AJH wrote:
On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:02:36 GMT, Stuart Noble
wrote:

It's reckoned that wood dries outdoors to a moisture content of 17% in
winter, and 15% in summer. This is what you expect joinery quality from
a timber merchant to be. But for indoor stuff and furniture, it should
ideally be around 10%, which is only achieved by keeping it indoors for
a few weeks. In an ideal world you wouldn't plane the timber until then

I must have missed something in this thread, are we talking about
seasoning planks for joinery or firewood?

If we're talking about a modest amount of planks and the cellar is not
naturally damp then worst case is you'd need to add a small fan to one
of the vents. If you're talking about dobbing a whole heap of fresh
logs onto the floor then you'll have problems getting enough air
through the heap before it starts rotting, which means both loss of
dry matter and production of more water which needs carrying off.

Even so split logs do dry out ok in my brother's redundant pig shed
over a summer with natural ventilation, that's the key, passing enough
m^3 of unsaturated air through the heap.


Well how much water can there be in a cu m (a few tonnes) of logs? 500
liters? and that takes about a year to dry..so thats as much as ..gasp -
10 liters a week? Gosh thats nearly a liter a day..spread out over an
area of lord knows how much. Hardly taxing is it?


AJH