Should I buy a Palladian?
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It is so hard to get ahead of the wood supply and I don't even have a long burning season. I don't feel like I can buy dry wood. Maybe the way to do it is to purchase wood right now, let it sit till next year and let everything we cut this spring/summer sit till 2024. Hard to look ahead that far though (for me!).A couple easy field tests from an old wood burner:
Knock a couple splits together. Wet wood thumps, dry wood rings.
If you throw a split on hot coals and it immediately bursts into bright flames, at least the outside is dry. If it sits there and hisses at you, it's pretty wet.
If you split a split and the fresh-split face is a darker color than the old face, it's wet inside.
Honestly 90% of the problems people ask about here boil down to 'wet wood', but a lot of people aren't open to hearing that answer.
There's been a couple that I remember in particular who had long, long threads detailing their trying journey troubleshooting the elusive manufacturing defect in their first stove, ignoring everyone who said it was their wood or their venting, and then they replaced the bad stove and somehow amazingly got a different stove from a different manufacturer which mysteriously had the same exact problem.... what are the odds...
jetsam
Minister of Fire
I don't know anything about buying wood, but in a pinch you can burn standing dead right away.
A small oak that's been dead for just long enough for the bark to come off by itself will often be really quite dry. You can get lucky with softwood even, but you have to kiss a bunch of toads to find your prince there.
You can also mix dry wood and less-dry wood to make the dry go further... so for example if you bring in a little dead 8" diameter oak that was pretty dry and a 24" pine that is pretty wet, you can dry the pine before the fire and mix the two as you load the stove.
It's not ideal, and you should burn this wood hot and inspect your flue often, but it keeps the house warm just fine.
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
Sounds like my first winter, but we finally gave in and bought a pallet of BioBricks. Pallets also work as a cheap/free wood that will help lower the average moisture content of a load of cordwood.
Update: Insulated block off plate last night, and replaced our superwool blanket (it was in rough shape). I've been testing every piece of wood that goes in. As predicted by ya'll, a lot of our wood is too wet. Some of the pine and red oak is ok. I'm still having trouble getting a really high temp, at most it will get up to 600 (on the stove top). I'm sure it's the wood though, even the best stuff is still around 18% on the moisture meter. I think I will buy some wood this weekend as we are going to run out soon. I also have some bioblocks on order that I should get on Tuesday. I'm really kicking myself having a huge bonfire with the wood from an old barn we had torn down earlier this year. It was untreated and very dry, would have been perfect to cut up to boost the temp of the woodstove.
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