What I learned about wood today I think...

[ddahlgren]

Ok realizing my quest for work may turn out to be a bust and not wanting to work in the shop today i played a bit. . Playing with the last wood I received about a month ago that was cut to 8 foot rounds let sit for 2 years then split a month before I received them. I am not sure if that is the truth but what i was told. I measured the MC before bringing into the house and 22%. They sat in the same room as the stove for 2 weeks and measured 14.5 on the outside. Split one and 25% on the inside. Put the 2 pieces on a decent bed of coals and burned for 45 minutes caught fairly well with minimal smoke. Put the un-split one in next with a similar bed of coals took off with a tad more smoke and burned well at first then kept asking for more air. The difference was a stove temp of 520 split and 450 un-split. My next experiment is to get data from a piece of the same batch that has spent it's life outdoors and get a surface reading and interior reading and see how it burns and will report back with how that went and I hope enough information the get some ideas on how you might burn marginal wood if given no choice.

The other thing I need to get done is get the probe stack thermometer mounted and unlike conventional wisdom I am going to mount it about 6 or 7 feet off the floor to see if it looks hot enough for the flue gases hot enough to get out of the chimney above 250 degrees the number i found on the net as below it you will get creosote.

I will report back with results! Sometimes it sucks being an engineer you just keep wanting to know 'why'...LOL

Dave

 

[ddahlgren]

Ok an hour and one half in the center wet wood is 27% and outside up 2% as well Hmmm water migrating to equalize the water content?

 

[ddahlgren]

At 2 1/2 down to 25 on wet side and 17 on dry tossed into a 400 degree stove top bed of coals and took off instantly.

 

[topoftheriver]

At 2 1/2 down to 25 on wet side and 17 on dry tossed into a 400 degree stove top bed of coals and took off instantly.

And the bottom line??????????

 

[ddahlgren]

Ok last load sort of burned but not well takes full air to keep it going. so what i think I have learned. There is no substitute for time getting wood seasoned. With a split with 4 to 5 inches on a side inside is at least 10 % wetter than the outside after 3 months. Storing wood indoors for a week in a low humidity area is good for about 3% less overall possibly more. Unseasoned wood left outside is useless in under a year. oak at least. Given enough air almost anything will burn but heat is optional. If in a jam split fine and leave in a warm place for a week or two and you stand a chance to get it to burn and make some heat. Fine being no bigger than a modern 2 X 3 then stack like kindling so no long burn beyond an hour possible. I do not claim to be any sort of expert but this a set of experiments to satisfy my curiosity and what I saw and what i thought it told me. I am not sure if useful to anyone but taught me a lot.
Dave

 

[ddahlgren]

And the bottom line??????????

See next post..

What i missed is the room the stove is in is 90 and the first floor 76 so lacking anything ood it might work but scrub chimney often!

 

[bmblank]

Remember sample size. Especially figuring moisture content. I'm willing to bet moisture content between multiple splits of the same 8 foot section will vary 10% or more.

 

[bmblank]

Another engineer here. It makes stuff so hard. Yesterday i was laying tile to look like a random pattern... I probably spent more time trying to figure out where each tile goes than the actual laying of the tile.

 

[ddahlgren]

And i bet you are 100% correct I just picked pieces sitting next to each other and the best i could do.

 

[Jon1270]

Keep in mind that your moisture meter is affected by temperature, and probably calibrated for 70F. If the wood is cold, the reading will be artificially low.