Backwoods Savage
Minister of Fire
Binny, it is never wrong to experiment so go ahead and give it a try. But my feelings is that you are assuming that heat is what dries the wood. Stick around and experiment and you will find that the wind will dry your wood faster than heat. I am certainly not saying that heat does not dry the wood because it will. But more importantly, it will allow for better evaporation of the moisture. So, if it allows for better evaporation of the moisture it would seem that leaving it uncovered would produce greater benefits. Put sun and wind together and it is difficult to beat.
So I am wondering why anyone would want to cover the whole stack at all? Better uncovered to let Mother Nature do the drying for you and that is best done with wind. I think back to my farming days and one thing always come to mind and that is putting up hay for the winter. The hay has to be cut and then it has to dry before baling. Just think what happens if you mow your grass and bag it. That green grass has lots of moisture in it. Spread it out and it dries relatively fast. Would it dry faster if you put it into a bag and then put a vent at the top of the bag? I always noticed when drying hay in the field that if we had windless days, it took a long time to dry that hay. However, if we had windy days the hay dried much faster. Of course keeping the windrows straight those times could be a problem but that is something else.
Our theory on drying wood is like this. We cut the wood in the winter months. No leaf on the trees and no insects to bother us. Sap is not so much of a problem. Following snow melt we then do all our splitting. As soon as the splitting is done, we stack the wood. Because we have time and space in our favor we don't have to stack in single rows. But the stacking is usually done by mid April and then we just forget all about the wood until the following December. Before snow piles up we then top cover the wood. This means that through most of the spring, all of the summer and most of the fall, that wood has been open to Nature. We think this allows for better evaporation of the moisture. By fall a lot of moisture has been removed. As proof of this, we stack our wood 4.5' high and by the time we cover the wood it is usually down to 4' and sometimes lower. This shows the shrinkage that is from the evaporation of the moisture.
As stated, experiment! That is something that sometimes is not done enough. Also many times people experiment thinking about one thing they find benefits where they did not expect. But as for me and my house, we will continue to let Mother Nature be our friend. It has worked quite well for us for a few years now and we have not found anything better. Good luck.
