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[yoda]

 This will be my first year of burning wood I have a shaver 165, I bought 12 cord of green birch/maple. Was in 8 foot lenths, I cut it up into 2 foot lenths and split anything over apro 10 inches diameter,(probably half of it) I finished that up at the end of sept. Will this be ready to burn by mid december or should I be looking to cut some dryer stuff? I do have aprox. 10 acres of my own woods with some dead standing maple that I hope to make use of, just trying to find the time to get out there.

[R W Ohio]

I would wait as long as you could,even by December it will not have had enough time to dry. It will burn but you will have to deal with a lot of smoke. I know people who cut today and burn tomorrow but I don't. Way to much smoke and that is what is giving OWB's a bad name.

Ron

[willieG]

i believe fresh cut wood  (hardwood) is around 60% moisture..air drying for 6 months lowers it about half (30%)
air drying for 1 year will bring it down  to about 20%...considered "dry" by most
others say 2 years will bring it down to 12%
the dryer the better
on searching the net i found (not knowing if all this is accurate)
perfectly dry wood (0% moisture) per pound  has about 8600 btu in it
wood at 20% is about 7000
fresh cut wood is only 2000

i burn a lot of different wood but mostly elm as it dies early in my area due to disease i dry all my wood 2 years and i get no smoke once burning well and less than most  fireplaces i see even on start up

[MyLeakyWoodDoctor]

Hey,

I'd like to know how to tell by looking at the wood just how seasoned it is!

This would be very useful for me. 

I know this will vary by species, but can't you tell by the size of the cracks on the end?

Is there a table somewhere breaking it down by species, length & diameter of log and crack size?

For instance, if I had a four foot long piece of red maple, 6" in diameter, with max crack size of 1/16", how seasoned would that be?

Anybody know if I could get my hands on information like this?

Leaky 

[ckbetz]

Leaky, I'm not sure it's possible to tell exactly how dry your wood is by looking at it.  For example, if your wood dries more rapidly it would have more of a tendency to crack more I'd think.  Also, every species contains a slightly different amount of moisture and dries at a different rate.  Really when you think about it the moisture affects the density of the wood more than anything.  If you take a piece of white pine and compare it to the same size piece of say, Osage Orange, the highest BTU wood, you'll notice a very big difference in weight and dry weights.  In other words, your pine and osage orange may weigh almost the same green but when dried the pine will be much lighter. 

I can kinda tell how seasoned wood is by lifting it and even splitting it.  A lot of times a green wood is harder to split, and it's always going to be heavier.  Yeah I know, I just added confusion and didn't really answer your question, I'm pretty good at that sometimes.

[CL-Ohio]

I went on ebay and bought a cheap moisture meter just to toy around with it'll only go up to 40 percent but anything higher needs way more dry time, interesting to see what trees that have been down a while register.

[ckbetz]

How does it work CL?  Do you have any pictures?  I'd be interested just to see how green the wood is that I'm burning.

[John D]

Yoda,are you burning the wood? If so how is it doing,and are you getting good burn times. I was in the same boat,I got a late start with firewood,i dropped trees in june,let then set,cut/split in august,and it just wasnt dry enough to brun this winter.I own over 20 acres,so i went out and cut up all the blown down locust and oak,what a difference! zero smoke,and long burn times.Thisstuffs been down 2-4 yrs,and wasnt on the ground.

[CL-Ohio]

Don't have any pics,not computer savy enough to post if I did. just type in moisture meter on ebay site. pretty much just stick the prods into the wood and it reads. works good on the hardwoods.

[yoda]

Yoda,are you burning the wood? If so how is it doing,and are you getting good burn times. I was in the same boat,I got a late start with firewood,i dropped trees in june,let then set,cut/split in august,and it just wasnt dry enough to brun this winter.I own over 20 acres,so i went out and cut up all the blown down locust and oak,what a difference! zero smoke,and long burn times.Thisstuffs been down 2-4 yrs,and wasnt on the ground.

  I have been burning the wood I bought, I think it is still too green, but we got hit early with alot of snow and it kind of put an end to my plan to cut and burn the dead standing wood on my property as I needed it.When it's been really cold I only get about 6 hours before I need to reload it. In the mornings sometimes my water temp is down to 120 and I have to turn on my propane furnace for an hour or so to let the boiler catch up.
  This last week it has been in the upper 20s during the day teens at night, stove working much better 10-12 hour burn times.

 Im really hoping next year with dryer wood and some improvements I'm planning on doing to the stove It will work much better

[Jason]

I burned some pine trees this year that were perfectly green and healthy when they were cut.  They started going into the furnace the same day they were dropped.  Not so recommendable, maybe, but one nice thing about this type of furnace is it'll eat pretty much anything you shove down its throat.  I wasn't thrilled with it, but free wood is free wood.

[jon d]

Jason, speaking of Pine, Since our ice storm last week there's free wood everywhere around here. I picked up a load of it that contained mostly pine(fresh/wet/right off the tree). Never again!! the smell of that S-it burning made me sick at my stomach!!! Even though i switched back to dry hardwood the next day, the dam smell presisted.  Ended up letting fire burn out to empty all ashes out. Started back with normal hardwood..Much better!!!!!!   First year burning owb!! still learning!!

[Jason]

Yeah, that pine smell is really something.  Makes your furnace smell like a gin distillery.

But again- free wood is free wood.   

[MyLeakyWoodDoctor]

I went on ebay and bought a cheap moisture meter just to toy around with it'll only go up to 40 percent but anything higher needs way more dry time, interesting to see what trees that have been down a while register.

I'm gonna have a look at getting one so I can get a better idea just what I'm burning!  I would like to burn less wood, so I was checking out that Wood Doctor Wood Converter (the boiler plate model of course . . . no more Stainless Steel for me!)!

Man!  You don't know what to think? . . . . they tell you it burns 50% less wood ... then a little later on they say it only burns seasoned wood! 

Well, if you can only burn seasoned wood, wouldn't you be burning 50% less wood!! Oh Man?? 

Leaky 

[willieG]

i have never seen one of these new epa rated stoves yet (hopefully i will see a few at the local farm show next month)  but if they are saying you can only burn "SEASONED" wood (that is good advice for any stove) that leads me to believe there will be a lot of problems with the stove not burning properly due to plug ups and big "clinkers" after all, the last guy that tried to sell me a stove said they were the best because i "COULD" burn green wood

we will see how they work out after a few that have them, use them a year or two and then report to a site like this one