I don't feel this is a myth. If I bring wood in when it's cold out it doesn't light off as quick as wood that's been in for a few weeks. My stove is in the cellar in a small well insulated room and can get up to 90 degrees. I can hear the wood clicking and cracking for a few days after bringing it in. This noise can be heard on the first floor also. No scientific study, just my experience
I agree with the math/physics of cold wood vs room temp wood, but I don't see the difference in real life experience. There are BTU's involved in bringing the wood up to combustion temp,but I can't tell the difference.
up here there is a (I think myth) that black walnut has an oil in it that leads to creosote.. a furniture store I get cutoff from only uses cherry black walnut and maple.. the cut bad parts out of boards.. looks like dimensional cut offs.. I have seen people throw back walnut... I burn it.
I do believe that you are seeing wood that burns better after being inside. But its probably has much less the temp/latent heat and more the dryness. In a 90 degree room your wood is getting some in some significant additional drying during those few weeks.
I agree it's not as noticeable if you drop a split or two on a nice coal bed, but you'd surely notice it on a cold start, or when the coal bed is marginal.
I love then myths about chimney cleaning. I've heard the all of the following remove all your creosote if you put them in your stove or sit them in the chimney: Ammonia A handful of Salt (!) Chicken bones (!!) I really wanted to see Mythbusters take this on.
Well, we've seen the explanations of why it works. However, I have to admit that I personally have never noticed the difference. Of course it seems to make sense that heating up a 60 degree piece of wood should be quicker than heating a 10 degree piece of wood. However, in real life, you probably won't notice the difference, or at least I have yet to see the difference. This morning it wasn't that cold, around 10 degrees and we had a little coal bed. I just walked out onto our porch (not enclosed) and got some wood to feed the stove. In 5 minutes I engaged the catalyst because all the wood was already charred, the stove top temperature had not gone down from that cold wood but instead had already raised a few degrees and the flue temperature had raised at least 250 degrees. So no, I don't think there would be enough difference that one would notice. However, if one had one of those really small stoves then perhaps you would notice. We must also beg to ask, if it did take the fire or the stove top temperature to start rising up, say, by 2 or 3 minutes; would that really be an awful thing? But like heating water, I don't think you'd notice a big difference. When heating water, it seems to take about as long to heat warm water to a boil as it does to heat cold water to that same boiling temperature and with the stove, we aren't talking about a temperature anywhere near the boiling point.
Here we seem to have either dew or frost most nights whether there is rain or snow or nothing. I think ridding the wood of that surface moisture is why wood thats been inside for a day or three is much quicker to light and less likely to smolder, in my experience anyway.
I'd like to call it the great wall of Scotty! I think he's building it to keep out the neighborhood and peeping Toms. It will eventually encompass his house in a great wall of wood!
*NOTED* and Agree! The Great and powerful OZ has spoken! I don't get what some of you folks get as far as weather, but are mostly wet and rainy. I've hauled it in, dryed it, thrown it in the stove dripping wet, it still burns "as long as it's seasoned"! Wood wicks out not in, once the layer of moisture steams off it'll start burning. Almost 40 years for this Fisher, She'll eat anything!
When I start a fire in the shop and its cold out there (32 degrees or so) the fire starts a little slower and the wood is inside the shop and has been since fall. On a hot bed of cools probably not going to notice it.
Dam there's some technical stuf in there . Start it slow , burn it hot then wind it down . I were loading up on a night and almost shutting both dampers . Gets up to black glass and smouldering wood . That idea went out of the window pretty quick
That is true....if there is no cover. That is also why we have a cover over our wood that is on the porch.
