I'm a firm believer in that even if it is dry. I'd like to get my hands on a few more of these carts.
Thanks Dennis and believe me I'm headed back to the good place in short order here. After you experience it for a while, it is hard to consider burning any other way.
Can’t go wrong there. It’s situational on your end and likely to just be good enough for the winter. I’m not going to assume you don’t have a brush, haven’t been burning for that long.
For the chimney? Yes, but I currently have a horrible setup for sweeping and it only happens once a year now as it has to be done from the bottom of a 20' stack. In my remodel though it goes through the peak and some lazy guy was smart enough to add a chase up right next to it so that he can climb up on the inside any time he wants
No worries... That thread was started about 4 years ago,.. Just goes to show that the same challenges come up over and over again... and our methods of addressing those challenges get recycles too...
I'll bet those 4 smaller ash on the left side of that photo might surprise you . This pic is 3 year old maple CSS in September. Been in a tote near the stove for week or 2 .
You’re right about that! It’s not reinventing the wheel, just showing that duct tape will work on a few applications and on the rare occasions it will work beautifully.
Nothing like the living room kiln to finish the job. Seems like the plan here is to take as much of the ends that seem like they have dried, CSS them in the sunniest/windiest spot I have under a roof for a few months, find a way to let them hang out inside and then burn on top of my dry stuff. If it doesnt burn right, put em back outside on the stacks until they are ready and suck it up using the baseboards as sparingly as possible as a form of penance.
I was just commenting tonsomeine about pine they had on their stacks for 3 years and still posting 20+ percenT. I figured if he really wanted to use it, ring it in and let it finish stoveside for a few days.. might do something but seems aggravating enough to not have it dry even to that point. Being pine and all....
If i were burning the wetter stuff, I'd put it on the bottom of the load rather than on top of a bed of coals. It should burn cleaner that way. Might even consider cutting some really short cookies and storing them inside near the stove. Most drying is through the ends and a 3 inch cookie would dry fairly fast and is less work than splitting a whole bunch of really small splits. Put one in the bottom of each load and it will help stretch your supply of good stuff.
The living room kiln if a good method for those that have the room. I had a few monster splits of red oak I put on the bottom of my indoor wood rack. I let them sit for two weeks before burning. I don't have moisture meter, but I might buy one just to see how many percentage points I can drop in a 80F+ environment with the ambient humidity typically under 20%. As info, this wood was seasoned but going from 20% to 15% is a good amount of water in a 25lb split.
Finally picked up a moisture meter and lopped one of those ash up. Measuring fresh splits from each round through the 9' log, if there was drying out the ends it wasnt obvious. All of them read between 22 and 26% depending on where in the split you measured and the end rounds were no different. For reference, the elm that is burning oh so sweet in the stove right now measured 13%. I'm going to leave my test splits near the stove and see what they do over the next week or so but this all looks like next year wood for my stove.
I was kind of surprised how much my test splits dried even in just a day by the stove. So the Fiskars and I had our way with some more of the smaller Ash logs this morning....thinking I might use that handy dandy cart of mine to turn my blaze king into a blaze kiln while i am running harder during the cold weather. The vast majority of the heat from my stove comes off the front so a few spins of the cart over a few days may have a dramatic effect and that cart holds a quarter of a face cord. a firewood hoarders tanning booth if you will.
Sorry to go against the grain guys, but my old saying is: It's not firewood till it's split. Meaning nothing beats time, thickness of the split along with exposure to sun and wind. From everything I have read, wood will only dry 1" per year from the ends. It kills me when I see small arm wood in the 6-8" range unsplit supposedly drying in the stack. If it's not split, it's not drying.
no grain crossed bandit...just trying to speed time up a little to minimize the inevitable use of the baseboards unless I happen upon some actually dry wood.
dropped three of my test splits that have been sitting next to the stove for three days into tonights load...seem to be doing just fine. Not advocating in any way that folks should be tossing green wood into their stoves but it does appear that time can be sped up with care and in the right proportion to actually dry wood..
