Ensure your firewood logs are well seasoned and neatly stacked all ready for your winter wood burning stove or open fire by correctly splitting, barking and stacking your logs.
Why Burn Only Dry Wood?
When wood burns, any water it contains must be evaporated; this requires a surprisingly large amount of energy. Freshly cut wood is often over half water by weight, whereas the water content of wood which has been well seasoned drops to around 20%. As a result, the heat energy given off by well seasoned wood is almost double that of freshly cut wood!
How to Prepare Logs for Drying
Firewood logs need to be cut and split small enough to dry effectively. Be sure to know the maximum log size accepted by your log burner or fireplace before you begin work. Two essential pieces of equipment when preparing firewood from a freshly felled tree are:
- A Bow Saw with a green wood or Raker Tooth blade. Excellent for cutting green wood.
- A Splitting Maul. Similar to an axe, a splitting maul splits large logs with ease.
Saw your wood into lengths suitable for your fire or log burner. Split the logs using a splitting maul, standing the log on a sturdy, wide log base set on its end. Ask someone with experience in splitting logs to show you how to do this to ensure your safety. Ensure that all people and animals are kept well away while you split logs.
Smaller logs that will fit into your stove or fire without splitting that do not need to be split will dry faster if you use a small axe to remove a strip of bark from the length of the log.
Felling trees is a specialized job, usually performed with a chainsaw, and is beyond the scope of this article.
How to Build a Log Pile for Seasoning
Wood needs to be dried for at least a year, and preferably two. In very damp climates logs may even benefit from being seasoned for up to three years. While firewood can be kiln dried, this is expensive, and not usually justified for fuel wood.
Wood needs to be stacked in a well ventilated spot outside, lifted off the ground to avoid water logging and protected from the rain in all but the driest climates. An open fronted wood store with a concrete floor, sound roof and three waterproof walls is ideal, but it is expensive and is not essential.
A cheaper alternative is to create a freestanding log pile in the open. There is always a risk that the pile may fall down, for example in high winds, so do ensure that any collapse will not cause damage or injury. Lay square concrete posts flat on the ground on a surface covered in paving slabs, concrete or similar surface. Lay several posts in parallel; close enough so that your logs can be laid to span the gap between posts.
Build up your pile of logs, raised off the ground by the concrete posts, always ensuring that the pile is as stable as possible. Cover the top of the pile with heavy duty waterproof plastic or a tarpaulin, and tie down with a rope or weigh down with bricks. Leave the face of stacked firewood logs open to the air to maximize drying.
Once your firewood logs are well seasoned, ensure that you make the most of your wood burning stove with some excellent new accessories.
