Splitting Wood Is The Short Part Of Making Firewood

Splitting wood is the short part of making firewood, and what a firewood splitter leaves you with still has a year to go

A full woodshed is not the same as a full winter

Canadian households put up their firewood in late summer for a heating season that starts in October. A firewood splitter turns a pile of rounds into a pile of pieces in a weekend, and whether any of it is worth burning is decided over the year that follows.

Wood coming off a firewood splitter is roughly half water by weight. Burning it produces steam rather than heat, coats a chimney in creosote, and leaves an owner convinced their stove is inadequate when the problem was never the appliance.

How long does firewood take to dry is a question about species and stacking

The target is around twenty percent moisture, and reaching it takes most Canadian hardwoods a full year under cover. Softwoods and split birch can get there in six months, and oak routinely takes two years no matter what anyone does to it.

Running rounds through a tow behind firewood splitter is what starts the clock. Bark is an effective barrier and a whole round dries from its ends only, which is why an unsplit log left for a year is still wet in the middle and a split piece beside it is ready.

How to stack firewood to dry comes down to airflow

A 34 ton firewood splitter makes the pieces, and the drying that follows works by evaporation, which stops once the surrounding air is saturated. A pile with no gaps holds humid air inside it, so the outside dries and the middle stays wet through an entire summer of good weather.

Wood off a 34 ton firewood splitter dries best in single rows with a hand's width between them rather than in a solid block. Orienting the rows so the prevailing wind blows along the gaps rather than against the end of the stack is the free improvement most people never make.

Off the ground, and covered only on top

Knowing how to stack firewood to dry begins here: wood in contact with soil wicks moisture upward and rots from the bottom row. Pallets, rails, or even a couple of poles solve that entirely, and they also let air move underneath the stack rather than only through it.

Firewood divides by how far ahead it was made

This season: small pieces, softwood, still marginal
One year ahead: most hardwoods ready, the usual target
Two years ahead: oak and elm, nothing left to chance

Where working ahead pays and where it costs

Strength: dry wood burns hotter and cleaner
Strength: far less creosote in the chimney
Limit: two seasons of wood needs two stacks
Limit: covered storage space for both

Weighed against splitting in the fall for the same winter, working a year ahead costs space and returns a stove that heats properly. A homeowner near Bancroft runs two stacks side by side and burns only the older one, which is the arrangement most experienced burners arrive at.

Wood heat is being measured rather than judged by eye

Inexpensive moisture meters have become common in Canadian households that burn wood, and knowing the number rather than guessing has changed how far ahead people work and how they stack what they have already split.

That more careful approach to seasoning is why the outdoor equipment TMG Industrial supplies is built to get a season of wood processed quickly, since the drying afterward is the part nobody can hurry.