How to Dry Firewood Faster – Seasoning the Firewood to The Best

You brought your friends home for a fun pizza party. However, you ended up being cursed as before the pizzas; you let your friend’s throat come out of their mouth due to coughing, and eyes gone devil red due to excessive watering.

What went wrong?

Thankfully, no one calls a fire brigade due to excessive smoke from your wood fuel. You should have dried out the wood to save yourself from this sort of humiliation.

Let’s face this; this will always ensue whenever you start burning wet firewood. So, how to dry firewood faster? You have multiple ways to pull firewood moisture content out of it. Technically, damp wood or fresh cut wood moisture ratio ranges between 30-60%. You have to bring it down, baby.

So, how to draw moisture out of wood quickly – question#1, how long to season firewood – the most anticipated query you probably want to get answered in no time, and starting a fire with wet wood – the consequences, these all will be our course in our menu today. Let’s jump onto these;

How To Dry Firewood Faster – What Happened When Starting a Fire with Wet Wood:

You’ll probably bear an untoward struggle when your pizza remains unripe even after hours of baking. Actually, making your wood ready, AKA seasoning the firewood to use as fuel power, is a lengthy and patience-demanding thing. Starting a fire with wet wood with 30-60% as firewood moisture content has its own good and bad flags.

For example, these are quick igniters. However, the drawbacks are much more in numbers than the positive aspects. Like;

• Wet Woods burn fast, so add extra cost to your pizza baking.
• You always face low temperatures, which won’t be sufficient to bake a pizza.
• Propagate excessive smoke, which will definitely be unwholesome for your environment and also leave more creosote in your oven exhaust.

Principally, you must bring the firewood moisture content in the range of 15-20%. You can squeeze it further from this range, but you should be an absolute master at the patience meter. Remember, fully air-dried lumber can give you the following benefits;

• Will burn extra miles.
• Produce Sizzling temperatures, so the cheese can dance on pizza dough in quick seconds.
• Produce less smoke which will eventually be equally Good for your and your’ oven health.

But how to draw moisture out of wood through seasoning? That is the Real art to master. Let’s get fully known about when is the perfect time to place dried wood in your kiln.

How Long to Season Firewood – Best Ways to Dry Wood to Perfection:

Bad news – Seasoning isn’t a “Get it real quick” scheme. It consumes from days to months to a whole season for the lumber drying process to reach the desired limit. Definitely, the time limit boils down to many circumstances like the type of wood (place link here), moisture ratio, and your weather, but take into your mind, a Sap wood takes 6-12 months to get thoroughly dried.

How to Season Firewood – Find the Fastest Way to Dry Wood:

Good News – You can make firewood seasoning faster with some easy tricks. But beware between Sap- Green wet wood (fresh cut wood) and Water-wet wood as both circumstances have a distinct time limit to get fully seasoned.

Divide your approach to draw firewood moisture content out of the wood into Indoor and Outdoor settings. This will be really easy to understand. So for the Indoor procedure, here are the best ways to dry wood;

Drying Wood in Oven – Fastest, but Risky One:

Really? Can you put wood in a microwave or oven? Seems strange,yes, you can do it, but you have to manage risk HIGHLY. If you haven’t enough space inside or outside for drying wood slabs, you can go for drying wood in oven.

However, I am not really a fan of this method, as this can be hazardous if you don’t manage this method correctly.

So, if you have ANY other option to dry lumber or firewood, go for that first. This is how you dry firewood in the oven;

• Split the wood horizontally and cut the length into small pieces of wood according to oven size
• Preheat the oven to 400F for 15-20 minutes; before placing the wood in the oven, maintain the temperature between 200-250F as a safe range.
• Take a stopwatch and set a 10 minutes timer to monitor the procedure every 10 minutes to manage the risk.
• I won’t be doing more than 1 hour, but you can keep drying wood in the microwave or oven for the above 1-hour as per the ratio of firewood moisture content. Ideally, you have to map the moisture content first through a hygrometer.
• Reposition the wood from time to time to finish curing the wood evenly.

Pro Tip: If your oven has a convection fan, turn that on so it will fasten the process. For this, place the wood slabs on the middle rack.

Dehumidify + Air Dry the Lumber:

You can perform this method indoors and outdoors as well. Additionally, you can dry wood slabs with only a high-speed fan, a dehumidifier, or a combination of both. But how long does wood take to dry via this method?

I’ll recommend you use a combination of these appliances to accelerate the evaporation. This will add some extra cost to your electricity expenses, but you’ll definitely get premium results in a short time.

