Interesting; weighed some locust 1/6 and 1/28

[OnTheRoad]

I cut up an uprooted Honey locust on 1/4/14 that was missing the bark and was down to it's stems. The property owner said it had been down 5 years which seems reasonable. On 1/5, the wood was sopping wet when I split it. The next day I weighed one piece: 6.2lbs. Every so often I weighed it, and tonight did so again; it's now 4.6lbs, a loss of 26%. Somebody on this board posted that fresh Locust is 50% water so this one has lost half of it's water in 22 days.

It's been in my basement with no airflow, with the hvac vents closed, and probably around 60 degrees. Occasionally my insert has been lit which gets the temp up to maybe 80 degrees but that's been infrequent.

How long would it take to lose the last half of the moisture? It seems to be drying very fast indoors.

Thoughts?

 

[Marshy]

Anyones guess at this point, too many variables, only guessing at this point. Whats the humidity of your basement? It wont get any drier than the ambient condition.

 

[sunfish]

The air is extremely dry right now, the wood has been dead 5 years. Both these conditions lead to fast drying.

 

[blades]

Till ya split it and check the inside faces ya don't know where its at.

 

[sunfish]

As low as the Humidity is outside this time of year, it's even lower inside. Just another 'quick dry condition'...

 

[esshup]

Weatherman said yesterday that if the outside air is brought inside, and no humidity was added, you'd have 3% humidity in the house.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Does stacked split wood dry, or continue to season, in the winter? Air is dry, wood is wet, but what about temperatures below freezing?

 

[jrider]

Don't know the exact condition of the wood in question but here is what I've found - moisture from growth aka green wood and moisture from wood sitting on the ground are 2 different beasts. Green wood takes a long time to lose its water. Water that has been seasoned and is now holding water again due excess rain/being in contact with the ground loses its moisture much faster.

 

[philoshop]

I have a bunch of cherry, walnut and Norway maple that was c/s/s this past summer and wasn't ready to burn in the fall (judging by my MM).
I'm burning some of the splits of all three as I write this. The stacks are open to sun and wind with no cover, and have a little snow on the top. They've also been rained on a few times in the last three months.
I bring them inside near the stove for a couple of days before they go into the stove, but they're dry enough to burn right off the stacks. Adding to the humidity inside my house is a good side-benefit.
So yes, I personally believe wood will dry outside during the winter months. Of course with 6 to 8 months of winter, I have to believe.

 

[Whitespider]

…I weighed one piece: 6.2lbs. …it's now 4.6lbs, a loss of 26%. …fresh Locust is 50% water so this one has lost half of it's water in 22 days.
Thoughts?

Thoughts?? Yeah, near all of the above is not correct.

The moisture content of wood is expressed as a ratio… water weight to dry wood weight. In other words, a 6 lb piece of wood at 50% moisture content contains 2 lbs water… the wood, at 0% moisture content, would weigh 4 lbs. At 50% moisture content the contained water weighs 50% of what the wood weighs when oven dried.

Now here’s the rub… Honeylocust has only a moderate resistance to moisture. If that wood was lying on the ground for five years, even if only part of it was touching ground, you have no idea how much water it has sucked-up. It could easily have been at 200-250% moisture content, or even much higher when you cut it.

A moisture meter would give you a rough estimate of the current moisture content… but only by weighing a piece, oven drying, and then weighing again could you accurately determine current moisture content. Wood will rapidly lose excess moisture (the “sucked-up” water)… but water left from the “green” state (if there is any left, and there most likely is... likely a lot) will take a much longer time to remove. The “sucked-up” water is held between the fibers… the “green” moisture is held within the fibers, between and within the cells.
*

 

[Guswhit]

Wet clothes on a clothes line in the winter dry?

