I'm new to cutting my own firewood.
I recently bought a house and quickly discovered two things: one, my house isn't very well insulated; two, where I live now (basically in the woods), gets a lot colder than where I used to live (down around 25 degrees at night). The first year, we ran the heater a lot, but the bills were murder and it's difficult to keep the house much above 60 at night (which is pointless anyway, since we only need to heat the bedrooms).
During a storm a few years ago, a huge pine tree (maybe 100' tall or so) fell down next to my neighbor's house. On the way down, it also split a 25' or so oak in half. This was obviously a sign that I should visit my local Stihl dealer
So after a while, I decided my plan was going to be to cut up those trees, get them home and split them. Then use the firewood to heat the house (up until that point we had been buying Enviro logs at Home Depot - 10 cases at a time - to heat the bedroom).
Okay, so to make a long story short. I bought a little Ryobi electric 4-ton log splitter first. I was going to weld up my own, but the Ryobi was on sale at Home Depot so I thought I would give it a shot. I found some fallen branches around the area I live in order to test it and was surprised how well it worked. I also used my little electric Sears chainsaw to cut down a small oak (where I'm going to expand my driveway) and the Ryobi made short work of it. For the money and the space it takes up, the Ryobi is darn nice and handles just about anything you throw at it.
Anyway, so soon after, I bought a Stihl 441 magnum. Great chainsaw. I started with a 28 inch blade and an Oregon 72JGX chain. I've since changed to a 20 inch Oregon bar and 72LGX chain (thanks Baileys!) The saw made short work of about 1/3 of the fallen pine, as well as most of the oak.
Okay, so I was very excited about cutting up my own wood, but wasn't sure how long I would have to let it dry before I could burn it. After I got rolling, I stacked up some wood in the driveway (both pine and oak - from the trees at my neighbor's house). After about a week of drying, I became impatient and tried to burn some just to see if it might catch. I put a bunch of rolled up cardboard under it and started a huge blaze, but of course no luck. No matter how much fire I put under it, it was about like trying to start a wet sock on fire with a match.
At this point, I decided to search on-line to see how long people dry their wood for. My friends who cut their own wood suggested around 9 to 12 months minimum. After looking around on google one night, I ran across the following posting where some guy had done a drying experiment on firewood:
Oops sorry, I tried to post a URL here, but the site didn't like it. Instead, I just took a screen shot of the part I'm talking about and have attached it below as a picture.
I thought it was pretty interesting and relatively scientific. It seemed to make sense - that most of the water left during the first few months and then you'd see diminishing returns after that. I decided I would finish stacking my firewood (both the freshly cut oak as well as pine) and then take a couple of pieces every few weeks and test them to see how long it took to dry to the point where I could actually burn them. Since I had already tested the pine after only drying for a week, I had a pretty good idea what green wood acted like in the fireplace.
The wood I was dealing with was very green from what I could see. Even though the tree had fallen a year or 18 months ago, when I bucked up the top 1/3 of the tree and brought it home to split, it was still very wet. I actually took a couple of nails and drove them into one of the rounds to hold a rat trap in place and when I did that, water came up as I drove the nail in. Also, if you tried to stick an axe into the face, you'd see water form around where the axe blade dug in. I figured that was a pretty good sign there was still a lot of water in the rounds. A couple of days after bringing them home, I started splitting. Clearly, they were not dry. The wood felt heavy and when split, you could see water forming any place where the wedge made contact. I figured I was looking at probably a good 6 to 9 months of drying before I could start burning any of this wood.
Okay, so I split the first batch of oak and pine on Dec. 12th, 2008 and ended up with about 1/4 a cord of each. I stacked the pine in two rows right next to each other (so 4x8 with each log being about 12" long). I figured I would wait about 2 months and see if any would burn then. Call that pile #1. Also stacked some oak (about the same amount). Call that pile #2.
