How much does that log weigh?

[/pine]

I complained to the local Bio-Mass Boiler Co. a few years ago, about burning unseasoned bio mass wood chips, making excessive smoke and creosote in their smokestacks. So they gave a weekend job drying wood chips for $10.00 a piece with an electric hair drier, it was a good jib while it lasted when fuel oil was high, but since the bottom drop out, they went back to that, and let me go with a picture of Obama and said don't call us, we'll call you.

(Side note) According to the weigh chart one of my biggest Eastern Hemlock log that I haul out with my L3400, weighs 2793 lbs. SE 6" x LE 28" x L 30'.

Curious...do you have a problem with Woolly Adelgid up there?...it has devastated the hemlocks here...

...on a related side note...the loss of hemlocks with their heavy canopy's and the advent of several years of high white oak mast crops...(walking the hills here is like walking on marbles with all the acorns)...with all the sun reaching the ground there is an unreal amount of acorns that are sprouting and not getting eaten as wildlife fodder...

 

[gwstang]

We had a grounds maintenance guy at my last job that was bush hogging down by the lake and got into a bumble bee nest. Tore him up pretty good. Knots all over his head/face/arms. He found out real quick that a Ford Tractor could not outrun bumble bees...not by a long shot. :ashamed:

 

[sd455dan]

I am not understanding how wood can be too dry for good burning. The dryer it is the hotter the fire is (although we all know from Ray Bradbury that the actual flame temperature for all wood is Farenheit 451)

sorry but 440f to-about 470F is the auto ignition point of paper- the actual flame temp is higher

 

[/pine]

I am not understanding how wood can be too dry for good burning. The dryer it is the hotter the fire is (although we all know from Ray Bradbury that the actual flame temperature for all wood is Farenheit 451)

sorry but 440f to-about 470F is the auto ignition point of paper- the actual flame temp is higher

picky, picky, picky...

 

[Scut 4 Big Bucks]

I use a moisture meter, too, and prefer to burn wood as dry as I can...but enough about firewood...let's talk about that enormous buck!!

Yes, lets talk! This is my biggest archery buck of my life. Scored 175 6/8 inches gross. Shot it behind my house on Nov.03, 2014. That's my wife holding his enormous rack!

 

[arrow]

The advent of owb being banned was brought on by the companies who make them. I have seen in more than one advertisement of how one does not need to split anything. If it fits in the door, just throw it in. This has created the amount of pollution that has been complained about so much that they are indeed against the law in many communities. For the sake of "convenience", they have shot themselves in the foot. I have a friend who has one. He believed the hype when he first got his owb. He burned 9 cords of wood his first year to heat an 1800 sq. ft. home. I told him to order 2 years of wood in advance and to split and stack it. He then used 6 cords of wood on an even colder winter with the seasoned stuff. His smoke output was also greatly diminished.
This is not like a traffic jam but something one can have control of. Of course this only applies to someone interested in getting the most out of his fuel as possible.

 

[arrow]

Just make sure you test the wood in the center, not just ck. the outside and call it good enough...

SR

Boy is this true. I season my wood which is mostly red oak for at least two years. I took a reading on the outside of a 6" split after one year and it was 18%. I then split it and took another reading and it was at 28%. I still get a slight hiss even after two years. If wood is supposed to dry an inch a year, one can understand how it takes so long.

 

[arrow]

I was wondering how much the logs I was hauling out of the woods were weighing. I searched google, and found this nifty site for an estimate.

Click Here

I figure the biggest one I hauled out was around 800lbs, pretty good for a little Massey GC1715.

View attachment 455999

Always amazes me what these little tractors can do.

 

[/pine]

Boy is this true. I season my wood which is mostly red oak for at least two years. I took a reading on the outside of a 6" split after one year and it was 18%. I then split it and took another reading and it was at 28%. I still get a slight hiss even after two years. If wood is supposed to dry an inch a year, one can understand how it takes so long.

Seasoning wood is all about ambient humidity and air flow...closely stacked wood (especially in a three sided wood shed) is not going to get enough air flow to dry evenly...where the air does not flow...neither does the moisture dissipate.

 

[arrow]

Seasoning wood is all about ambient humidity and air flow...closely stacked wood (especially in a three sided wood shed) is not going to get enough air flow to dry evenly...where the air does not flow...neither does the moisture dissipate.

Correct. It is why I single stack my wood outside for two years before I bring it into the wood shed for an additional 2 months.

 

[/pine]

Correct. It is why I single stack my wood outside for two years before I bring it into the wood shed for an additional 2 months.

FWIW...I recently cut and split some red oak...that was a live tree before it fell on a friends house...when first split it was reading about 38%...I stacked a few pallets tic-tac-toe style for 5 weeks with nothing but a lid on it...in 5 weeks (of breezy low humidity weather)...the internal (re-split) content of 6" splits was reading about 25%...tinder and smaller fuel splits were reading 15% to 20%...

 

[nickmags]

arrow + /pine- wish I had that much room. I burn an average of five cords a heating season, or roughly a cord a month. It is not unusual to have eight or nine cords of wood cut, split, stacked, and covered with some pieces of old tin to keep the rain off yet still allow it to dry. Like the original post I cut a two year dead standing white oak (60" diameter trunk) Figured I could burn fairly soon - it being so long dead. Wrong! tried, no moisture meter( you guys must be richer than this old retired GI) - but the stuff just sat in the stove and smoldered. It felt heavy also - like green wood. Finished splitting it and added it to next years wood.

