I am sure i know the answer to this but want to be sure. I have a wood burning furnace. This year everything has been going great for the most part. I was using some older wood and the fire was going in the firebox, furnace kicking on. All is well. I switch ranks because i ran out of the older wood and now the wood primarily smolders instead of staying lit, thus furnace doesn't kick on and house temp drops. If i crack the firebox it relights and starts to rock and roll. I close it and 3 minutes later its black in there with smoke. It certainly seems more wood related. I am currently burning hickory from a tree that was down for 6 months whole and i blocked, split and stacked it 12 months ago. I am finding out 12 months for oak and hickory split is not enough. I thought possibly since the tree was dead etc that would help to some degree. I have re-split some of the split wood and measured it with around a 14-15% moisture reading. From what i can tell that is somewhat normal. Can the wood truly be causing the symptoms i am experiencing? I struggle with having enough room for wood to sit for 2 years plus the reality that if i split enough this year i wont be able to burn any next year. I have to think i am not the only one who has this situation. Any advice/ ideas for next year to get me by? Currently i am leaving the door slit for 5-10 minutes at a time monitoring it to get the fire hot enough for the furnace to kick on. Just wanted to add i have the damper fully open when its smoldering still.
Wood Furnace Question
- Thread starter Btenkhoff
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In my area it takes two sometimes three years to properly season oak.
Are you taking your reading from a fresh split face ?
Does the wood hiss when it's being burnt ?
When I dealt with wet in the past with my wood furnace I would go to Rural King and buy some biobricks and mix them in with the wet wood. That seemed to help a lot.
Check your flue for good draft. If it has dropped some, it will take more incoming air to draft better. Hence leaving the door cracked open.
Check your chimney cap for build up. If there is a screen, they typically can clog up.
Check your chimney cap for build up. If there is a screen, they typically can clog up.
Classic wet wood symptoms...hickory and oak take 2 years minimum, but really won't be right for 3 years though...unless maybe if you split it small and have it stacked in a sunny/windy spot. Beech is one that has BTUs like oak, but can dry in 1-2 years.
Biobricks as mentioned, scrap untreated lumber, cut up untreated pallets, you could always try to buy some dry wood, but good luck with that. Slab wood and cutoffs can dry fast, if you have any mills around.
Look for soft maple, poplar, pine, boxelder, mostly lower BTU woods, but can dry fast and be mixed in with your wood to get a decent burn.
Even so, you'll need to keep a close eye on your chimney cap (if screened) and clean the flue often.
yes reading from the fresh split face. . It does not hiss from what i can tell. I have heard hissing wood before and it doesnt sound like that. No what on the ends coming out which i have experienced before. On the biobricks how often did you mix those in? I burn my furnace pretty much december to march.
Thanks I will do that. I checked my chimney cap and it is fairly wide mesh and not clogged thankfully. I have my chimney cleaned every year and was told this past fall there was not a lot of creosote build up. I also use a "creosote destroyer" in the fires often. Unfortunately seems like a case of not properly planning and seasoning the wood. I have about 6- ranks of fresh oak that i was hoping to burn next year. Looks like best case the following. Thanks again for the time and wisdom
I noticed that even when i throw like kiln dried 2x4 chunks, it helps but the fire does not keep on rocking as much as it usually does. Is that to be expected were the addition of dry wood is still going to be affected by more "wet" wood from a performance basis?
Sure it will, you still have a bunch of water in the firebox, which does not burn.
A different way of looking at it is by weight...if you load 40lbs of 25% moisture content wood, that means you just loaded 10lbs, or about 1.25 gallons of water in your stove!
Add more dry wood!
Makes sense to me. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a symptom of something else. Like a clogged pipe or something. thanks again
Look for a roof truss manufacturing plant
They have a lot of kiln dried scraps, and a lot of the time have a bin where you can load up with them
They have a lot of kiln dried scraps, and a lot of the time have a bin where you can load up with them
Used pallets (often free) can be sliced up into firewood sized pieces rather quickly with a circular saw.
