I season my wood with black pepper and garlic, quite tasty. I have managed to burn dry wood; and I check with a moisture meter, but I don't have three years worth. I am starting on that though. There are big oaks down on the property that I need to get the Old Girl running again in order to get them out. Of course I can roll them down one hillside but getting them up the other hillside is the work. I also want somewhere other than the drive to process wood as it can get messy with the sawdust and bits and pieces of wood and bark. I am stacking on pallets but they are hard to get here; every place I rang said they send them back; Lowes, Home Depot, Tractor Supply. I want to build wood sheds; I stack and cover with tarps but on the dry wood having to deal with the tarps gets old; for wood that is drying, tarps are OK. Welcome to the FHC. They can get crazy here at times.
Air movement is key, there are posts on here about that as well. Cold air is denser so you want to push cold air instead of trying to pull warm air; in other words, move the cold air towards the warm air to get the circulation going.
Have you thought of putting in some duct work? I have put in a duct with an 12v in line fan which takes heat from above the heater and then splits and goes to the kids bedrooms. It does a great job of just moving the warm air through the house. The ducting is that round insulated stuff around 10" diameter.
My house had an addition onto it. The original part of the house needs better insulation while the newer part appears well insulated. Good point to insulate better and take care of infiltration vs. just use more wood to heat. They have a program with the electric utility/state of MD where they will insulate your attic at low cost and even seal openings up into the attic. This is a program you pay for with fees on your electric bill and is available I believe to all homeowners at least in the utilities footprint. The only issue is that I have ductwork up in the attic (for the HVAC) and it needs to be replaced due to being at the end of its life and poor construction. It is better to do this insulation upgrade after the ductwork is replaced. Thus waiting till I get the ductwork replaced and preferably find a way to cool the house without running ductwork up in the attic (something I really don't like). Mitsubishi units in each room is an option though more expensive but more energy efficient to cool vs. ductwork in the attic.
Can you elaborate on this? Are you saying that the temperature of the air where the wood is has an effect on measuring moisture in wood? I wouldn't think that this would matter. I am well aware that the relative humidity of air decreases as the temperature of the air is raised but not heard this about measuring moisture in wood.
Steve, you are an okay guy for sure. You will do just fine. About the only thing I could add right now is for moving the heat in the house. Perhaps you have found out already but in case you haven't, the key is to move the cool air and not try to force the warm air into the cool air. To do that all you need is a very small desktop type fan. A larger one will work but then you might feel a draft whereas a small fan running on low speed you don't get much of a draft but it will work wonders! Like sitting the fan in a hallway and blowing toward the stove room. It is amazing how quickly you can bring warm air to the back of the house this way. Also with ceiling fan, set so it sucks the air up rather than blowing it down.
Just be aware that until you get ahead on the wood supply, that wood will dry much faster outside of a shed! Stack it so it is off the ground and top covered then let Mother Nature do her thing. Later you can move it into a shed if you like. Yes, it is some extra handling of the wood but worth the time spent.
I'm not a fan of moisture meters but yes, you will get a different reading from a log depending upon the temperature. Just for kicks you might find a log outdoors when it is quite cold and get a reading. Then take it indoors, say, for overnight and then take another reading.
We do have a fan on the floor (where obviously the cold air is located) blowing the cold air into the heated space. We also have one box fan we have mounted up near the ceiling (where obviously the warm air is) to try and blow warm air near the wood stove to colder areas of the house. I think what might be ideal for my situation (a single level house with attic) would be to run insulated ductwork from the room where the stove is to the further away bedrooms to force air circulation. That would be quite a task but perhaps ideal. I seem to recall reading online somewhere where one person did that in their house The other thought would be when replacing my HVAC system to try and have the return near the wood stove and turn on the fan for say 5 minutes every hour. Unfortunately that might not be possible or easy to do due to the construction of the house.
Just keep in mind that even when you are trying to blow air through ductwork, it is difficult to move warm air into cool air. This is one reason they put such large fans on furnaces. Cool air is more dense than warm air and this is the reason that it is so difficult to move warm into cool but works great doing it the other way around. And if you were to run ducting through an attic then try to force it down, well, it will take a pretty good fan to notice much of a difference. Hence, this is why most people report poor results from trying to use duct work for moving heat from a wood stove.
I have two storage areas. This area was made with some recently found 10 ft. rectangular pallets (ideal dimension for wood storage). I have covered them with 2 ft. wide sheets of plywood going the entire length. I have also supported each pallet on both sides with metal posts. I also have them up on concrete blocks as you can see. This is my other area: The above are built different ways. My original ones were built on a base of 8 ft. 2x10's laid horizontal with matching 4 ft. sides. Knowing what I know now not the best configuration with a wide bottom. Later ones were built using a firewood kit (see URL). One thought I have about my firewood supplier who seems shocked at my storage is maybe it looks like more firewood storage than it really is (as I said before it is around 5 cords).
SteveWest Welcome to the site. Great pics of your wood supply. Looks like you have a good amount of room to put in more wood racks to help you get to the3 year plan.
The ducting in my house works well to move the heat. The total length of my duct would only be 9 metres or so with the fan about a third of the way along with it splitting off to the rooms after that. I have 9ft ceilings and if I put my hand up near the vents I can feel the heat come through also if I close the door to within a few inches the door will close with the air flow so it moves the air through the house nicely but without being draughty.
The ducting in our house moves warmer air well. That's what it is designed to do. I have a "fan only" switch on my thermostat. It the farthest bedrooms are too cool, we turn the fan on to stir things up and force some of the warm air back there. Just the fan motor uses a lot less electricity than the full furnace. Of course we don't use it often that way as cooler bedrooms are more comfortable for sleeping. Nice neat stacks SteveWest !
There are lots of different moisture meters. Some will have different settings for different woods to compensate for the density of the wood. These are basically sensing a current and translating that into a reading of the moisture; the wetter the wood, the more current flow. Temperature of the wood can affect it as well; or that is what I have been told here on the forum. Take two splits from your wood supply that are close in size; leave one outside and bring one inside (but not beside the stove). After a day or two when the split that has been inside has warmed up, take both splits and split them again. Take a moisture reading in the centre of the split for both and compare. I haven't actually done this test; just gone by the info presented on FHC.
You're no longer comparing apples to apples if you re-split a piece as you are no longer testing equivalent "centers". Wood seasons from the outside in. You wouldn't even get similar test results if you re-split the piece at the same time.
If you are wanting to know if the centre of the wood is ready to be burned; that it isn't still high in moisture, you certainly won't know unless you split it. How are you to read the moisture content inside of the wood without splitting? I haven't seen this special moisture meter you must be using because the one I have, I have to split to see how dry it is inside.
