Operations ·Jun 12, 2018

Outdoor Furnace: The Top 3 Most Important Steps When Preparing Wood

Outdoor Furnace: Preparing Your Wood For Winter

The Top 3 Most Important Steps to Remember When Preparing Your Wood for This Winter

Will You Be Ready?

Properly preparing wood can make a huge difference in keeping your outdoor wood burning boiler on its high efficiency. So, you're not alone if you want to learn more about how to prepare firewood for your outdoor wood burner to help keep your home at a comfortable temperature all year.

Freshly cut green wood contains up to 50% moisture. That means that 50% of the weight of the wood is water. However, properly seasoned wood contains only 20% moisture.

When you try to burn green wood, you must first use up your precious BTUs from your fire to boil off the water in green wood. Those are BTUs that could have gone into your home, but instead are wasted.

So the 3 Most Important Steps are as follows:

1.) Split

2.) Stack

3.) Cover

Split

Obviously, splitting your wood opens it up to allow it to dry much faster. A round log will never properly dry - it will start to rot before it has had enough time to dry.

Stack

Stacking wood allows it to air-dry faster, particularly if you only stack the wood in narrow piles so the air can flow freely. Many people stack their wood on pallets to keep the bottom layer from rotting.

Cover

Cover your woodpile on the top from rain. Do not allow your cover to hang far over the edges of the pile as this prevents airflow.

How long does it take to get seasoned wood?

The amount of time for proper seasoning depends upon many factors, but if you have a GASIFIER outdoor wood boiler, you should have already cut, split, and stacked your wood for this next winter.

It will take at least 6 months for green hardwood to properly dry in order to burn properly in your GX Series or other gasification outdoor boiler. You actually should prepare your wood this summer for next Winter.

All other traditional outdoor wood furnaces will sometimes operate a little better with some higher moisture content wood. This is because they are not high-efficiency furnaces and a load of really dry wood will burn up like a pile of match sticks, and too much of that heat will exit the chimney before it has a chance to transfer through your furnace walls into your water jacket.

Do NOT burn all green wood, but also don't just burn 'matchstick dry' firewood in your outdoor boiler either.

So for these traditional outdoor wood stoves, it is ok to use wood that is less seasoned. We have some customers who mix some green wood in with their dry wood and they report that this works very well.

Video - EPA Blunders Again

While we may disagree with the EPA's blundering policy, they created this useful video on the topic. It is less than 2 minutes in length and worth watching. (Ignore the comments about the health risks of wood smoke - as if there are ANY types of smoke that are actually good for your health!)

Click BELOW to see the video.