 

[philoshop]

My post was in response to SandhillCranes' question about c/s/s wood drying in the winter months. In my experience it absolutely does continue to dry.
I regularly take little splits from the inside of bigger splits, weigh 'em and dry 'em, over and over near the stove until they reach EMC (equilibrium moisture content) to verify that what I think might be dry actually is. (Yeah, my business is pretty slow in the winter.)
FWIW the cheap MM I have is actually darned close on the different wood species that I burn. 10-12% +/-. Close enough for firewood.

To the OP: The fresh-cut standing honey locust I've dealt with has never been what I would consider 'wet'. If yours is 'sopping' wet after five years of being uprooted you should probably get it outta the house. Chances are it'll make more mushrooms and other fungi, not to mention carpenter ants, before it'll ever make much heat. You can split out one small piece and dry it near the stove to see what you end up with, but I sure wouldn't want a closed-up basement full of it. Not tryin' to freak ya' out, just my experience with it.

 

[sunfish]

Wood stacked outside does dry in the winter months. No question...

 

[OnTheRoad]

Thoughts?? Yeah, near all of the above is not correct.

The moisture content of wood is expressed as a ratio… water weight to dry wood weight. In other words, a 6 lb piece of wood at 50% moisture content contains 2 lbs water… the wood, at 0% moisture content, would weigh 4 lbs. At 50% moisture content the contained water weighs 50% of what the wood weighs when oven dried.

Now here’s the rub… Honeylocust has only a moderate resistance to moisture. If that wood was lying on the ground for five years, even if only part of it was touching ground, you have no idea how much water it has sucked-up. It could easily have been at 200-250% moisture content, or even much higher when you cut it.

A moisture meter would give you a rough estimate of the current moisture content… but only by weighing a piece, oven drying, and then weighing again could you accurately determine current moisture content. Wood will rapidly lose excess moisture (the “sucked-up” water)… but water left from the “green” state (if there is any left, and there most likely is... likely a lot) will take a much longer time to remove. The “sucked-up” water is held between the fibers… the “green” moisture is held within the fibers, between and within the cells.
*

Yeah, 200-250% moisture content? I wasn't a math major, but that's hilarious.

 

[OnTheRoad]

My post was in response to SandhillCranes' question about c/s/s wood drying in the winter months. In my experience it absolutely does continue to dry.
I regularly take little splits from the inside of bigger splits, weigh 'em and dry 'em, over and over near the stove until they reach EMC (equilibrium moisture content) to verify that what I think might be dry actually is. (Yeah, my business is pretty slow in the winter.)
FWIW the cheap MM I have is actually darned close on the different wood species that I burn. 10-12% +/-. Close enough for firewood.

To the OP: The fresh-cut standing honey locust I've dealt with has never been what I would consider 'wet'. If yours is 'sopping' wet after five years of being uprooted you should probably get it outta the house. Chances are it'll make more mushrooms and other fungi, not to mention carpenter ants, before it'll ever make much heat. You can split out one small piece and dry it near the stove to see what you end up with, but I sure wouldn't want a closed-up basement full of it. Not tryin' to freak ya' out, just my experience with it.

Thanks for the information, and for your concern. When I said it was soaking wet, I meant that when as I split it, the wedge squeezed out a little bit of water on the surface of the round before it split, which is normal. I just found it interesting how quickly this stuff is drying in the basement at 55 degrees, without a fan.

 

[Whitespider]

Yeah, 200-250% moisture content? I wasn't a math major, but that's hilarious.

It wasn't intended as a joke... far from it...

Cottonwood has a "green" moisture content of close to 150%... there are a few other that approach 200%.
Perhaps you should go back and read my post again so you understand how moisture content of wood is expressed... the joke is actually on you if you don't.
Any wood laying on the ground can soak up enough water to easily reach 200-250% moisture content... even much, much higher.

Think of the wood as a sponge...
If the sponge weighs 1 ounce dry, but weighs 6 ounces when saturated... the moisture content of the saturated sponge is 500% (5 ounces of water to 1 ounce of sponge).

