Learned birch, moisture content , in the Fall is roughly 80%. Not gonna burn good until next fall. 2 months split & stacked is gonna be quite a bit drier than anything fresh cut & pine dries faster than most. If it needs burned , just watch the chimney, If it's all you have, "You burn what you got " Been there, learned to brush the chimney every 6 weeks
Back to the O.P. I guess it somewhat depends on the stove is my position. At 2 cubic feet, I have to fill with great wood. An old 4 cubic foot smoke dragon generates enough heat that it can get by with less than ideal. A cat stove is a different matter, and I'm only repeating what I've been told...no experience.
Yep the yr later "how is it holding up update" would be helpfull. Our home is 1890 original windows that my wife covers with heat shrink clear plastic. The house is 3000sf with infloor heat and other radiators (150' of 3/8" copper tube under the bath tub). Yes we use 20+ cord (128cu' ea) per year. Thats because its also used for our businesses . Heating wood shop, lumber dry kiln, dog grooming bath water . I advanced up to hyd splitter yrs ago but that still is not efficient enough.
That much wood in a mild climate??? I thought TN was relatively warm in the winter. Sounds like a cool property though with all those things going on. I'd like to see pics of the kiln.
Maybe the secondary burn tubes don't work or something like that. The exhaust reburn should clean up some of that gunk.
We do have mild winters. We heat allot of business space (about 3500sf) + 2500bf kiln + mini kiln for thick material + house so it adds up. And the big problem was , I just cant work fast enough to bank up FW so I'm taking an efficiency loss. If I can get ahead on FW , I should be able to use less. Kiln. I made my own kiln. Its a room in the shop so if it is empty I can use it as a shop heater. I vent the wet heat out in the summer. The radiator is 3/4" black steel pipe, and for the controller I use a programmable controller that is from the poultry industry because they have to manage temp and humidity. The controller has input for wet bulb and dry bulb, and output to operate a water solenoid that can add moisture to the kiln when needed.
Sounds like you know what your doing, look forward to learning more from you here. I love it that we have a diverse crowd on here.
