Wood that's too dry isn't good either...Good stuff if you want to keep feeding your stove

yes you get the same BTU in a piece of wood wet or dry, however if you have to cook the moisture out of your wood with some of it you experience less intense heat in the stove, you are also sending more of that wood up the chimney in smoke , smoke is unburnt wood gas , unburnt wood gas + moisture and cold chimney= creosote condensing in your chimney.

if you open your stove door and you hear a hiss , you have moisture in your wood if it is still hissing 15 minutes after you loaded it in the stove you have too much moisture in your wood.

EdP said you get the same amount of BTU's out of warm or cold wood. I don't believe you get the same amount out of wet wood as you do seasoned wood.

I think it goes by weight.
When all are dry-some wood is much lighter by volume than other wood.
Probably get the same BTU out of 10 lb of dry birch as 10 lb of dry poplar.

Some wood,like Bam is heavy when wet but like a feather when dry.
It makes good kindling when dry.Burns like paper.Good for a fire on a wet summer morning in the cabin to drive out the damp.

I'm in the same btu from 10lb of hemlock as 10lr locust camp.
Burning white fir, poplar mix right now with oak and hickory over night.
Sugar maple and cherry for mix. I miss the coal stove of my old skinning shed.

Try a couple thousand and get the hang of it lol.

I just filled a Kubota bucket load up to my basement door. I only heat with wood but do have a backup furnace if needed. Forecasting 4-8 here tonight

I cover my wood on pallets and heat my entire house. My FIL insists you do not need to cover wood but cannot even heat one room in his house with his wood stove and wet wood

Yes, the BTU ratings are figured using dried wood and the weight/density of different species is what governs the BTU values for the most part.



I disagree Mr. Wright. It would take me twice the amount of say poplar to get the same amount of heat/BTU's as it would using locust over the same time period. You made that point yourself. If you loaded that low BTU fir and poplar for an overnight burn you'd have to damp it down so hard you'd get next to no heat or it would be out come morning. Load it up with high BTU oak and hickory and you get good heat all night.

Yeah, you have to keep the rain and snow off it. I have a wood shed that can hold 8-10 cords and I load about four cords on my porch each fall.

Lug I said lbs not cords (volume) but I get what you say.

Son was running my 034. If anyone has 034 or 036 parts saw...

I hauled in a tote of wood this morning I grabbed a few pieces out at noon that were still in the tote and put the wood moisture meter on them they ran 11-13%
I went out to the shed and grabbed the stuff that was right next to the wood I hauled in this morning right only 2 feet below the tin roof so it shouldn't have seen any rain even though it is 38 and rained much of the night

I brought in another tote and measured pieces from the same tree that had been siting just inches away from the stuff in the house this morning.

the lowest I got was 13.7% with some measurements setting off the >16% beep most were mid to high 15% so 15.4 to 15.9%

if my average of wood that had been in the house was 12% and the stuff I brought in the house was more like 15% that is a 3% difference based on 100%
but 12/15 =.8 so the wood that has been in the house about 6-7 hours a few feet from the stove was 20% drier than the wood just in from the outside.

20% is a decent difference
yes this is surface dryness

to get a real read on the internal dryness both pieces would have to be at room temp then split and measured on the fresh split
this is all wood that was cut more than a year ago from he same tree and stored under a tin roof inches apart it is all burning just fine.

but when you have wood that has a surface humidity 20% less it spends less time drying and burns sooner when placed in coals in the stove.

Probably good I don't have a meter.
I use the if it sounds like bowling pins being hit while tossed it is ready.

Sorry, missed that part...

Your observation is correct regarding the heat transferred to your home. The wood itself has the same BTUs available but some of that heat goes to boiling off the water and drying the wood so it will burn. The moisture may also decrease the temperature in the stove and reduce combustion efficiency causing some of the available BTUs to be lost up the chimney as smoke. That all results in less heat available to heat your home and the potential creosote issue mentioned by others.

I had some questionable wood one year when I ran low stuff I sourced from a friends so I bought the meter

I only pull it out and use it occasionally now

if it has been split and under a shed roof a year it is good to burn
not always the case with big rounds never split and stored on the ground in a shed

EdP got it right , moisture lowers the burn temp= lowers BTU given off.
For 3 years did 2000 measurement on cord wood stacked with the moisture ,meter 3 times a year, 3 separate piles
gave the data over to the person and they died 3 months later and the goverment person never dealt with it that took his job...gr moment

my observations were; all wood stacked on 2 pallets high off the ground
Manitoba gets maybe 18 inches rain fall, so consider a dry climate
! cord piles 128 cu ft, field exposed 100 m from tree edge
burr oak, ash, manitoba maple, popular, spruce our main species here
wood dried sunny side up as 10% drier then round side up
most wood was not dry enough the first fall to burn in the winter
the frost freeze cycles of Feb-April spead up drying( action of the moisture inside the wood)
drill small holes to put the probe into each time= 1/4 inch
the felt pen markings after 3 years were hard t see the ID's #s

This was all before Y2K and DOS entry was a pain