Moved a rank of firewood today to a shed beside the driveway for easy access when the snow flies, as it was previously stacked at a place that got good sun and air movement, but would be hard to wheelbarrow to the porch in snow without considerable work. Standing dead Red oak cut in winter 2020. First picture shows weight when first CSS, and subsequent weights. Not easy to read so: 2-27-20 7.5 lbs 5-15-20 6.0 lbs 8-25-20 5.5 lbs 11-30-23 5.5 lbs Apparently it was ready to burn in the winter of 2020 as it did not lose any more weight since. Interesting but not surprising. I used to just track wood moisture that way, with weighing, but I just split and checked it with a moisture meter I recently purchased (which you FHC guys shamed me into getting), and it read 9.8%. Bring on the cold!!
Being dead standing I'm not surprised at all that it reached peak dryness in 6 months. Oak is funny like that. Sometimes 6 months is enough, sometimes 3 years isn't enough. Each batch CSS'd needs to be considered individually, and the chart that says 3 years needs to be taken as a general guideline and not gospel.
Depends where you are, but I agree, November in PA, probably more like 15%. Either way, ready to burn.
Standing dead & the state of decay = huge factor in dry times IME. What’s in my basement stacks now is reading very low. The dead standing chestnut oak I’ve been cutting & processing is drying very fast too.
Out here, it's common for outside humidity to be 10-15%. If I cut wood on Friday, Saturday I can hear the ends of the wood checking in the sun.
I've found that storage location can be a huge factor. I'm right beside a large river and the humidity reflects that...as well as drying time. As such I have started to keep stacks up on the hill in the woods ~300ft higher elevation, where it seems to dry much better even under canopy.
Good sun and wind exposure speeds drying up a lot. Wood sheds are great and all but in many climates, they slow the drying process down.
This helps 'kinda' prove a theory I've had for decades..... The Amish and old farmers around here still 'divorce' standing oak trees they intend on culling for firewood. They leave them stand for several years, then I see them cutting them down and processing them only months before they use them. Gravity seemingly plays a role in the tree excreting its moisture. To an extent. The thicker sections (trunks) will still have moisture but it seems to season off quickly when split and stacked. The longer the tree stands (bark and sapwood decaying off) the better it seasons. Just an observation from my angle. I've got a handful of bog, lightning-struck white oaks on the neighbors farm that have been dead for several years, I'll do some preliminary tests on them when I get to cutting them this winter. Maybe we will do a thread and video on the subject?
I have had similar experiences to what Zack323 has noted. I've never "heard" the wood checking, but I have seen it happen over the course of just a couple of days. Standard conditions in my part of the world are extremely low RH and high sustained winds (similar to Wyoming I suspect). It's a miracle any trees can grow at all. I've learned a lot from this forum, but drying times are absolutely something I've had to sort out for myself and just make mental notes on as I go along with regards to species. Experience has been the better teacher in resolving this very specific quandary. Everyone's conditions are unique, and like jrider points out a wood shed would probably slow down someone in my situation. I throw tarps on as many of the stacks as I can when rain or snow is forecast, but that's so uncommon as to be a rare concern. And I don't actually top cover with the tarps, I sort of throw them on the side the wind is coming from and they flop a little over the top. But the precipitation never comes straight down so some creative tarp placement is required, or the rain/snow would just blow into the stacks anyway. Before anyone finds this to be more of a brag than simple commentary based on limited experience, those same conditions that seem to dry wood so efficiently put my stacking skills to the absolute test. I fail the test more often than I pass given the number of times I'm picking splits up off the ground. I'm almost to the point where I just want to make loose piles on top of pallets and call it good. I can't keep my wood upright any longer than an old man without a little blue pill.
That would be a fantastic thread and video to have on the topic. I do think the Amish are on to something there. I go after dead oak almost exclusively for this reason. I've seen time and time again that dead oaks even when wet, give up their MC very quickly. My first year on this forum I cut over a cord of long-dead, mushroom covered oak in May-June and my uncle and I were both burning it the following January-February. Not a single piece had any water boiling out of the ends. I was dumbfounded but it made a believer out of me.
This echoes my experience with red and white oak dead standing die-offs from caterpillar stresses in the last two decades. Dead standing oaks can be a good source of "need it now" firewood - just get the trunk cut, split, stacked ASAP and use the tops of the tree now. I've had some heartwood standing for a long, long time that made for some really nice firewood.
Likewise, have used and depended on standing dead gypsy moth...oops, I mean spongy moth killed oak for 40 years.
