Machria, there are many who don't have room to store three years, are new to burning, or for some reason have been unable to stockpile. For all of those, finding a quick, easy and inexpensive way to kiln dry wood in one season or less is a wonderful boon.
New burner, or no wood available is understandable, kinda. But not the space issue! I am on 1/10th of an acre, I bet there is nobody on here with a smaller piece of property than I have. I have about 15' of property around the perimeter of my house. In that space I have 10.5 cords stored right now. I'm not against the idea, go for it. But I was just pointing out it sure seems like a lot of work when much of that work/effort should really be put towards getting ahead if possible instead.
Not everyone with even twice that amount of land around their home is allowed or able to store ten cords, for various reasons. Great that you are able to.
I have plenty of space to store wood on my 40 acres. What I don't have is lots of time. I am considering starting to burn this fall and want something I can use in my new EPA stove. I am not even done installing that stove yet because it goes into my new home and the hearth is not yet finished. I am making progress on the ember protection hearth so I am now starting to look at options to get some burnable wood for 2015/16. I do have maybe a half cord of ash from a yard tree that I had removed a couple of years back but that won't last long. After that it is stuff I am going to remove to clean up my back yard which includes some apple, some wild black cherry and a couple of young mulberries. Most of that will be cut in the next couple of weeks and will mostly be green. I will definitely be experimenting with speeding up drying because I have few other choices if I want to use wood. Around here buying wood is not a viable option. It would cost me less to use my geothermal than it would to buy cord wood locally, even unseasoned cord wood.
Oldman, Surely on 40 acres there's some dead/down wood you can cut, split, and stack and have ready for fall. That's almost all I cut on my pop's 28 and I don't think I'll ever run out. Top covering WILL help a lot. Solar kilning is great if all you can get is live wood, but ash, most pines, fairly small split silver maple, and almost any deadwood will be ready by fall.
Oldman47, that cherry will definitely be ready after a summer of simply top covering it after its split and stacked.
I live down in the wetlands and most of the sunniest, that's sunniest (less than 6 hrs sun/day) are used for gardening. I have heavy mil clear pond liner that I cut into 4' strips and cover both sides and over the top of a vertical cord. Shrink wrap to hold in in place. This I have done for 3 years now, but not to all my wood. It works with just the bottom all open and a shallow cone on top made from any very heavy wire, sheet metal, or even bamboo. The moisture builds for a month and then sweats right out the bottom. This works on two areas on the blacktop, near the garage, and is the only area that gets 8 hrs of sun on the longest days. Now, as far as gardening green houses, you have my attention. The idea of using and old A-frame swingset is brilliant. It is becoming critical to extend the growing season in all areas. With the coming food shortages, cyber attack, EMP, or flat out collapse of the world; some green beans in February could feed some people. like my family. I have all raised beds and one that's 10'x20' and it gets covered with the same clear poly in November after sowing spinach, lettuce, garlic, peas, and more spinach. The past few years have seen excellent germination & overwintering the vegetables. Last year the peas were crawling all over the bed in March. This year I planted lots of northern white garlic bulbs and the are uncovered and shooting up nice now. It dries and stores good through fall and a head of garlic is all I would need to get through another day in the zombie apocalypse...
I will add that top covering is not needed on single rows and single rows will allow more air circulation around the wood, plus (if you can) a nice sunny windy spot will be good. At least the top covering has never been needed here, besides if I just top covered the sides would get wet as very very few of our rains come straight down. Multiple rows I would never not top cover but I dont stack anything but single rows. YRMV but singles rows make the most sense and what is recommended for the best drying.
UPDATE.....the water is literally dripping out the bottom of this thing....seems to be working quite well so far...its only 60 here
Ok... Got my two done. One is the standard and the other is the kiln. I took two different sample weights from each pallet, marked them to know what we ended up with at the end percentage wise anyways... I had to keep them low profile to be able to move them to there location with the tractor. But roughly same amount on each one. Came from same tree at the same time...variables should be kept to a minumal this way. I'll post pictures as individuals post to keep them separated.
