Wet wood

[Heinz]

Never ever burn wet wood 
I mostly burn old oak whisky barrels which I buy already cut up into bits about 100mm by 100mm by 30mm. There's a small outside pile left over from last year and there's this years heap in the polytunnel woodstore. I want to clear the area where the outside pile is and it looks fairly dry, so brought two loads of it into the house for this evening. I've struggled to get the room thermometer up to the normal 24 to 26 deg C all evening, it's just sat at 23 deg, stove eating wood with the air valves open much more than normal to get it to that. Put some of this years polytunnel stored wood in the stove and without altering the settings the temp has gone to 25 in ten mins. and I've had to close the air valves to slow things own.
Obviously I'm a numptie for burning the damp wood and the polytunnel woodstore is a success  It'll probably blow away tomorrow now that I've said that...

Heinz

[regen]

Heinz,

Its one of those things that we all know - it tars up the chimney and produces little heat so why do I keep trying! At least once a year i give it a go in the hope that the laws of physics have changed! You cannot beat dry wood for heat production.

Regen

[camillitech]

"I mostly burn old oak whisky barrels "

Bet they smell lovely on the fire 

[Twenty4Seven]

"I mostly burn old oak whisky barrels "

Bet they smell lovely on the fire 

Especially if they're single malt barrels.

[Richard Owen]

Here's the YTC bodge solution to wet wood.




It's amazing what people will put up with to keep warm.

[Heinz]

"I mostly burn old oak whisky barrels "

Bet they smell lovely on the fire 

Sometimes I get lucky and they have just cut the barrels the same day, so the wood is soaked with whisky. The smell is overpowering and I almost feel drunk unloading the trailer     Most of the time the wood has been sitting cut for a while though, so there's not much smell.

H

[Heinz]

Here's the YTC bodge solution to wet wood.
It's amazing what people will put up with to keep warm.

Firelighters!!! That's cheating.... 
I have piled the wood round the stove here, but get a bit nervous about it overnight or if I'm outside working.

H

[Richard Owen]

Stove's only on in the evening, or if it's very cold and I need to dry some wood.

We did have some interesting smouldering when an over enthusiastic bodgling stacked wood on the stove top.

Other than that it's been fine.

The wood is 3 year old alder and willow from some pollards we keep to stabilise the stream bank. They are pretty dry, but a bit of final polishing never hurts.

[Heinz]

How do you find the willow and alder for heat? I've got some willow at the moment and it doesn't seem to last long? Got a huge? plan to grow some firewood as part of my Forest Garden (Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford) and Alder is used a lot in his ideas for shelter/shade/nitrogen so it would be good if it burnt well.

H

[dhaslam]

I think that I need to dry the wood a bit more for  the gasifying stove.     Normally the water  vapour goes up the chimney but in the gasifying stove it goes downwards and mixes with the  woodgas so it probably does more damage  than just evaporating  the  water.   I am going to buy some kiln dried wood to do some tests.       Anyway I need to set up the wood store in the house to have warm air circulating through it.  That will give a few weeks drying to the wood before use. However I wonder if the fuel shed  should have some drying facility as well?  

The wood is stored on pallets so it would be  easy to circulate air, perhaps from a  solar panel.  The solar panels I made produce air at 60 to 100C  when the sun shines.   Alternatively  I could  make a   hot channel under the roof, paint the roof black,   and circulate hot air from there under the wood.    The air would just need to circulate when it is hot so it wouldn't take much energy.          

[Richard Owen]

How do you find the willow and alder for heat? I've got some willow at the moment and it doesn't seem to last long? Got a huge? plan to grow some firewood as part of my Forest Garden (Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford) and Alder is used a lot in his ideas for shelter/shade/nitrogen so it would be good if it burnt well.

H

They do burn brightly and quickly. I like willow for lighting a fire and getting it off to a good start.

They don't last as long as ash or beech.

Alder seems a little longer lasting than birch, but I haven't studied it that much.

Also, they tend to be fairly small section being pollards and our ash and beech are large section so that might affect my impression as well.

Sorry I can't be more help.

[Baz]

Whenever I put on a particular species or batch sample to 'see how it burns' I always completely forget I was supposed to monitor it until I'm back in the woodshed again looking at that same pile. Doh!.
I got some willow last year but it is very light so in a couple of years when I get round to it I'll let you know, or not as I won't remember.
I hate bringing wood inside more than a bucketfull - all those woodwormies and bugs waiting to leap out.
I think wood just dries in a shed to a certain static level that is abut 20% in the uk depending on the local average weather.

[chasfromnorfolk]

I'm going through the latest batch of Ash at the mo, and following tradition and exploiting its character, I'm burning it green ie "wet". It does, however burn cooler - I've got one of those magnetic flue thermometers, and take an interest in getting it above 200deg where the "creosote" warning ends. If I stack a few chunks on top, then even a hour or two's drying makes for a brighter, hotter fire when their turn comes.

Chas

[brackwell]

Be careful drying the wood round the fire. The other night i put a biggish log,probably fairly dry, in front of the fire about 1ft away and left it. when i came back 30 odd minds later the room was full of smoke and i got the feeling the log may well have set alight !  Not Again.

Ken

[Heinz]

I'm going through the latest batch of Ash at the mo, and following tradition and exploiting its character, I'm burning it green ie "wet". It does, however burn cooler - I've got one of those magnetic flue thermometers, and take an interest in getting it above 200deg where the "creosote" warning ends. If I stack a few chunks on top, then even a hour or two's drying makes for a brighter, hotter fire when their turn comes.

Chas

Ash is what I was planning to plant for firewood, before getting sucked in to the Forest Garden idea, will probably still plant a load of it.
So what temp does your flue get to in normal use? I've got one of those Cal Fire mag temp gauges and 200 is ticking over, up to 400 for a good hot fire and anything higher is because I lit it and forgot to turn it down once it got going.....

H