. All of it at least 2 years split and stacked off the ground, except for the holzhausen, stacked single row deep, and all of it waterlogged to some degree.

I really believe that location has alot of factors on the quality of wood drying. I am not far from you, but not on a mountain. I keep ALL of my wood in a wood shed. I season it in the shed. It is east west with the front facing south and it is vented. All of the southern winds from the summer blow on my stacks.. I am 3 rows deep, i have a large overhang on the front and in the summer i take the back panel's off to expose the back row. All the sheds are in full sun, even in winter. My area recived 40 in of rain by august, a full years worth of rain in 8 months. None of my wood is struggling. I do think that the MC is slightly higher than in previous years but not to the point that my wood sizzles. I think with a dryer year my Mc would be a little lower. Sometimes there is an advantage to protecting the wood from dew and regular times of high moisture. I really believe that wood getting wet truly slows the wood seasoning process. Wood can only lose a certain ammount of moisture in a given period. That being said the uptake of any additional surface moisture will slow the internal your trying to get out..

 

[Stinkpickle]

I’ve been intending to do a little experiment by submerging a seasoned split in a bucket of dyed water, leaving it in there for some period of (maybe a month), and then cutting it to see how deep the dye penetrated. Maybe someday...

 

[Stinkpickle]

Somebody beat me to it. Sort of...

https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/myth-soak-your-wood-first

 

[Ashful]

Somebody beat me to it. Sort of...

https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/myth-soak-your-wood-first

Interesting, but he makes too many assumptions to validate his conclusions. How do we know the dye component penetrates the wood as well as water, perhaps the wood acts as a filter toward the dye. How do we know the effect of rinsing the wood, if it were so porous, then maybe rinsing is removing some dye. An interesting experiment, but there are too many untested variables.

 

[Schipp]

I’ve been intending to do a little experiment by submerging a seasoned split in a bucket of dyed water, leaving it in there for some period of (maybe a month), and then cutting it to see how deep the dye penetrated. Maybe someday...

That would be interesting!
Maybe different lengths of time!
ie • 1day
• 1 week
• 1 month
I might need ya try that!

 

[Sawset]

You'd be surprised how much moisture the wood will absorb just from air. There was a nice graphic in a scholarly article about curing wood and how much moisture the wood picks back up during the wet season even under a cover. For the life of me I cannot find that graphic. If I come across it I will share it.

This is one article I know of. It does give some good reference information. Useful if it can be translated to similar situations.

http://dec.alaska.gov/media/7558/wood-storage-best-practices-final-report.pdf

 

[wooduser]

Why not measure the affect of rain or moisture?


Weigh some sticks of firewood when they are dry, and write the weight of the stick.

Weigh it additional times after rain, or dunk it in a bucket of water for a few hours and weigh it additional times, writing the results on the stick.


Measurement would seem to be a better way to answer this question than opinion.

 

[Hasufel]

Why not measure the affect of rain or moisture?


Weigh some sticks of firewood when they are dry, and write the weight of the stick.

Weigh it additional times after rain, or dunk it in a bucket of water for a few hours and weigh it additional times, writing the results on the stick.


Measurement would seem to be a better way to answer this question than opinion.

You are right, empirical data would be useful in this discussion. There are a lot of variables to be considered but at least we might get some ball-park estimates. I tried something like this a while back on some test pieces of oak (to compare drying conditions) and found that wood exposed to the elements took longest to dry, by a wide margin. During one rainy period the moisture content of my smallest test piece increased by 60% (from about 14% to 23% average MC), and it took about 6 weeks to lose the moisture it had picked up. But this is heavily dependent on weather conditions and the size, initial dryness, and other characteristics of the splits.

 

[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Why not measure the affect of rain or moisture?


Weigh some sticks of firewood when they are dry, and write the weight of the stick.

Weigh it additional times after rain, or dunk it in a bucket of water for a few hours and weigh it additional times, writing the results on the stick.


Measurement would seem to be a better way to answer this question than opinion.

Someone could really rack up some academic points on this. There are many variables to take into consideration, types of wood (oak vs tulip poplar vs. black birch, etc.), old growth vs. new growth, ambient humidity, bark vs no bark, round vs flat cut or split. Just in one stack, all from the same tree cut and splt at the same time, I find considerable variation.

All that said, it would not be hard to come to some useful conclusions with some splits, buckets of water, a scale and a little time and effort.

 

[billb3]

 

[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Fabulous video. Tremdously informative.

 

[Sawset]

The video is excellent. And it creates a couple of questions:

1) if red oak wets from the ends very quickly vs white oak, does it dry equally quickly. I've never differentiated between the two honestly as far as that goes.

2) if a stack sheds water vertically, and very little reaches the ends, does infiltration also vary that way (radially) between species?

 

[wooduser]

I think the video illustrates how some simple experimentation can be more useful than "It stands to reason...." opinion.

 

[Hasufel]

The video is excellent. And it creates a couple of questions:

1) if red oak wets from the ends very quickly vs white oak, does it dry equally quickly. I've never differentiated between the two honestly as far as that goes.

2) if a stack sheds water vertically, and very little reaches the ends, does infiltration also vary that way (radially) between species?

And of course: 3) is it OK to blow on the ends of my red oak splits to dry them out faster?

But seriously, if the pores between the annular rings are the big difference between red & white oak, then it stands to reason that there should be little difference in the speed of wetting/drying if you stack oak in a way that minimizes rainwater infiltration on the ends. This is consistent with what I have observed anecdotally, with red and white oak drying at roughly similar rates.

Interesting discussion!

 

[Schipp]

Great video!
I liked this one as well!

 

[coutufr]

Is there a way to differentiate both types of oak using the bark? Oak is relatively rare around here but I scrooge some once in a while

 

[Ashful]

Is there a way to differentiate both types of oak using the bark? Oak is relatively rare around here but I scrooge some once in a while

Yes, but since there are at least a dozen different species of red oak and a dozen different species of white oak (red/white is a class, not a species), it’s frankly easier to differentiate them by the leaves. Reds have pointy leaves, whites have rounded tips on their leaves. There’s an old “cowboys and Indians” phrase that goes along with remembering this, but I guess it’s not PC today.

 

[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Yes, but since there are at least a dozen different species of red oak and a dozen different species of white oak (red/white is a class, not a species), it’s frankly easier to differentiate them by the leaves. Reds have pointy leaves, whites have rounded tips on their leaves. There’s an old “cowboys and Indians” phrase that goes along with remembering this, but I guess it’s not PC today.

Didn't know this. Interesting, informative and concise. I'll be on the lookout next leafy season to see what we have. Guess there's no easy way to tell what's what in the stacks already, but I'm burning it, either way!

 

[Ashful]

Red oaks look redder, after split. Also, there’s the straw trick, you can blow bubbles in a glass of water thru a sliver of red oak, not with white.

 

[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Red oaks look redder, after split. Also, there’s the straw trick, you can blow bubbles in a glass of water thru a sliver of red oak, not with white.

I draw the line at trying to blow through my wood.

 

[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Red oaks look redder, after split. Also, there’s the straw trick, you can blow bubbles in a glass of water thru a sliver of red oak, not with white.

Red on the left, white on the right. No blowing required.