Time drying wood heating

[Ahmed]

"The tradition of waiting two years" corresponds to wood 1 m long, in short logs and in your containers one year is enough.

By the way, how do you plan to unload the contents of these containers?

[jean.caissepas]

"The tradition of waiting two years" corresponds to wood 1 m long, in short logs and in your containers one year is enough.

Indeed, our wood storage was done in length of 1 to 2 meters according to the diameter (and especially the weight!)

The purpose of this length is to maximize the loading of the trailer to bring the wood to the farm.

If the drying is more longitudinal, small sections should speed up the drying time, but not necessarily that of "rinsing" the tannin from the wood to prevent clogging of the chimney pipes.

[Ahmed]

As far as the "rinsing" of the tannin from the wood is concerned, it is doubtful that the longer exposure to rain changes much, given that the leaching can only be done superficially, despite the very high solubility of the tannins. in water.
Indeed, a log can be likened to a bundle of parallel tubes almost sealed between them.

I do not know the impact of the presence of tannins during the combustion of wood ...

[Francx]

Hello Aisp,: D
Of course the drying of firewood depends on:
> the ambient temperature
> ambient humidity
> the initial humidity of your wood
> the surface in contact with the air
> ambient pressure.
For example, some sawmills use high pressure boxes to dry quickly:wood drying at Aymonier
But I doubt that this process is profitable for firewood.
Did you also see this drying principles research study ? It contains the formula for calculating the humidity level.
So why complicate your existence in determining with precision the drying time of your wood? If you want to gain in efficiency, I recommend the empirical method, that is to influence each factor favorable to drying. Then remains to follow the process and control the humidity of the wood.
By the way, how do you plan to measure the water concentration of your wood? by weighing? [/ url] 8)
Good continuation.

[Did67]

with my father who heats his old farmhouse with a stove, and an insert when it's colder (three chimney flues in the adobe house which dates from 1890)

He always told me that you have to leave the wood in the rain and in the wind for at least 2 years, to "rinse" it. The rain removes the tannin from the wood which clogs the chimney pipes. The wind makes it dry quickly and prevents rotting after the rain.

My father was a lumberjack (in winter).

I was on "chore" of wood every summer!

We burned 20 or 30 cubic meters, in the stove and in a stove.

We sawed the wood from winter to summer; it remained to be dried in heaps; I split part of it (especially for cooking; and light the stove). The stove, we put the most "big logs" and in particular all the "knots" which were too hard to split ... for the fire to last.

After drying in a heap, it was brought back as quickly as possible to the dry, as much as possible without it taking the rain. It was either stacked or loose in an open but covered barn ... [in fact, the top of the garage]

Never heard of rinsing wood!

We occasionally had oak, even if the majority was beech and charm ... No chestnut!

The other woods (light hardwoods) were snubbed by my father, who had no interest in poplar, birch ... For him, it was not wood!

[Did67]

high pressure boxes to dry quickly:.

You mean low pressure, I guess ??? Or depression ??? Indeed, a liquid evaporates all the more quickly as there are not too many molecules which move around it and bombards it ...

However, the wood is treated by high pressure injection. To bring in the treatment product!

[Cuicui]

The other woods (light hardwoods) were snubbed by my father, who had no interest in poplar, birch ... For him, it was not wood!

As we say around here, the only bad wood is the wood we don't have! Currently, I continue to make wood when I have the energy, it is our only means of heating in addition to solar. I take care not to snub anything since I do not have tens of hectares of forest, but I isolated my building at best.
Rinsing the wood is recommended only for oak.

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

I dig up this subject because the question is quite often discussed right to left ...

When I started heating exclusively with wood I no longer know who gave me the advice that the most effective way to dry your wood was ... to do nothing.

Or rather to leave it in a heap not stored in the open air and without protection (in the rain and in the wind) approximately 24 months years then and to burn it as and when required

It is obvious that this was understood for a "normal" climate here, that is to say not 300 days of rain per year and for a normal rotation that is to say not to leave it in heaps of years and years.

For thirty years I have therefore practiced without worries and with working time and especially handling reduced to a minimum.

The wood sellers often do the same elsewhere and mine too: it has just delivered 9 cubic meters (for the winter of 2021) and that makes a nice pile.

He has a whole stock outside without protection
Information taken he also told me that the rain (in normal quantity) was by no means an inconvenience for drying the wood.

I had hardly asked myself the question until now: it worked point bar.

But the discussions on the net you know what it is and 99% of wood storage advice is: sheltered and dry.
Not especially my way of doing or even that of some of my neighbors who are content with heaps outside in the open air.

But hey, 99% is still a good majority.

I found in all and for all only one article which said the opposite
https://grindesel.forumactif.fr/t279-bo ... oui-et-non

And a Chatelot intervention (the same as here I suppose)
https://forums.futura-sciences.com/habi ... ffage.html

And that's all.

So I was wondering out of pure curiosity where was the truth and if it existed in this area?

Are there studies that are a bit scientific and serious to corroborate one or the other method?

[GuyGadebois]

Personally, I do like you, but as you know, we have few long and regular rainy periods, and moreover it is very dry in Haute Provence.

[Did67]

At my parents' place (Alsace Bossue; geographically, it is the "Lorraine plateau"), we only cooked and heated ourselves in wood (among other things, my father, in winter, was a lumberjack - in the chore of the vegetable garden. add wood between haymaking and harvest!). The tradition was to stack the wood in a shelter, exposed to the wind: in fact, many barns in which one sheltered the material, etc had an unclosed part, which one "filled" by stacking 2 or 3 parallel rows of wood after having cut it (to the size of the hearth of the stoves and the stove - approximately 25 cm long) and split ...

Some piles, "at the bottom", were a "long-term" reserve, and sometimes it was wood that was 10 years old!

Wood is never too dry! The quality of combustion, and in particular "polluting" emissions, are reduced ...

Two clues that tell you that the wood is too wet:

- it "hisses" for a while when you put a new log (it is the pressurized water vapor that is released)

- the chimney, outside, is enveloped in a bluish, acrid halo ... (the water vapor which emerges from any combustion forms just a small plume which dissipates almost instantaneously) ...

NB: In the mountains, wood is often stacked against the wall, outside, but under an overhang of the roof ...