Woodworks

Or the trade or was I alone in my ignorance?

There will be plenty of that as it seems most moisture meters are made for the construction industry so will read high

Monkey gone to heaven Living on a prayer

It is good news but worth baring in mind that while most deaths are in the older population ICUs are full of the middle aged who wont be seeing their vaccine for a while yet. Point being we will still be protecting the NHS even when deaths start dropping. Sadly most of the over 70s dont even get into ICU as their chances of survival are too low to merit the use of the bed.

Andrew you are spot on as they do calculate moisture content on a wet weight basis so our logs would comply. Very happy about this and have suggested to Woodsure that they make this clear. So to answer the OPs question "How does one keep logs at 20% at this time of year ?????" buy a new moisture meter thats calibrated to measure on a wet weight basis. Any recommends?

My pessimism for this winter proved to be unfounded. Had to say no to new customers back in October. Even now we are struggling to spin out the last of our dry stocks. On top of that had quite a few orders for charcoal in January! Very fortunate that most around here are not involved in hospitality.

Many thanks. Might give Woodsure a call next week and find out if the do it by wet or dry basis.

Hi Andrew. I spilt some ash that was reading between 20%-22% with little difference from inside to outside so I am presuming its in equilibrium with the outside RH. The split piece weighs 383g and then 315g when fully oven dried. By your wet weight bases what do you make that as I dont really understand how to do the calculation? Thanks

Had a listen. Sounds like a pretty fair description of the changes over the years. Change for the good is happening though. One of our good friends runs a successful dairy farm based on mob grazing. They are planting up shelter belts and increasing the carbon in the soils. Their stock are more productive and from what we see very content to boot. Old and new practices combined for a more sustainable, productive and diverse farm landscape.

Confess to forgetting that. Had better do some more oven drying tests on the wood reading 23%

On the reverse side of this some farmers including ourselves are moving to mob grazing and other similar techniques which have multiple benefits. Only recently taken on management of my parents small farm and we are already seeing dramatically reduced runoff in wet periods due to the longer sword length. What is mob grazing? WWW.SOILASSOCIATION.ORG

And remind us how much do they charge for this service?

Not sure how much energy would be needed to get logs down from 22% to 19% for compliance. Probably not that much and I am sure plenty will pay more for "kiln dried"

I was just getting depressed about this today. Spent some money on a pro weather station last year and these are the average external RH readings week by week going back from today 95%,90%,93%,95%,95%,95%,92%,91%,94%,95%,91%,94,93% and finally 14 weeks ago we had a week that was 86%. Put that together with these tables Woodworkers Source: Equilibrium Moisture Content [custom wws] WWW.WOODWORKERSSOURCE.COM and its quite clear you need a kiln to have logs sub 20% at this time of year

Good to hear. The elms are only on one short section of Devon bank and we have 3km of bank in total so it will need some help to get around the farm. Never been very green fingered so can you point me to any guides on propagating? Thanks