A neighbor seen me moving wood from my shed to my covered front porch . He tells me that my wood will be to dry and I will have a hard time controlling the fire. I have done my firewood for 17 years like this and I've never had a problem controlling the fire. Have I been lucky all these years?
Wood can't be too dry, but you can have more fire in the box than your stove can safely burn. This could result in too much heat or excess smoke, or both. If your wood is super dry it will burn faster, so you may not be able to pack as much in the stove as you could on some slower burning wood.
Under normal Ohio conditions, I think it would take a LONG time and the perfect setup to get your wood too dry. Even then you’d have to do something aggressive like a solar kiln, or store it inside. A couple months ago my neighbor confidently told me the maple I was unloading had as many BTUs as any other wood. A little odd, because he correctly identified my last load as black locust. Cutting him some slack, I said that the maple I had was Big Leaf Maple. I thought it had fewer BTUs than other maples, and that maple is great but there are other types that have higher BTUs. He looked at me like I was an idiot.
You cannot get your wood to dry. Out here in Wyoming the wood can get very dry because of the wind and low humidity. I never have issues. There is a reason why stoves come with controls. I do not wait for the stove to be going full blast with a full load of dry wood to dampen it down. So, knowing how to use your stove makes a difference.
Basically no. Last time this question came up someone did provide an article claiming you can. Don’t recall much of it. I think you’d have to stack your wood in an Arizona attic for 100 years to achieve that type of dryness Rule #1 of firewood : Water does not burn. An interesting Google search for people who never paid attention in school like me (Why does water not burn? ).
If you have a leaky stove with gaps you can fit your fingers through maybe? Any modern stove or an older stove that's actually sealed should not have issues.
Some hard maple has lots but not all wood is equal?? But wood too dry, it hits an equilibrium. Wood in the barn will only get so dry, wood on your kitchen counter will only get so dry, now they will be different moisture contents but it won't get too dry no matter where it's stored.
NOPE! You are doing it the right way! Too many folks burning (or trying to burn) underseasoned wood out there.
The guy i bought my insert from years back taught me the dollar bill test. Close and latch the door with a dollar in the seal. Pulls out too easy, replace the gasket. Only problem is i tried it with a $20 bill while the fire was burning!
Modern stoves are designed to burn wood that is in the 15-20% MC range...much less than that and the fire can be hard to control due to how much air is being allowed into the stove (as a minimum, by design) but you are not going to get air dried wood much below 15% in Ohio (or most places in the US) so no worries. But burning wood that is much over 20% MC is just foolish. 20% is actually a lot of water...if you have a big stove and can load 50 lbs of wood, and its 20% MC, 10 lbs of that 50 is water...or over a gallon...almost 1.25 gallons! Think about that for a minute!
Yea I see at the lowest 13% I think but usually in that 15-20%MC on my wood that I burn. Most is dried at least two years.
I got some wood once from a SIL that had been stored inside a barn for 8-10 years and it was also white ash! Not a problem. The last time some so-called intelligent man tried to warn me about getting wood dry and once lit, poof, it was gone. The oak we were cutting at the time should be good to burn right away and that would hold a fire all night where if we dried it the 3 years I spoke about, it could not hold a fire and we risked burning house down because of burning dry wood. He looked a bit baffled when I simply said we would do just fine because our stove had controls on it so thar we could control the fire depending on what wood we were burning at the time.
I'm here in the south, where efor some reason everyone that burns wood has similar thoughts to your past guy who you cut wood with Backwoods Savage . They tell me it won't last all night, it will burn too hot or too fast, or I can't burn pine cause my house will burn down or creosote up from the pine. I said I'm not burning this stuff green! I say the pine sits at least a year and the oak 2-3 years. They try to convince me they are right, these are the same people with creosotecicles hanging from chimney caps or huge black soot marks streaking down their brick chimneys.
