I've seen zero signs of it on the wood which has been kept dry. I had a row or two tip into the adjacent ones within a year of being stacked. This exposed the bottom of these rows to the elements for a good 5-5.5 years. Some of those splits where degraded, dry and very light, but still burned fine. I am past those now and everything looks great. Just tested a red oak re-split now before loading and it was a dripping wet 17.5%. Here are two larger splits that are 6.5 years old. Just took this today. Over 30 lbs for two splits of oak. Nice thing about older stuff is a lot of splits shed their bark just from being handled now.
My favorite question when wearing a kilt "is anything worn under a kilt?" Nope, everything is in perfect working order..... Sir McFarlane Chopsalot.
My guess is Lamppa Kuuma furnaces operate better on 18% moisture firewood because they are totally electronically controlled. The moisture would slow the temperature swings so the control system can keep the burn clean and in the control zone. Control systems have "lag" times which very dry firewood could "our race". One more point of interest: EPA moisture specs are on a wet basis while moisture meters read on a dry basis. If Lamppa Kuuma uses wet basis then the moisture meter equivalent would be 20%+ moisture firewood.
If I load my warm pizza oven the night before and let it bake bone dry it absolutely for sure no question burns better in every way. I’d like to talk to the actual engineers, of that stove (not the sales guy or front office guy) and see how they manage to keep their allegedly optimal 20% wood at 20% after it’s been in the firebox an hour.
You can have too much too dry wood in my boiler, especially if they are smaller pieces. The wood will gas off faster than the secondary burn can handle and it will run dirty. I don't know what the moisture content numbers are but I can for sure burn wet-ish wood cleaner than I can burn ultra dry wood.
lukem I’m wondering if manufacturers are designing them the way the general population uses them. Meaning if the average person burns xx moisture wood then only design the secondaries to burn so much per hour. I’m not an engineer but it makes sense that it’s cheaper to build and design something with a smaller range of operations than a larger one
With anything you engineer to a specification...and their specification for moisture content and the resulting gasification rate was probably based on what they considered, on average, to be dry cordwood that most people would actually get. But when I burn scraps from the shop or framing lumber cut-offs, that's more than it can handle, and understandably so.
