Burning wet logs / woods

[Broch]

Don't forget that burning wet wood results in higher particulates. Wood burners amount for a highly significant amount via this method.

It was enlightening to read that the figures were grossly overstated by the 'authorities' and that new research considers this to be a fraction of what was stated before the new burner and fuel supply legislation was brought in

Many people have spent a small fortune on upgrading their fires because of false research!

 

[Robson Valley]

Outdoors, under open cover and not cooked in a shed, my cedar carving wood dries down to an equilibrium moisture content of 12-14%.
540 cal/g is the Heat of Vaporization for water going from a liquid to a gas. This is the energy loss which will kill you as hypothermia. This was a major issue in saving downed pilots' lives in the English Channel during WW II.

 

[Ystranc]

Another point to consider is that a lot of timber pruned or felled this Autumn has had an unusually high moisture content because many trees were active until later in the Autumn, many of our trees were in full leaf far later than usual, some are still in leaf.

 

[Robson Valley]

There are still some people in the village burning round wood. The suppliers ask for more money by holding the firewood in their inventory for a couple of years to dry out a bit. Split, stacked and covered. 4-5 cords will just barely heat an old village house for out winter.

My wood pellet stove required ultra dry feed stock to burn properly with no smoke and very little brown ash per 500 lbs.
Anything in September left over from April needed to be mixed with fresh pellets (stored in my downstairs kitchen, no less.)

The pellets arrived in my front yard as a 4' x 4' x 4' triple plastic wrapped 2,000 lb ton of 50 x 40 lb bags on a fresh new pallet. Funny all the things that grew out of stacks of pallets and heavy duty plastic bags! Alas, my guts prevent me from lifting the pellet bags any more.

 

[Ystranc]

There are still some people in the village burning round wood. The suppliers ask for more money by holding the firewood in their inventory for a couple of years to dry out a bit. Split, stacked and covered. 4-5 cords will just barely heat an old village house for out winter.

My wood pellet stove required ultra dry feed stock to burn properly with no smoke and very little brown ash per 500 lbs.
Anything in September left over from April needed to be mixed with fresh pellets (stored in my downstairs kitchen, no less.)

The pellets arrived in my front yard as a 4' x 4' x 4' triple plastic wrapped 2,000 lb ton of 50 x 40 lb bags on a fresh new pallet. Funny all the things that grew out of stacks of pallets and heavy duty plastic bags! Alas, my guts prevent me from lifting the pellet bags any more.

I used to do all my splitting with a maul but these days I use a PTO auger splitting rig that hangs off the back of my little tractor, purely because I tore a trapezius muscle that’s never really recovered and have a touch of arthritis in my shoulder. I used to find an afternoon with a splitting axe quite relaxing but pain takes the fun out of it.

 

[Erbswurst]

If you have, whyever, some kind of indoor survival situation you can split the wood as small as still sensible and use the heated living room as a drying room for the fire wood. You get a pretty moist living climate in the beginning but it works. You will get dirt, spiders and insects into the living room of course.

But if you have any other option leave your soaked wood in the garden and dry it outdoors correctly and look for different fire wood for this year. Even dead standing wood directly out of the forest is better than wood that was lying on the ground during this autumn.

And indeed, outdoors you can nearly burn what you want it will work. But the limited room of a oven is a different game. And If you can't clean the chimney yourself you will get with whet wood into serious troubles. A usual oven tube can be filled with whet soot during just two or three weeks. You should try to avoid that if you can't clean it yourself once a week.

 

[Robson Valley]

I hear you, loud and painfully clear. There are a few teams of people who go around the village to cut, split and stack firewood for seniors incapable of the tasks. Stand alone hydraulic splitters with a 10-15 Hp gas engine.

News that there may be a $5,000 incentive to setup a "heat pump." They rewire the house and take away the furnace oil tank, if there is one. I wonder what the bottom line is for cost.
They keep coming up with a wider variety of more expensive heating units. Winter power grid failures and we are still screwed.

 

[Erbswurst]

In Germany saw dust bricks went from 200 € per cubic meter up to 900 €.

The forests are full of dead standing wood though. A Stihl saw looks pretty cheap regarding the prices for delivered wood. But what you have to pay are mainly the hours of the men who serve you.

Otherwise one really should think about wearing two fleece jackets and longjohns and the problem is solved currently.

 

[Robson Valley]

We have tens of thousands of hectares of standing dead fire trees and standing dead beetle-killed pine in British Columbia.
Was not worth the chainsaw gas to cut it down. Until the market developed for ultra-dry, high energy compressed wood pellets. Train loads headed for Scandinavia are more than a mile in length. All the way east across Canada then overseas.

They are half the cost, for an entire winter, of me using diesel petroleum in my central heating. I can afford it but I don't like to have to do it.

If I was 15 years younger and IF I had to suddenly depend on round wood, I'd have to build a 3-4 year inventory, cut and stacked under cover. Loading a wood burner every few hours is not at all attractive to me.

 

[Erbswurst]

My brother worked on a farm where the wood burner was so big, that they needed two men to throw the logs in, so big were they. Things obviously develop also in this case. If you don't want to split you don't have to, if wisely organized.