 

[LD1]

I dont have a meter, but I try to throw a seasons worth of wood in the basement prior to heating season. Mostly ash and cherry this year, which IMO dries pretty quickly. But getting it in the house, and stored in the room right next to the wood burner, with a fan blowing that hot dry air in my wood room.....it dries in no time. And what does dry, puts humidity back in the house for comfort.

Nothing I burn in the house sizzles. So its dry enough IMO.

My issue isnt creosote due to wet wood, or loosing too much heat to wet wood. When its ~30F out, I have to keep the stove damper (automatic bi-metallic) turned all the way down otherwise it gets too hot in the house. Having to keep the fire choked down dont keep the chimney nice and hot, and that causes me more creosote issues than wet wood. But nothing a brush once a month cant handle. Super dry wood might allow me to not clean the chimney as often, but would just keep my house too hot.

 

[nickmags]

I understand the Not wanting a super hot fire. Seems to me, to be asking for creosote issues: cold fires and wet/green wood are just about a sure and certain recipe for a chimney fires. Local VFD gets calls on two or three a month during heating season. It must be fairly dry if you are not seeing the ends bubble/sizzle. Just not sure I want all the crumbly bark/ insect/mess in the house.

I dont have a meter, but I try to throw a seasons worth of wood in the basement prior to heating season. Mostly ash and cherry this year, which IMO dries pretty quickly. But getting it in the house, and stored in the room right next to the wood burner, with a fan blowing that hot dry air in my wood room.....it dries in no time. And what does dry, puts humidity back in the house for comfort.

Nothing I burn in the house sizzles. So its dry enough IMO.

My issue isnt creosote due to wet wood, or loosing too much heat to wet wood. When its ~30F out, I have to keep the stove damper (automatic bi-metallic) turned all the way down otherwise it gets too hot in the house. Having to keep the fire choked down dont keep the chimney nice and hot, and that causes me more creosote issues than wet wood. But nothing a brush once a month cant handle. Super dry wood might allow me to not clean the chimney as often, but would just keep my house too hot.

 

[LD1]

Mess in the house is no big deal. Its in an unfinished basement. Crumbly stuff sweeps right up. Not really have a insect issue as a result. I do keep some terro ant bait traps down their though.

 

[LD1]

Mess in the house is no big deal. Its in an unfinished basement. Crumbly stuff sweeps right up. Not really have a insect issue as a result. I do keep some terro ant bait traps down their though.

 

[Deere Dude]

After looking at that chart now, no wonder my JD3720 with FEL was having so much trouble with as 36" 7' oak log. That sucker weighed close to 3000 pounds. I was able to carry it an inch of the ground by manipulating forks but ground a couple nice log chains down to nothing from the asphalt from FEL settling out. Should have cut it first.

 

[Baby Grand]

I keep a good load in the basement, where the humidity stays very low, thanks to a heat exchanger water heater. The wood gets brought in during the Spring or early Summer - whenever it's dry enough to drive on our so-called-lawn with about 1/3 cord stacked on a pallet, each trip. By the time it's brought in, this wood has set outside for at least a year, more often two, under a tarp or canopy so it gets plenty of air without getting rained on. I'm burning hardwood, oak, hickory, soft & hard maples, birch and elm, mostly whatever the storms drop for me.

When I haul the logs out of the woods, I strip the bark off with a spud. Sometimes the bark won't separate from the trunk without a fight. This seems to depend on what species of tree and if the tree was still alive when it dropped or has been dead for a while. After beating the cr@p out of my wrist & shoulder a few years ago, I learned that if I let those stubborn ones set a year or two, the spud would zip the bark right off. Once all the bark is off, I cut to length, split and stack on the aforementioned pallets.

Since I started all this futzing about with my firewood, it never hisses or bubbles in the stove, but burns hot and steady, like a coal furnace. Because there's no bark on it when it comes into the house, there's no bugs & very little mess. Now that I skid the logs out when there's some snow down, and the bark is off before it gets cut up, blades stay sharp a lot longer.

-Jim

 

[Oldpath05]

Curious...do you have a problem with Woolly Adelgid up there?...it has devastated the hemlocks here...

...on a related side note...the loss of hemlocks with their heavy canopy's and the advent of several years of high white oak mast crops...(walking the hills here is like walking on marbles with all the acorns)...with all the sun reaching the ground there is an unreal amount of acorns that are sprouting and not getting eaten as wildlife fodder...

So far I notice more of a porcupine problem with hemlock trees, that I can deal with, bugs on the other hand might be harder to shoot.

 

[Creamer]

I am not understanding how wood can be too dry for good burning. The dryer it is the hotter the fire is (although we all know from Ray Bradbury that the actual flame temperature for all wood is Farenheit 451)

sorry but 440f to-about 470F is the auto ignition point of paper- the actual flame temp is higher

Thanks! I never had looked it up but you caused me to. Per Wikipedia adiabatic flame temperature for wood is about 1980 C (3596 F) - very similar to that of propane.