I want to buy the i dry kiln to dry for myself and other's. Will you tell me about where to start on price to charge per board foot. I mill about 1000 bdft a week.
Normally the rate is anywhere between .62-.75 per bf a week. Now that depends on your electric costs in your area. If you have a high energy cost you may need to charge more
So fully open with the trolley outside the whole kiln is almost 38’ long. As far as capacity it’s 56” off the trolley to the ceiling and I believe it’s about the same width maybe a bit wider it’s been a while since I checked that, it’s running now or I would let you know 100%. The shop where the kiln is at is 60’ long. It gives us enough room to get behind the kiln, that is where all the controls and hook ups are.
I’d like to know how you know when it is done, do you check it everyday/every few days? How do you check for moisture? What do you dry it to? Do you run the kiln on low or high power and how often does it drain? Sorry for all the questions, did some research and these are a few things I cannot find definitive answers on.
For sure, 1. The kiln has a digital chart that tells you the heat, vacuum pressure and moisture inside the kiln at any given time. It doesn’t give the reading of the wood but I can watch the moisture line and as it begins to drop once it reaches the 9% ranges I know that I can open the kiln up and start checking the lumber with my gauges. 2. We have a few different types of moisture meters that we use. My favorite one is our Wagner Orion 950. It is pricey but it’s an important tool in the drying process. It’s also very important to select a meter that can change settings for different types of species of wood, because different species of wood have different densities so being able to change settings to accommodate for that is very important. 3. We like to have the wood finish at anywhere from 6-8% moisture content. 4.We normally like to pre-dry (air dry) our wood until it reaches about 26% moisture. To get it to 26% depends on a bunch of factors like wood species, climate outside, is it out of the elements etc. That way the kiln can run on high or full power. Now you can put wetter wood in the kiln but you would have to run it on low power. When you run wood with a higher moisture content (over 26%) you may run the risk of cracking, and degrade. We have done it and haven’t seen to much degrade. And when you put wet wood in it doesn’t take longer so your cost of drying will be higher. Thank you for the questions, maybe I should do a more detailed video on how everything works.
