Heat is the biggest factor in drying fire wood or any wood. That's why wood is dried in a kiln and not in a wind tunnel.
I believe its been said here before. There are three main ingredients in drying firewood. Sun, wind, and time. Only one ingredient can be left out. (and protection from rain/moisture.)
Most wood is not dried in a kiln! Most wood is dried out in the sun and wind. Air circulation never fails and is not only cheaper but less work.
Scotty Overkill I'd be interested in knowing about the shrinkage of those stacks. For example, like our stacks (3 rows together stacked at approximately 4 1/2') when we measure the height, we find that the center row shrinks at the same rate as the outer rows. This should mean the wood is drying about about the same rate otherwise that center row should be higher until all wood is dried to the same point.
this time of year I cut and split everything into piles since everything is mud and driving rips everything up. I pile onto a dry sloped area or on pallets and tarp all but the bottom two feet. Once the ground tightens up in spring I move it to the coming winters stack area. I have a few stacks up in the woods from the same logs, so this spring I can check the moisture content difference of several pieces for comparison. Guessing it will not be significantly different.
This post is getting to be about as much fun as chewing on razor blades. The way I split and stack wood for home heating is going to vary greatly from some one who lives a thousand miles away from me in a very different climate. What may work for me will most certainly not work for someone else and I wouldn't be so bold as to tell them they is doing things wrong. To me that would be like telling someone with the same stove as I have that they are not operating it right even though they have a much different set up than I have. Things just don't work that way. And to totally hijack this post, it has been my experience over a life time of cutting down trees, that the place them trees live on is a huge factor in what they have for moisture in them. I cut a lot of Elm on a piece of farm ground and some of the land is really wet and some not. The trees I dump on the wet spots are bleeding sap like nobodies business even after dormancy and the stuff offn the high ground is good to go. Now that I think about it, what was the original post about any how? Do you know??
It seems to me that stacking would work best to quickly season wood. If you're on the three year plan, does it matter? That's a long while. But, each situation is a little different and there are a lot of factors at play. For those that stack in cubes, does your wood dry within a year? I have limited space and don't think I can keep multiple years worth of wood on my property...
Even the stuff not on the ground? Would moisture just wick up through the pile? We're talking split stuff, right?
I believe heat is used to accelerate the drying process, but with the proper protection from moisture and air movement, the wood will dry. The Amish do not kiln dry anything, only stack and protect and in time it is as dry as the kiln dried stuff from Home Depot. Drying is simply wicking and evaporation, which can be accelerated by adding dry heat right...
A lot of my pallets have large spaces between the slats, so I often sacrifice splits to place on the ground to fill in the voids. I've never had an issue with the wood wicking moisture up to the next split.
From my experience, putting a large heap on poor draining dirt/grass/etc will result in rot in the lower layers even in a windy location. After throwing enough gravel down in that same spot I get no rot. From my experience at my well drained, windy and sunny site, it is not possible to do the final finish drying to get the results I want out of my catalytic stove in a heap. That said, the heap is my go to for the beginning part of the drying/shrinking process (~1 year) and does not degrade the quality of the product, only the timing. There are pros and cons to most of the potential drying step options. Choose appropriately to meet your goals and let the debate rage on.
I really like to hear everyone's methods. Sure do love FHC too, people here rock with their explanations and objective reasonings
myself, I tend to cut when I can, bring logs to processing area.. block and split.. the splits are then piled until stacked. I live in a high humidity with wind all time mile or so from Lake Champlain (100 miles long). lessor hardwood will birch, popular etc will start to rot in 60 day in spring on bottom. Why I try to stack ASAP. Heck my pallets rot in 2 years. Driest time of year for me is January cause snows dry til it melts. I assume my conditions play a role in how it dries. I presume dry places out west are completely different. If our humidity levels drop below 50% it makes news here.
I try to get everything split and stacked asap. If I can't get the rounds split I just leave them on pallets on the side. They tend to wick up moisture standing up. I've been splitting in my driveway into my trailer and then driving it around to the back yard and single stacking. Now that I am ahead 1.5 years I'm probably going to start double stacks instead of single.
I used to try and split right into the stacks but it made more of a mess. Clean up is easy in the driveway. Just shovel and sweep up the splitter scraps. Plus there's a big maple next to the driveway for shade. It took a year but I finally got a system worked out. I just don't drive on the lawn when its wet. Don't want to leave ruts.
