Drying firewood - fast!

[Stereo]

Afternoon all, newbie here.

 

I've been cutting, seasoning firewood for many years and have an old Villager stove plus an Esse W23 woodfired stove which does cooking and hot water. The problem I have is that for the last year I have been flat out busy trying to save my company (credit crunch etc). I have just about succeeded at this but now find I have no wood stacked for the coming winter and no time penciled in to do it until Sept at the earliest. I have access to plenty of fallen trees and active coppice which I have managed, mainly beech and alder.

 

So, I'm thinking of ways to dry this stuff in a hurry. The Esse in particular is very fussy and wet wood will clog it in 2 days as well as not producing enough heat.

 

I was considering building a kiln or mud oven of some sort. Probably an oil drum on it's side up on 2 rows of blocks with a space for fire underneath. Then cover the whole thing over with earth, fill with wet logs, place a steel plate on the front with a vent gap at the top and light a hot fire underneath. Effectively, baking the logs. I have access to plenty of old pallets and other junk wood.

 

Anyone done this? A lot of Esse owners recommend drying wood in the bottom oven overnight but the way I see is that the moisture has to go somewhere when you do this and it's probably not up the chimney.

 

Do you reckon that a couple hours at say 200 degrees C would be enough to dry out green wood enough to produce good results?

[ukminch]

Surely if you've got the time for all that you've got a bit of time to get some quicker drying wood split and stacked now??

 

R

[northumbriaforestry]

The set up you've described is the start of a charcoal making process. We use it to season wood quickly for our kilns (a pre-burn or cooking burn) then the main burn means making charcoal with unseasoned wood is possible without being a tremendous waste of energy. Play with it a little & it will do exactly what you need, very well. It may take you a few goes to get he hang of it, not hot enough or long enough wont dry it out enough, to hot or too long will over do it. Good luck

[slasherscot]

split it now thinly and stack on pallets and get as much pallet wood for stove during winter, a few bits thrown with split logs will keep the heat up

[Marko]

A small solar kiln would possibly be more worthy of the effort and provide more lasting benefit.... but you will still need to cut and split the wood!

[skyhuck]

Could you do a deal with a local firewood merchant, to exchange a large quantity of unseasoned timber for a smaller quantity of seasoned??

[combined tree services]

how about trying a polly tunnel ? just an idea tho

[Rob D]

If you have access to copice etc is there no dead/dry wood you can pull out for this year?

[Stereo]

Thanks for all the replies. Nice to find a busy forum on this subject.

 

In terms of time now, I have none. 3 young boys under 5 and a business at it's busiest seasonal time means I am flat out and exhausted. I have some wood laying in the fields which is seasoning but it's on the ground and the weather will turn soon enough.

 

I have thought of solar kilns / polytunnels etc but the problem is the land is not mine and there are often sheep and cattle on it who would trash a poly tunnel. I could build a solar kiln in the garden.

 

I usually spend a lot of time in October / November gathering and stacking next year's wood. The weather suits me and the sap is not up so cut coppice is easier to season naturally.

 

This year though by the time I get cutting and splitting I'm going to need the fuel. I'm not keen on buying in if there is a way I can season the wood quickly and on-demand.

 

In terms of mixing seasoned and dry to keep the fire going, this is fine in the villager as sticking the brush up the flue and a full sweep out once a month takes 10 minutes. The Esse though won't tolerate it at all as it burns slower and has flue ways which take a while to clean out. It's one of those tools thats all or nothing. A cheap and practical joy with very dry wood, a complete nightmare with green wood.

 

Back to the oven concept. I have been told that this will remove the moisture but not the sap. I was under the impression that the sap would harden and become fuel when dried. Is this a problem I will face? It might be possible to create a cage area in our stream where I could soak the lengths for a day to strain out the sap but this of course makes the wood sodden in the short term.

[northumbriaforestry]

Your kiln idea will work fine, as I say we do the same to great effect. You want to spend as little time & effort getting the best & quickest results. Kiln will do fine as it will be done in hours. In future, as has been suggested, if you could find the space, a polly tunnel or solar kiln is a great asset.