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| That's the gauge, reading wouldn't show. |
I left the East Pole at least two weeks earlier last year than I had expected. Rain and consistent temperatures above freezing necessitated a quick exit lest I get caught here for a while and even then I would have had to hike out. As a result I left a considerable amount of wood cut but yet to be split. I had split a cord and a half and a little more. FYI a cord is not a pickup-full. It's two rows 8 feet long and 4 feet high. I have left now just about one cord. I burned the half between December 3 and now (January 9). This takes me through the cold part of the winter and as temperatures warm toward spring I use less. I do have about half a cord stacked under the porch and in a pile under the snow (covered by Visqueen) down the hill. I also had half a cord of spruce, which burns much faster so not the best firewood compared to birch. Looking at what I have left, I have started splitting a day's worth from the stack under the porch every day to supplement the main supply.
And therein lies the "more than you probably want to know." Last winter my friend Joe May sent me a device that measures the moisture content in the wood. You want as low a moisture content as you can get for burning; that's why we normally cut for a year ahead. Unfortunately the lower the moisture content, the faster it burns. Anyway: I made a couple of test chunks. Last March they measured 18.3 percent moisture. I checked in December almost as soon as I came out. They measured 15.2 percent. So, in about nine months I gained about 3 percent. That is rated "medium" on the meter. Doesn't seem like much, but it burns fine.
The nine months triggered a memory. A few years ago I read something put out by the State of Alaska about firewood and whoever wrote it said all you need is 9 months drying. I will watch my test chunks and see what they say at the end of March. My experience says a year is better. Another thing the writer said is it makes no difference if the wood is frozen, that goes totally against my experience. The wood I have saved under the porch is well frozen after almost two weeks of sub-zero temperatures. Several of them display the scars and wounds from when I tried to split them with my 18-pound maul, but gave up. At these temperatures they fall apart under the 6-pound maul. Enough said. Of course there's that 3 percent moisture loss. It looked to me like that article was written by someone who had never spent a day in the wood lot.
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| 20.5 percent moisture reads in the high zone. |
But there's this that applies as well. Even in sub-zero temperatures, the relative humidity outdoors here remains above 70 percent and in the teens and 20s flirts with 90 percent, so we aren't getting much help from climate. Note the reading in the photo: 20.5 percent. That's from the center of a chunk with about a 14-inch radius from what I am splitting daily. One I checked earlier came from the outermost part of the wood and read 15.2. The one I am monitoring under the house was also from a center cut. I guess it pays to split the wood.
Then there's the discussion about buying a hydraulic log splitter. I am not much of an exerciser, but I find splitting wood (and the other physical aspects of the process) gets me into some sort of shape fairly quickly. And obviously offers plenty of time for the mind to wander as well.
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