Kiln dried firewood

[Medusa]

As I have mentioned (several) times before we get free pallets to burn, but we also need to buy some wood. Our usual supplier now supplies us with kiln dried, (dried on a drying floor) wood rather than the seasoned wood he used to supply and it just seems to burn way too fast. I know that it is supposed to be less than 20% moisture these days for efficient and clean burning, but we seem to have rocked through it this year much faster than normal. How dry is too dry for efficient burning and heat? I suppose that I should really buy a moisture testing thing and check it myself, but am really considering going back to seasoned rather than the "kiln" dried stuff and obviously the price has increased too, more than the expected annual increase. Obviously I do not want to be burning wet wood and I certainly dont want people knocking on my door and a fine for smoke emissions, but is there an optimum moisture content?

[pseudonym]

I use kiln dried wood. Yes it does burn faster but I damper my wood burner down sooner to counteract that.

As to prices:

https://thewizardoflogs.co.uk/

both have gone up £40 in 3 years

[Winterprep]

Personally I season all my own wood.Anything from 20% and below is what I burn. I’ve never understood the point in using heat to dry wood to generate heat seems like a waste of energy!

If you think that things are burning too fast can you compare your burning times with what you used to use and maybe you have a leaking seal or damper that’s not closing properly,just worth a check.

You can get moisture meters on Amazon from £10 to £50.

HTH.

WP

[GeraldTheBonzai]

The only kiln dried wood we use at the moment is kindling. I didn't like kiln dried for exactly the same reason - seemed to burn too fast.

So did a bit of investigation. Kiln dried wood has a much lower water content than seasoned, so actually burns hotter. What we were doing wrong was burning kiln dried in the same way that we burned seasoned - vent settings, how often we were adding wood etc. Once we "turned everything down" as it were for kiln dried, it performed the same.

But regardless, using energy to create kiln dried wood seems counter productive to me. Would rather let it season a bit longer.

[grenfell]

I don't as such buy kiln dried firewood , well to be honest I don't buy wood at all. But , as a joiner I do buy kiln dried timber for work. There are of course always off cuts and waste that goes to the woodburner and yes it burns readily , great for kindling . I do remember one time some years ago when I burnt quite a bit in one day , 12 bags of joinery offcuts . Ok to be fair I was up early and went to bed late so possibly 16-18 hours but not a consumption I could sustain for very long. As it is at the moment work has given me a really decent quantity of green wood which I'm currently logging up . At the very earliest it will be ready next winter though.
On the other end of the scale in re-enactment there is or was a running joke about English Heritage safety wood , wood that seems to have been cut down the week before and stored in the canal in between. Smoulders away more than anything else. We took to taking as,much as we could , taking it home and bringing it back the following year and repeating. We have also had organisers provide pallets that must have been treated as they gave off quite acrid smoke.

[ForgeCorvus]

On the other end of the scale in re-enactment there is or was a running joke about English Heritage safety wood , wood that seems to have been cut down the week before and stored in the canal in between. Smoulders away more than anything else. We took to taking as,much as we could , taking it home and bringing it back the following year and repeating. We have also had organisers provide pallets that must have been treated as they gave off quite acrid smoke.

I've encountered LARP safety firewood, it actually seems to suck heat out of the surroundings and anyone stood nearby in order to burn.