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oldspark
Guest
Been burning wood (dry wood by the way) for over 30 years and never gave it much thought, BK makes me think and thats good at my age. :lol:
Backwoods Savage said:Thistle said:krex1010 said:This is the only formula anyone needs on this subject
Dry wood=good
Wet wood =not so good
+1 YES. Split it stack it forget about it for 1 to 3 yrs depending on species,wood condition,your location/climate. Its not rocket science.Your nose,eyes & sense of smell/touch can tell you whether its ready or not.
KISS! I have to agree. Too much analyzing can be harmful. Keep it simple. Don't try to burn wood that you cut this year. If one decides to burn wood then one must abide by Mother Nature's rules. Get the wood ahead of time, git it split and get it stacked so it has time to dry. No more analyzing needs to be done to that formula.
For those who have not tried, if you ever experience the difference between good dry wood and marginal wood, you will be simply amazed and will never go back.
joefrompa said:One thing I haven't seen at all discussed here is absorption of heat in the stove (versus going up the flue). I don't disagree at all with Battenkiller's numbers, but that's a given set of BTUs.
Now, those BTUs have 3 choices: boil water, go into the stove, or go up the flue.
As moisture content increases, it seems to exponentially increase the amount of air input needed to the stove to combust the wood. And, therefore, the rate of loss of heat up the flue seems to exponentially increase. This makes sense when you realize that for a bone dry (12% MC) piece of wood, you can maybe meter in (making a number) 5 cubic centimeter of fresh air every second where as for a 30% MC piece of wood you need 4x that amount (a far more open air intake).
As far as I can tell, the problem with high MC wood isn't that it has so much less BTUs, or that it takes so many BTUs to boil the water content....it's that good combustion of the wood requires so much more air that the loss-rate/efficient rate of those BTUs gets so much worse for the wood burner.
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