Okay, so in the meantime (while that wood was drying), PG&E decided they would show up and clear away all the trees and limbs which had started to over grow their wires around here. In one area down the road from my place, they dropped two pine trees (maybe about 18" in diameter at the base). Whatever they cut down, it had been growing in the ground the day before, so we are talking green here. My neighbor and I decided we'd run down there and grab the wood before someone else did. So on January 16th, 2009, I fired up the Stihl 441 and we made short work of everything PG&E left behind. Brought it home and split it right up - all pine. Call that pile #3 (although in the photo I'm attaching, it's actually the two piles of wood on either side of the log splitter there; pile #1 is in the back ground; #2 is on the right).
Okay, after splitting everything up, I ended up with two big piles on either side of the log splitter. I ended up having to re-stack pile #1 to make room). When I started re-stacking #1, I noticed the wood felt really light. This was on I think January 21st or so, which was when I finally got around to splitting the last of the wood that PG&E cut down. Anyway, so the wood which had been drying felt really light (the pine in pile #1). Also, the color was quite different from the stuff I just split up (see the picture). I should also point out that pile #1 (the first pine) had been rained on twice pretty hard. I didn't cover it because I wasn't expecting more rain. When that happened, the wood had been sitting out for about 2 or 3 weeks. I figured that might extend how long it took for the wood to dry, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I also wasn't much in the mood to buy tarps and start covering the wood piles with ugly blue or brown plastic. I should also note that when I re-stacked pile #1 (the pine), I noticed there was some white mold growing where the two rows touched. I took some Chlorine spray and sprayed on the areas where that had started.
Okay, so at this point, during the re-stacking of pile #1 and the starting of staking up pile #3 (shortly after taking this photo), I noticed the wood seemed awfully dry in pile #1 (this was on January 22 now). I took some from pile #1 (the pine) over to the log splitter and split it down into ~ 2x2 inch slats. It popped right away when the wedge touched it and no water came out when the wedge pressed into the face of the wood. I think I split down two of the pieces of wood out of pile #1 and threw them into a plastic bin. After finishing up for the night, I told my girlfriend I wanted to test to see if the wood burned. Mind you, it had only been just over a month - about 40 days to be exact and it had just been raining on everything.
I rolled up some cardboard and piled up the wood. Sure enough, the wood fired right up. In fact, it burned hot and was gone in about 10 or 15 minutes maybe. I was surprised how hot and fast it burned. I mean, I know pine burns fast, but I wasn't expecting it to be dry enough yet. I ran down and grabbed some more and split it down into smaller pieces. I then used that to start some of the oak from pile #2. The oak didn't seem to burn quite as well, but the pine had no problem burning.
That was a couple of days ago and since then I have burned both the pine and the oak in the fireplace all night long with no problems. I think the oak might still be a touch moist, but it definitely fires right up if the coals are hot enough in the fireplace. The pine seems pretty dry, because it burns up very quickly and very hot. There is no hissing from the wood, so that's a good sign I think also.
I'm not an expert on drying wood, nor have I down any fancy moisture readings or anything. I'm just passing along my experience. Like I say, the wood has been rained on pretty hard for several days, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on the internal moisture content of things. The outside is wet of course, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. The wood seems to be burning clean as near as I can tell; there is no huge amount of smoke or anything like that. I'm sure more drying wouldn't hurt anything, but based on the last couple of days (burning the wood nearly around the clock), it seems like it's plenty dry as far as the pine goes and I would say the oak was good too (not having much problem with it either).
What do you guys think? I'm not trying to suggest that you shouldn't season your wood for 12 months. I'm just wondering if maybe the guy who wrote that article about drying it only for a couple of months might be onto something here.
All I know for sure is the house is warm
I am going to keep an eye on things to see if there is any build up or anything. I may also toss in one or two of those logs that are supposed to clean the chimney out. Has anyone used those and do they work?
Anyway, I thought it was interesting that the wood burned so well after just over a month. I'm going to repeat the test with the wood in pile #3 (the wood PG&E just cut down). It was split on January 19th, 2009, so it still has a ways to go here.
Ray