This is how you do it;

• Stack Wood outside or inside, depending on the space.
• Check moisture from the hygrometer, and if it’s above 50%-70%, you are good to go with only a fan; otherwise, combine the dehumidifier.
• Stacking the wood is the real art here. Stack the wood slabs so that each layer should have at least a 1-inch gap in-between. This will let the water drops or moisture content evaporate easily.
• Make sure there will be no barrier, wall, or solid behind the place where you’ll pile your wood slabs. This will block air crossing, so chances are you won’t get easy wood or lumber drying.
• You can add multiple high-speed fans and dehumidifiers to speed up the process.

Pro tips: In case of high humidity, you can add 1 ultra-speed fan and two dehumidifiers. Dehumidifiers remove excess moisture from the environment, and the fan will evaporate the wetness from wood.

The Garage Method – How to Season Firewood via Garage or Abandoned Indoors:

Using abandoned indoors like store rooms or garages can considerably shorten the firewood seasoning length. Again, it entirely depends on the wood type; you can choose this best way to dry wood as quickly as 3 months.

Actually, the places like garages or low-usage rooms pose more heat than regular indoor spaces with frequent use. That’s why the high temperatures and low humidity fasten the wood curing process. However some precautions you have to write in your dairy;

• Infestation should be done before you stack wood in the garage.
• Split the wood and cut it into small pieces of wood.
• Do the stacking away from circuit breakers and flammable materials like petrol, diesel, and other liquid fuels.
• At least spare 1ft space between any barrier and wood stocks.
• Split the wood horizontally, and rows of wood slabs should have at least 1 inch Gap in-between.
• Also, there should be a gap between the ground and the wood stack to prevent any bugs.

Pro tip: Manually check each wood slab or log. In case of any bugged wood log, separate that piece so it’ll decay all the lot. Visit the garage space after 10-15 minutes to check on any hazardous activity.

Sun Drying The Wood – Stack the Wood Outside:

As the name suggests, it’s purely an outdoor activity. You have space, you have time but are short of budget to bear electrical appliances to draw moisture out of wood blocks; a natural heater is your best friend then.

If you have summers or springs with high temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius primarily, some woods get seasoned in less than a week. However, you have to save your wood stacked outdoors from light or heavy showers. So prepare yourself according to that;

• As you are not taking help from any electrical gadget, cut the wood into thinner logs – ideally, not thicker than 4 inches.
• Don’t permanently shade the wood stack, so the sunlight directly should reach the wood logs.
• Only do rain proofing in case of bad weather
• Same as the garage method, manage a gap of 4-6 inches between ground and wood stack.

Pro tip: Extend the wood stack horizontally, so you’ll make fewer rows, and the heating process will be more operative.

What Acknowledges You the Ending of Firewood Seasoning?

Well, there are ubiquitous signs to read about completing the firewood drying process. You’ll witness;

Lighter Weight: As the seasoning process has evaporated water and moisture content out of the wood, you feel the wood much lighter in the weight

Cracks in The Wood: Different species have different kinds of cracks; however, wood fibers contract during the drying process. This leads wood to crack.

No Hissing: If you are scared of wood hiss, fully dried firewood with no moisture content doesn’t hiss while burning.

Change in Color: When moisture fades away, the wood gets darkened. You’ll face darker tones of each species.

Ready to Burn: When water and moisture dry out, there remain the pure wood fibers to burn. You add it into the fire; it’ll burn straightaway.

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People Also Ask – FAQs

How to Store Lumber Outside?

You can store lumber outside by placing it under a dry shade where rain or snow can’t reach out. I have made an iron frame for this purpose that keeps wood logs locked in a place and above the ground so avoid any infestation. 

How Long To Air Dry Lumber?

Different factors get applied to the length of the air-dry process. The Percentage of moisture content, Air power, humidity in climate, wood specie, the length of air drying per day, number of fans + dehumidifiers affect time period of to get full dried lumber. However, expect anything between 1 week to 12 months or more to get the desired results. 

How to Kiln Dry Wood?

Kilning is a process of storing the wood in a chamber and letting the heat induced in the chamber, controlling the moisture content and humidity levels. So, that way you kiln dry the wood.

The Bottom Line – Fuel the Oven Now:

Well, how to dry firewood faster? You have to identify what wood type you are using first. In case you still ask me how long to season firewood? This is highly dependent on the wood type. For example, some fruitwoods season (pine, apple) faster than regular hardwood (Oak). Also, there are multiple ways to draw moisture out of wood, but what will be your best way to dry wood? Only time and your experience can tell this.