Wood seasoning chart

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Zzyk

Member
Hearth Supporter
Oct 24, 2008
80
schoharie county ny
First of all sorry if the has been covered before. Wondering if anyone has compiled a simple chart for wood seasoning. Maybe broken down as to which species need 1year, 2year, 3 year, etc. I realize there are many variables involved (how and where stacked etc) but just something to use as a rough guide. This could be very helpful for stacking and could help answer questions such as... should I stack my just split ash with my 2 year old oak so that they're both ready at the same time. Thanks.
 
After reading your post I was interested in this too. This is what I found:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/seasoning-time-chart.69423/
I keep a large colander by my stove and mark down when I clean it, how much creosote I got out and when I start burning a new stack of wood just to keep track of things. I need to start writing down the date when I finish stacking a new pile so I can guesstimate when it will be ready. Maybe if I even get spunky type up all the wood ddying info up and go to the graphics store and have them blow it up for me on the plot printer to keep by the calander
 
There are to many variables to just give you a required time. It depends on average relative humidity average temp size of splits how and where it is stacked top covered or not ect ect.
 
(broken link removed)

This link has a US Dept of Ag report that contains a lot of useful info including avg days to dry lumber by species and region to 20% (pg 24-25). Also has avg number of "drying" days per region etc. A lot of other interesting and not so interesting things about air drying wood.

It's for lumber up to 2" thick but at least you get some relative data.
 
Here are my rules of thumb, your results will likely vary.
Oak, hickory, 3 years (minimum)
Pitch pine, white pine, cedar, juniper 2 years
Fruit wood (cherry, apple pear, peach, maple (all types) plus locust and poplar, 1 year, though more is almost always better.
Standing dead; top half or so may be burnable when harvested, bottom half may seaon in a year depending upon time of death
(most branches gone, most bark gone). With the standing dead, I am only targeting hardwoods, around here the pine starts to rot almost immediately. Standing dead cedar can likely be burned asap.
 
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