Sound advice. I've ordered a moisture detector and you are correct it only cost me a tenner (£10), cheap for something that might save my life.

If you leave the wood next to the stove for a week it will drop down…

Thank you, very important information.

Hi Robert Before i close my eyes tonight...here my love & support😊

Good advice. Glad you and your house survived a chimney fire. So I guess you were a bit lucky. I let my firewood dry for about three months and then it's below the 20 percent thanks to the wind. Cheers

Here goes Bob ( the bill is in the mail ) : 1. Know how to season firewood. 2. Stack it JUST top covered, or best, build a woodshed ( this is mandatory if you use wood stoves for 100% heat.) 3. Catalysts are very sensitive to unseasoned wood. Non cat stoves are less so. 4. Know how and when to know when your firewood is ready WITHOUT a tech gadget: Checking, color, ringing sound when banged together, experience. Meters vary anyhow. 5. Burn hot fires. Don't close primary air too soon. 6. If you buy firewood never depend on whether it is selling seasoned; it varies. Buy it green in Spring. Bill may be in the mail.😁

Thanks! I had no idea about this.

Must have been a pretty grim experience, you have my sympathy, glad you survived it. I've seen a couple of chimney fires, helped to put one out. Not funny the way the fire runs away, drawing air from anywhere it can. Where I come from (England), 'seasoned' means correctly dried. That is to say it's not correctly seasoned if it's not dry. Here in France firewood is sold still wet, and you are supposed to get it in advance and dry it yourself. So you get folks running out of wood and trying to burn wet wood, with all the attendant problems. I have two modern stoves with smoke re-burning factilties. I agree that this makes the chinmey much cleaner, but the ash is very different. It's much finer, and I've heard that it can be really bad for your lungs. We managed fine with our old stoves when I was a child, and I sort of wish that I'd invested in that type though they're hard to find in good condition here. I tend to mistrust modern technical developments until they've been tried and tested by people actually using them for some time.

I have seen a couple chimney fires. It means your chimney needed cleaning out of creosote buildup. And as you say ,don't burn wet wood to make more creosote. I cover all my stacked wood.

In my area if you are paying over $300 per cord and you also have to stack it, drag it into your house and burn it. You might as well just use a different energy source. At that point the wood cost too much. I get all my own wood.

I just got a wood stove and I'm still in the process of installing (having to work full time and manage other stuff around the house means not a lot of time) but I got a bunch of wood during summer. My trick was to split it super small in hopes it can dry faster. Right now some of what I'm testing is at 0-5% which I'm honestly surprised because it was like 30%+ originally. I need to split it again but I split it so small already that I was able to put the prongs close enough to the middle so I'd be surprised it's more than 10%. Moisture meter is a must if burning wood! Once I'm better organized I want to have a good rotation so that I can burn stuff that's seasoned over a few years. Then I can probably get away with keeping the logs bigger.

In Norway dry firewood must have less moisture level than 20%.

1 last thing I forgot. If your burning wood straight thru until you clean out ash. Especially if your are burning low and long. Every morning before you load it up. I burn hot small fires to burn out the crap on overnight burns for an hour before building coals to fill it with wood. 1 or 2 passes with the brush in spring and it's good. House stove was in the basement and went 2 stories and an attic to get out. 3 more feet above roof line.😉

Another thoght would be to split it into smaller pieces that can then dry out. When I purchased wood the pieces were too big and didn't have the capacity to dry out.

A cord of firewood, in Northern Maine is going for between $325 to $400 a cord.

Glad your house didn't burn down, but it's clear that you're not educated on this topic. Wet wood is different than green wood. Wood thats been standing dead isn't "seasoned" even if its gone through 4 of them. Wood also dries perfectly fine in a big pile, as long as air can flow through it and you give it an appropriate amount of time, which varies by species and split size. Go watch "In the Woodyard" and he specifically talks about how he doesn't stack anymore. An example: This year I processed an oak tree that blew over several years ago and was still attached to the root ball. It was over 30" diameter at the trunk. Even though you'd call it "seasoned", it will likely be at least 2 years after cutting/splitting/stacking this year until it's actually ready to burn. Rule of thumb is that oak dries about 1-1.5 inches per year from all sides. Pretty hard to dry the center when its 15" away from the outside, right? Oak is a slow drying wood, but the point remains. I also processed some ash that was laying on the ground in a swampy area. Dead for years, but just wet. A few weeks later after being split and stacked, the ash was ready to go. That would have never happened if it were green.

Forgive me if I missed it. But if the wood has been seasoned for 2+ years, how did it still have an inner moisture of 35%?

I paid $350 for "seasoned" wood. Haven't been able to use it for 3 years. Ir spits. sizzles and steams.

Did you split it and actually check? I always thought the same but recently another youtuber actually split the wood and checked. It appears the moisture leaves the split wood from the center to the outside. His test results were the opposite. Dryer in the middle on all pieces he split.

I've been burning wood for years and 20 percent is still too wet in my opinion.

The question i have is how is it that our ancestors were able to burn without regard to moisture ? Back in their day EVERYBODY was burning wood so i do not think they were able to season wood for 10 years? Our Great Grand Fathers just cut down a tree stacked it and probably used it within months (or at most a year or so) ? But its not like everybody burnt their houses down right ? Glad to hear you did not torch your house down btw.

You almost lost your house because of a sub par chimney... It's not the wood's fault. I have a regular 6 inch pipe.. and in the attic it has an 8 inch pipe around it. So it's basically a double wall setup, but it's just not insulated. If mine gets full of soot, I just burn a hot fire and leave the damper open and it will burn all that soot out of the pipe with no issues. Even if it catches fire inside the pipe, it doesn't hurt anything......... So moral of the story, stop relying on old brick or rock chimneys and just put a metal pipe inside of it. My stove is just a classic 55 gal drum.. but I welded in a plate in the top, so that it catches all the heat before exiting the flue. I burn all kinds of different wood.. some will be running and dripping and steaming out the ends of the logs.. Doesn't matter at all; like I said: I can just cook the soot out of it any time I want.. but normally I leave the damper mostly closed to capture all the heat and only let it breathe just enough to keep a steady burn. Get a metal flue; they're not that expensive

Gets into other stuff. What type of flue did you have? Did you have soot accumulation in the flue? How hot are your fires? I just see a green log as a regulator log to cool the fire. Show pictures. Let us learn. I'm surprised they don't have temperature regulators on wood stoves yet. I think everyone can over fuel their wood stove to get it and their flue to burn too hot.

If it has 33% moisture content then… I guess it’s NOT perfectly seasoned. Seasoned = dried to the point of a desirable moisture content (

I'm going to assume... which is almost always the wrong thing to do. But if your stove catalyst worked as the damper as some do. Regardless of what the owners manual says install a regular damper in the pipe a foot above the stove. I have heated my house my garage and my barn with wood for 40yrs. The garage and the barn until last year was with a 50gal drum barrel stove kit. Learn how to clean your chimney if you haven't yet. Lastly chimney fires are common have a couple of five gallon buckets handy and a ladder close at all times. Any and EVERYTHING you may need to get on the roof to knock the cap off and pour the bucket of water down the chimney. I also was a Firefighter for 11 yrs treat fire as the beast that it is. Never allow it out

That wood behind you is not seasoned seasoned wood will have checking on the ends not seasoned

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EVERY CENT PERFECT RE chimney fire and moisture meter. Been there and done that. Also got cat. stove so as to gain extra BTUs from burning the smoke. Further. Physics can't be fooled, be sure to use the meter correctly, Also 'seasoning matters only to guitar builder;GET THE METER!!