 

[Broch]

There used to be nothing I preferred doing on a sharp frosty morning than swinging a good axe at a pile of ash logs. It has to be one of the most satisfying outdoor tasks.

Sadly, no more, just a couple of swings and I'm in crippling pain with sciatica. Swinging a lump hammer at a fence post does the same

So I bought an electro/hydraulic double acting log splitter several years ago - not quite as satisfying but at least I'm not laid up in pain for days!

 

[Ystranc]

I hear you, loud and painfully clear. There are a few teams of people who go around the village to cut, split and stack firewood for seniors incapable of the tasks. Stand alone hydraulic splitters with a 10-15 Hp gas engine.

News that there may be a $5,000 incentive to setup a "heat pump." They rewire the house and take away the furnace oil tank, if there is one. I wonder what the bottom line is for cost.
They keep coming up with a wider variety of more expensive heating units. Winter power grid failures and we are still screwed.

We have an electric powered ground source heat pump but they really aren’t suitable for most houses. Unless they’re being fitted to underfloor heating in a super insulated home they’re ineffective and expensive to run. The Renewable Heating Initiative payments took the sting out of it for us but I won’t recommend it for an old house.

 

[British Red]

If I was 15 years younger and IF I had to suddenly depend on round wood, I'd have to build a 3-4 year inventory, cut and stacked under cover. Loading a wood burner every few hours is not at all attractive to me.

We can keep our Esse "in" overnight quite easily. There are a few techniques that help

1) Get the wood really dry (sub 15% moisture)
2) Use the right wood. Good dense stuff. Ash, oak or hornbeam
3) Use a quality stove where you can restrict airflow to slow the burn
4) Have a large firebox that can take logs at least 18" long by 12" diameter
5) Live in a home with high thermal mass - heat the stone / brick in the evening & it stays warm at night

Proper sized logs


A log burning slowly

 

[British Red]

I bought an electro/hydraulic double acting log splitter several years ago - not quite as satisfying but at least I'm not laid up in pain for days!

I split by hand a lot - but I also use an 11 tonne vertical hydraulic splitter. It's superb - even crowns split under it's unrelenting power.

 

[Broch]

We can keep our Esse "in" overnight quite easily. There are a few techniques that help

3) Use a quality stove where you can restrict airflow to slow the burn

One of the outcomes of the regulations for modern stoves is that you can't close them down to a very restricted airflow. The idea is to prevent people using a 'smouldering' high particulate output burn over long periods

We used to be able to keep our old Villager stove in overnight easily, but it wasn't an efficient burner by any means. Our new stove is much more efficient when burning normally (probably about two-thirds the number of logs we used to use for the temperature) but it cannot be set on a very low burn because it wouldn't pass the emissions tests.

 

[SaraR]

Are you allowed stoves with a smoke channel "maze" in the back nowadays - the ones that let you transfer more of the heat to the stove rather than up the chimney?

Our solid stone walls were great during the heatwave and the pandemic (working from home) -not so much now that we're in work most of the day and only have the heating on in the evening. On the plus side, I get to use all my knitted wares regularly this time of year.

 

[Ystranc]

Are you allowed stoves with a smoke channel "maze" in the back nowadays - the ones that let you transfer more of the heat to the stove rather than up the chimney?

Our solid stone walls were great during the heatwave and the pandemic (working from home) -not so much now that we're in work most of the day and only have the heating on in the evening. On the plus side, I get to use all my knitted wares regularly this time of year.

I’m sure you are allowed to fit them but they’re not common in the UK. The masonry ones where the entire chimney breast is a thermal mass/heat exchanger are complicated to build but you can also buy the black iron stove pipes that split into three or more channels and may have heat exchanger/ heat reclaimer fins on them.

 

[British Red]

One of the outcomes of the regulations for modern stoves is that you can't close them down to a very restricted airflow. The idea is to prevent people using a 'smouldering' high particulate output burn over long periods

We used to be able to keep our old Villager stove in overnight easily, but it wasn't an efficient burner by any means. Our new stove is much more efficient when burning normally (probably about two-thirds the number of logs we used to use for the temperature) but it cannot be set on a very low burn because it wouldn't pass the emissions tests.

Oh dear. I'm sure it's an impossible adjustment too

 

[Broch]

I refuse to comment on the grounds it could incriminate me

 

[slowworm]

I don't slumber our wood burner, our main source of heating, I just have some nice dry logs and kindling and get the fire going full tilt in a few minutes each morning. Unless it's very cold outside the house is still acceptably warm the next morning.

I wouldn't burn wet wood for the reasons mentioned, there's a risk of damage to the flue and even the stove. As for drying the wet wood, if it's seasoned but has got wet it can be dried off next to a stove (but the moisture will make the house damp). If it's unseasoned wood it'll take far longer and not worth it.

I tend to stack my firewood in rows, with enough room to get the wind and sun. Each spring we tend to get several weeks of dry weather and the summers have been dry as well so the wood seasons fine in the open. I just cover for winter.