Thanks Chvymn! Glad I joined up. I just started burning again after a 2 decade brake in the action. There's a lot of good info on FHC... and good people too! Wow have stoves come a long way!!
For pictures I use photobucket. It is free, easy to use and you can link pictures from it to any forum I have ever used. When you upload a picture there it gives you 4 possible codes but just copy the IMG one and paste it in as text in most forums and the picture looks like it is right there in the forum. Since I use more than one forum for each subject it saves me a lot of duplicate uploads. I usually use this one as a sample when I am explaining. It is a harbor seal pup I saw on the beach in Oregon. I see it works on this forum too.
Welcome Flatlander Pete Looking forward to pics of your setup & stacks. Wish that I had Paul Bunion's technology! I do everything manually. I start by recording the % moisture of the fresh splits that go into my pallets along with the month & year. Then I simply record on paper the ambient conditions when I check internal stack temps. I am not to " religious " about getting regular temps. Need to improve. I have noticed that excessive condensation inside my 5 " vented" pallets has disappeared in less than a week. Other 5 pallets still show the terrarium effect ( or is it affect?) but they seem to be getting better. Planning on pulling some pieces out of various pallets late summer & resplitting to check moisture content. No pics but 91 here today & internal temps 125 -147 F. Need to confirm tomorrow.
Good stuff Deacon "Effect" is the result. "Affect" is the action... Example- the effect of open bottom solar kiln wrapping seems to affect them in such a way as to make them like "terrariums." Eff- noun Aff- verb But that's neither here nor there...
Welcome Flatlander Pete. Glad you finally joined up. You've found a great place here. Full of great people and thousands of years of wood burning experience. Some of these guys have hundreds of years of experience by themselves ...well...you know. One was even there when fire was invented
I appreciate all the help everyone! My kilns are are definitely unscientific. Some heavy plastic sheating on the bottom with 4 small holes in it, then wrapped in shrink wrap. As you can see in the pic with both kilns. The closest corner, the northeast corner, has plenty of growth. Hopefully it will get better as temperatures rise. We have also been getting a ridiculous amount of rain for the last 3 weeks. It's supposed to be 87 today. I'll try to get some temperature rise readings to compare notes!
Welcome Flatlander Pete. I have now want or need for a kiln, but super exited for you folks that do! Great idea.
Few observations from today but first a pic of my general layout. Looking straight south... Top of a bluff. Actually 12 pallets. Five unvented, five with a pair of 2x5 inch vents. One on the east side & one on the west. Two pallets with a single 3x5 vent on the east side. These I just vented to alleviate the terrarium effect.( thanks Eric VW) 94 & quite breezy here, 5 PM . Highest temps in non vented. Single vents Double vents. 108-116 degrees. Looks like I am losing some precious heat with my double vents. I may close up the western facing vents. Additionally I think that the strong breeze lowered temps across the board.
That strong breeze probably carried quite a bit of moisture away with it. I'd say this is still a very young science, with lots of variables. I'm so jealous. So many of you are WAY ahead of me!
It's pretty much the same way to post directly from your phone. I pretty much only surf fhc on my phone.
Thanks for the link Huntindog1! That was useful information. No pictures to verify my temps., but on a 83* day my internal temperatures were 121* and 118* . Of course, the kiln to the north was a touch cooler just from having a partial block of the sun. Still pretty even though. I ran the probe of the thermometer as close to center as I could get. I wasn't quite center but all in all I'm happy with the results so far. The kilns seem to be keeping pace with the results that others are seeing. Deacon, those kilns look great! I went to the shed and found a couple sheets of old hog panel to copy the setup! I assume no copyright issues!
I think I see how this works. If the sun is on the east side of the stack, then the west side plastic is cooler, so the moisture condensates on that side, then as the day goes on, the west side becomes the hot side and the water condensates on the east side and runs down the sides to the outside. Is this right?
It's really just a green house. It gets to about 120 degrees and the heat drives the moisture out of the wood faster than just sitting in the sun and having the wind blow the moisture away. There are holes in the bottom to let the condensation drip out over time. Venting is not necessary. The wood will drive out the moisture during the day faster than it can reabsorb the moisture at night. The added heat is the key. Clear plastic lets the sun warm all the contents in the kiln. Even at night the kiln will be holding the heat in, letting the wood continue to release it's moisture
Pete Good info. Looks like we both are getting around a 30 degree temp gain. Looking forward to seeing your hog panel redneck solar kilns. I stole/ modified the idea from a buddy. They also work great for hauling/moving wood around. Stretch wrap also keeps the stacks tidy. Hate to have stacks tip over. I will probably close some of my vents to maximize heat now that the condensation is more manageable. Early on I could almost see steam coming out the vents!
Well... I think Eric VW agrees. I do as well!! Deacon - I'm really looking forward to one of the 100*+ days! (I can't believe I said that.) I'm curious to see the kiln reacts to that kind of heat on a bright sunny day anyway.
