Chestnut Oak Firewood
In February I was cutting up a chestnut oak tree. Freshly fallen and green as could be. This is premium firewood, it is just as good as white oak, about 26 million BTU per cord. Easy to split, too. In a normal firewood pile it would take 2 years to dry. It needs to get below 17 percent moisture to burn well in a modern wood stove. Here is the wood shed that I invented. It is non ventilated. Once it is full I keep the door closed. Sets in the sun all day, and gets heated up with sun striking the metal roof and white pine walls. It works on the principle that water vapor will pass through wooden walls. I had to crank up the wood stove yesterday, here is the chestnut oak, dried for 8 months. I cranked up the Jotul for the first fire of the season last night and this is some great firewood.
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Shed looks like you already burned it all. Musta been plenty warm last night.😊
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Works like a solar powered kiln.
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Glad it works for you, we've found that just piling up firewood like done back in the old days and not stacking or covering works better for us and dries a lot faster, getting wet from rain doesn't seem to hurt it's burn. Will say also the wood (tree) is pretty well dry before we even cut it…….we be lazy. 😀
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I bought a small greenhouse from Harbor Freight about 10 years ago. It didn’t work for what I thought it would so I started stacking it full of firewood and it works like a solar kiln.
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Heck of a wood shed there. Very nice.
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montanajoe: 32593672925851/comments/32593674266907
Heck of a wood shed there. Very nice.
Looks like it could be made into a double deluxe two holer outhouse with a minimum of effort.
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It's Appalachia, he already has one.
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Here is a conventional woodpile. This is my backup woodpile. It is under the carport roof so gets very little rain. Gets wind, and gets a few hours of afternoon sunshine. In this pile oak will dry to 17 percent in two years.
My woodshed, however, is a solar kiln. It runs temps about 10 degrees warmer than outside temps. On a 90 degree day it is 100 degrees in the woodshed. Oak dries to below 17 percent in 8 months in the woodshed. Plus the woodshed holds a tremendous amount of wood, three times as much wood as my carport woodshed. 32 degrees last night and we are running the big Norwegian wood stove.
Daisy likes the wood stove.
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That is a good ol' dog, not a wood stove.
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