So going back to your original post and assuming the 6.2 pound piece of wood was actually at 50% moisture content, and now it weighs 4.6 pounds... it hasn't lost half its moisture, it's actually lost 76% of its moisture. (But again, that's assuming it started at 50% moisture content... but I'm bettin' it was many times higher than that... many times higher.)
*

 

[CTYank]

As to drying wood, eschewing diatribes, you need to lose free (inter-cellular) and bound (intra-cellular) water. IOW, between the wood cells and within them. The first is much easier/quicker than the second, and mostly done when the stick gets down to about 25% MC, dry-basis. (Don't assume that the rate of drying is anything like constant.)
If you want to see the MC drop another 10% (well worth it, IMO) it'll take time, and maybe a summer in the sun. Some woods, such as some conifers, and red oaks, take much longer than others. Oak's worth it.

 

[haveawoody]

Trouble with locust is even stored as splits in a stack it's a bit of an art to tell when it's really dry.
I agree the only way to tell is a moisture test on a fresh split and see what that says.
Another solution if you think it's dry is to try a small split in the fire and watch it burn, no escape of moisture and it's probably semi dry.
Sort of dry locust burns with quite a bit of resistance so that the piece more chars than burns then it's sort of dry.
If you get mainly char wood then your locust needs a much longer stacking outdoors and as standing dead about the same time next year and it will be wonderful firewood..

Lots of issues to think about even in barkless long dead locust like did you find it in a pile, lying on the ground, standing as a tree, location of wood on that tree, was it wet when you cut it into rounds etc etc.

Wood stacked outdoors in winter dries just much slower than the same wood does in summer, all about energy input and ease of moisture loss in any season.
A block of ice takes a long time to loose moisture in winter but just damp wood can dry semi decent in winter so some of winter drying comes down to when it's split and what it was like when stacked.

 

[OnTheRoad]

As to drying wood, eschewing diatribes, you need to lose free (inter-cellular) and bound (intra-cellular) water. IOW, between the wood cells and within them. The first is much easier/quicker than the second, and mostly done when the stick gets down to about 25% MC, dry-basis. (Don't assume that the rate of drying is anything like constant.)
If you want to see the MC drop another 10% (well worth it, IMO) it'll take time, and maybe a summer in the sun. Some woods, such as some conifers, and red oaks, take much longer than others. Oak's worth it.

Thank you for the information, my friend.

This was the first time I had recorded the weight of a drying piece of wood, and I was amazed at how fast it lost the first 26% of it's weight. This is wood for next year, so I'll continue to weigh it and monitor it's progress on the scale. I anticipate that the rate of loss will decay drastically with time. I have some fresh cut white oak that was put down yesterday. I'm going to take a couple of splits this weekend, store one outside uncovered, one inside the basement, and one under my covered deck to compare the difference in drying time over the next year or two.

 

[OnTheRoad]

Trouble with locust is even stored as splits in a stack it's a bit of an art to tell when it's really dry.
I agree the only way to tell is a moisture test on a fresh split and see what that says.
Another solution if you think it's dry is to try a small split in the fire and watch it burn, no escape of moisture and it's probably semi dry.
Sort of dry locust burns with quite a bit of resistance so that the piece more chars than burns then it's sort of dry.
If you get mainly char wood then your locust needs a much longer stacking outdoors and as standing dead about the same time next year and it will be wonderful firewood..

Lots of issues to think about even in barkless long dead locust like did you find it in a pile, lying on the ground, standing as a tree, location of wood on that tree, was it wet when you cut it into rounds etc etc.

Wood stacked outdoors in winter dries just much slower than the same wood does in summer, all about energy input and ease of moisture loss in any season.
A block of ice takes a long time to loose moisture in winter but just damp wood can dry semi decent in winter so some of winter drying comes down to when it's split and what it was like when stacked.

Makes sense. Frozen water is likely to take more time to evaporate than boiling water.

I like numbers. I like firewood. I'm trying to put numbers to firewood that are useful to me.