Ok, so I dont have a moisture meter. I'm sure that I can just do a Google search and find one. But, I really want to know which one out there is a good reliable meter. Something I can use for at least a few years. Now that I finally have wood piled up all over the place. this stack is all pines/spruce but mostly the ponderosa I cut down my mostly cottonwood holz hausen this stack in my garage is 3 rows deep. This is my stack over at my parents house, they just moved from CA to Texas, they are snow birds. But this here is my stack here in South Dakota. I'm starting to get confused as to which stacks are dryer than others. What do you guys, and gals, use??
I use one of those inexpensive volt ohm meters from Harbor Freight. Sharpen or file the leads real sharp, stick in the ends of the wood and measure the resistance (ohms). Set on the highest setting the wood should be at least 2M to 3M ohms but I usually shoot for 4M that way it will always be less than 20% moisture.
How in the world did you ever figure that out? I've been using multimeters for almost 25 years and have never heard of using it like that. But hey if it works. Just because I like talking about them, I just bought a new meter made by "Fieldpiece" the SC 640. I had my trusty SC76 for well over 10 years but it began to read capacitance (microfarads) wrong. Fieldpiece told me they could repair it but it was still way out of spec and no longer supported.
I have a General from Lowe’s- $25 or so. Works great. Remember to resplit and check on fresh wood- ends dry out faster than internally. Any of the $10-15 Chinese MM’s on Amazon will work fine. Horkn loves the one he has that BT’s to his phone.
I have a couple, but the Ryobi phoneworx one I have is pretty slick. It uses the camera and the screen and memory of a smartphone ( as long as it has a 3.5 mm headphone jack). It's not BT, but that would be extra slick, and probably make it a little more$ than the corded one now. You can store pics and it will take outside weather conditions and sure them on the files too. To be honest, the pinless Dr Meter MM my wife got me works at least as accurately as the Ryobi, and it's even more convenient, as it doesn't require a phone. As far as pin vs pinless, the pinless ones are typically more accurate, but the one I have is as accurate as ones that cost around $500. So you'd have to compare apples to apples. It doesn't and can't record all the data, but I don't need it to do that either.
I just use the inexpensive one from a local Harbor Freight... like this... It's good enough for me. Most of my wood is so old that I don't have to worry if it's dry enough.
General from Lowes. I find if you split a split open fresh you don't have to jam the points way in (deep) like some claim.