One cut down each side of the stringers, then strategically cut the stringers in half, avoiding the nails. Ashes will either have to be swept for nails, or thrown in the trash, WELL after they are cold! (Hot embers can linger for days, to a week or more in ashes)
More than one person here has got by when short on wood by using pallet wood. Sometimes you can even find oak!
One cut down each side of the stringers, then strategically cut the stringers in half, avoiding the nails. Ashes will either have to be swept for nails, or thrown in the trash, WELL after they are cold! (Hot embers can linger for days, to a week or more in ashes)
More than one person here has got by when short on wood by using pallet wood. Sometimes you can even find oak!
The bio bricks that I used were supposedly made out of hardwood and would last a decent amount of time if there wasn't a lot of heat demand. Not sure what kind of furnace you have. The furnace I had did have secondary burn on it so I would generally throw the bio bricks on the bottom and then the wet wood on top of them to help bake some of the moisture out of the wood, or I'd intermix them with the wet wood. My wood wasn't terribly wet ( 22 - 25% MC ) either but my wood furnace did not like anything much over 20% MC. You definitely want to monitor your stack temperatures with them as they burn pretty hot.
There's a guy in my area that makes them and sells them by the ton. Might be worth seeing if there's someone like that in your area selling them on FBM or Craigslist. I've contemplated buying a ton myself to mix in with my wood. But I have so many dead trees on the ground it doesn't make financial sense IMHO.
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A roofer's ground sweeping magnet, works wonders.
Great source of pallet wood comes from big HVAC companies. Units they get for installs are shipped to them on hardwood pallets made of 2x3'' and often long. Bring a saw. Preferably battery operated saws all. They may frown on chainsaws due to liabilities. You may also have to fight off the employees so, bring a friend. LOL
make sense. I am hoping to just get by this year and hope you have a good rotation going forward armed with the wisdom i have now on dry times. Being in SE missouri it gets hot and dry so i know that helps some but ultimately not enough
Just curious, how do you all store your firewood as its seasoning. I typically have done mine off the ground on landscape timbers. mostly uncovered on the top. I see people put a "roof" on it and some dont. Curious your thoughts. I dont want to have wood rot.
Your timbers should work fine. Most use pallets. Top covering is good practice. Not necessary as much as making sure there's plenty of wind/air flow. IMO top covering helps more and only con is an additional step. Easy price to pay. Those in really rainy areas should top cover.
I started stacking mine on double pallets in 2019. I top cover with rubber roofing take-offs. I need to cover mine, as I have a lot of it and it's stacked in the woods where it does not see a lot of wind or sun in the summer. I use 48" wide pallets and stack all my wood in single rows, separated by around 8" or so. Won't be long and I'll be burning 10 year old stuff. I'm burning almost 8 year old stuff right now.
I do double pallets as I've learned that over time the first pallet pretty much settles into the ground leaving the bottom of the wood near ground level. Using two pallets alleviates that issue and keeps the wood one pallet height above ground.
Here's a video I took last spring for someone after I finished splitting last winter's wood.
Thanks. I was under the impression that the wood can season too much. That it becomes too dry and wont burn as efficient. Is that not true?
Wood will reach an equilibrium moisture content based on the environment it's stored in. Around here it seems to be right around that 12-15% area. I've not found it to be an issue at all. IMO, the more water one can remove, the less BTU's are wasted from boiling it off when burning it.
Just as JR said above, average equilibrium most places is in the 12-15% range, so most stoves are made to burn wood in the 15-20% range (because many people try to burn wood that is not to perfect equilibrium, plus it varies by season, and by location too)
Whatever the moisture level is in the wood, it is directly deducted from the BTU's that otherwise would be available burning that wood (15% MC, 15% gets deducted from the BTUs available in a given pound of Oak (for example)
Water does not burn, water makes steam in the firebox, which quenches the fire, and water is a big part of making creosote too.
The whole "too dry" thing is largely propagated by the OWB guys that throw anything/everything in and it "burns" (sorta...smolders is more like it) because they are designed to "burn" wet wood, to satisfy the demands of a certain group of people that are too lazy to gather/split wood and let it dry (which would be much more clean burning, and efficient!) but its a false economy because OWB (just for example) that are made to burn dry wood, are MUCH more efficient...wood consumption often drops by 50% by switching over!
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