What are we looking for in a well season piece of firewood? Does length of seasoning decrease significantly the amount of creosote produced? Or... Regardless of length of seasoning, if the moisture meter reads below 15% is the wood ready for the stove? I have copper beech that was cut and split in January that is showing a meter reading of 12%. Surely it would be to soon to consider this wood for the stove... or would it? Cheers, BB PS. I'm always happy for the advise you guys give me.
Yes, but if you can get it under 20% internally, then you are good to go...much under 15% starts to almost get "too dry" depending on your stove...but too dry is still preferable over too wet.
I've never burned any wood that was too dry and have burned wood that was under 10%. And yes Bob, good dry wood will mean a lot less creosote and you will get more heat from each log. The reason you will get more heat is that one of the first things that happens when you add wood to the fire is that the moisture has to get out. After all, I still have never seen water burn. Same with moisture in the wood. Funny that some folks say you can burn ash right after cutting it because it is so dry. Not so! Generally ash will be around 35% when fresh cut. Yes, you can burn it but not good. But I've seen 20 year old ash being burned in a stove and it did wonderfully. We are burning ash that is very dry as it has also been dead for many years. It still is in the stack 3-5 years and burns like a charm. I never have worried about wood being too dry. However, I would still not recommend burning a full stove of kindling...
My stove has superb air control, but saying that, in my ignorance and early on in my burning career I did over fire the stove a couple of times, but managed to bring her down fairly quickly. Alas, I'm still learning on the job, but enjoying the process. As an aside. I received my latest toy today and it works beautifully. LED light shines down by burning 4hr tealight... magic! BB
Most of us are always still learnin...if not....what's the use of us talkin to ALL these fine people?????????????
Before you guys get too wound up beating the "somebody said the phrase too dry" drum, go back and read what I wrote. I said if your stove doesn't have good air control the wood can be too dry. In other words, if you put a full load of kiln dried construction cut offs in one of those Vogelzang Boxwood (or whatever that cheap lil stove is called) you are probably gonna have soiled shorts soon!
According to the book by Lars matting, “drying and stacking wood Scandinavian way”, wood can be “ too dry”, but it seems to be such a rare occurrence that’s it’s best to think that getting wood as dry as possible is the goal. I think the relative humidity in the vast majority of the united states keeps firewood stacks in check. If you lived in a place like Death Valley, you may get wood that’s too dry.
This is very true. When I was a teenager, we had an old pot belly stove in our basement. I overfilled it with dry hickory...mama said she smelled pine tar...I went to check, stove was dull orange, single wall pipe was cherry red, and the floor joist were oozing sap, they were about 15 yrs old. Thought I was gonna have to change my shorts that day...
