I'm curious if anyone knows how much wood drys in the winter with below freezing temperatures? Is the wood being frozen just keep the water in? We've been at 10% humidity outside pretty constant during the winter (except for snowfall).
I'll bet there is some drying that occurs with everything being forzen. Example, a piece of meat that has been in your freezer for a few weeks. One thing is for sure, the wood chunks that were hard to split last summer sure do split a lot easier once they are frozen.
I can't say but I've noticed lighting -15* logs are harder to get going. Is Douglass kind of shut down like here? Schools cancelled, small shops closed, a lot of parents took sick days to be home with kids etc. ?
Our lowest humidity is in January, so I bet my covered firewood is drier now than it will be in June.
My practice of weighing splits in the stacks confirms moisture loss in winter. And we do not have that 10% RH like you in WY.
I tested this theory years ago and made a post about it, but I don't recall if it was here or on another forum. If I recall, it was an 8-10" piece of poplar split down the middle and one chumk outside exposed to the elements (or in the shed, honestly don't remember) and one hanging out in a corner in the shack. But anyways, in cold crappy weather like ours, it did lose weight outside in winter, but I bet it would take 5 years of winter drying to equal 1 month of summer drying. I'll see if I can find it. Not sure the rules on hotlinking or whatever and don't need to make trouble, but this should get you there without me actually linking. I stripped 2 ss from the h part and one w h77ps://ww.hearth.com/talk/threads/how-quick-do-you-suppose-this-poplar-will-season-inside-vs-outside.150728/
I recall that post. I always knew that wood loses more MC in summer, but the post you had confirmed it, and it was a big difference between winter and summer. Good news is, wood splits still lose MC in winter.
Yep, I included the broken link above now. Not exactly a controlled scientific test, but enough to give a baseline for rough numbers that prove something, sort of, in a good enough way. Summer or warm equals more better quicker drying.
Today was a perfect day here for winter drying. Sunny to start and some light wind. I moved some 4x4's that were wet/frozen on one side and later in the day noticed how much they had dried.
Laundry used to always be dried outside on the line and it worked, although the stuff was usually a little stiff when bringing it inside. The point is that things will dry in the cold of winter albeit a lot slower.
Moisture is lost from wood all year long but unless you live in some extreme cold dry place, nothing beats the hot summer sun and wind.
Wood will dry in the winter and it will dry faster in a place with low humidity. But for many of us, the winter air is not that much drier than the summer air. Also to be noted, the warmer the air the more water vapor it can hold so lets compare the following: 85 degrees and 50% humidity vs. 25 degrees and 40% humidity. The 85 degree air can hold a whole lot more water vapor than than the 25 degree air so evaporation rates are higher when it's 85 even if the humidity is 10% lower at 25 degrees. Another way you can think of it is this: how long does it take pavement to dry when it rains on a 35-40 degree day vs an 85-90 degree day. We just went throug a month of temps 30ish to 50ish. On some of those days, the pavement stayed wet for days without additional precipitation. There is no doubt wood will dry in the winter but it doesn't compare to how much it dries in the summer.
There's no doubt about that, seems everything takes a half arsed swing and even then you almost need to cut back on the power!
I read last year that drying in January is equivalent to 4 days of July drying and December + February are equivalent to 8 July days each for each local climate. An entire winters drying is less than one summer month. Water requires energy to evaporate and water movement in the wood fibers to the outside slows or stops with lower temperatures. Ice crystals in the middle or under the bark may not move all winter and will just re-absorb when they melt. One winter, I put 1/2 cord of wet red oak in the basement near the furnace to dry and in one month it was below 20% but... the humidity in the house jumped very high. The numbers: 2500 pounds of wood at 30% moisture drying to 20% gives off 250 pounds of water or 30 gallons, ouch. Not to be repeated...
