Monday, December 9, 2013

Happiness is Dry Firewood

I've heated my home with a woodstove before Bleecker.  The Unabomber Cabin isn't my first go round.  If you burn wood in a woodstove, you know the important of seasoning your wood and keeping it dry.  For you flatlanders, seasoning the wood means to cut it and let it dry for a season.  You can cut it in the spring and burn it in the fall, but the moisture content will be high and it won't burn as hot.  You can hear it steam in the stove, and the wood smoke won't be hot and it will cause creosote to quickly build up in your stove pipe.  It is much preferred to cut it and let it dry for a year or longer.   This kind of seasoned firewood burns easily and is very hot.

We were cutting trees that were felled a year ago when we had our property cleared.  It burned fine, but I didn't get enough cut because of my accident.  We stopped at R&R Firewood and bought a cord, cut, split, and delivered.  I could have bought a cord for $190, or "the good stuff" for $240.  Of course, we bought the good stuff, meaning it was seasoned.

It was delivered as promised, and it is seasoned, but it is wet.  It either got rained on, or snowed on.  Pam and I filled our wood shed and stacked and covered the rest outside.  But how do you burn wet wood?   Like this.


Yes, there are pieces right on the woodstove.   You can only do this if the woodstove isn't red hot because it might crack if you put wet wood on it, especially if the wood has ice or snow.  The other pieces are placed close to the stove.  After a few hours, they're dry enough to burn.  I try to bring enough wood in to stack around the stove for a day.  That dries them out enough to burn well.  I turn each log during the day to dry it all around.

Over the course of the summer, Earl and I have felled enough trees that we should have an ample supply of seasoned firewood for next year.

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