Thank you so much, Maximus. As usual I learn so much when I listen to you. You are very much appreciated. Every time you throw out another gem I want to give another up tick, of course I cannot, silly me. I hope you never stop doing this, you must be making so many people's lives much easier. I would love to buy you a drink, Cheers friend!
Right - so I've been burning wood for decades, but I did wonder what you'd worked out that I hadn't. And sure enough, after watching this it was suddenly obvious that drying unseasoned wood on the fire will take energy that's not released as heat. So here's one dim-witted follower now better informed. Thank you.
I love the fact that you always think about what your end goal is and make it happen. And that you truly get enjoyment out of your accomplishments. You are living the dream and you know it and appreciate it. That’s where the “zen” comes from! Thanks for sharing all your videos with us! My hat is off to you!
You all prolly dont give a damn but does anybody know a method to get back into an instagram account?? I somehow forgot my password. I would love any help you can give me!
Yay! at last, someone who has taken the trouble to learn about using wood as fuel. Seasoning to 20% or less not only produces more heat but more importantly less air pollution.
It might sound difficult nobby, but it's bloody true. I'm a software engineer who does forestry part time and I love my annual Puzzle of stacking after I've split. Relaxing.
We always had a wood fire at my parents' house (they still do). I grew up cutting, splitting, stacking, bringing in and (finally) burning wood. (Love the smell of it when handling it.) My Dad taught me to stack it with the bark side up, as much as possible, especially the top layer of the wood pile. Helps keen the rain off etc, meaning it dries out more quickly. Could be worth trying.
One of my favourite jobs is gathering and stacking firewood. Your wood stacked in cages is enough to make me drool. Good work. Love it. When I drive by houses in the country the one thing I love is to see the stacks of firewood people have in their yards ready for winter. To me that is "Curb appeal" haha.
A lovely big stack of wood. Very therapeutic stacking it too. I agree. We don't cut our own but I do get enormous pleasure in stacking when it arrives on site. Very envious. Keep up the vids - very enjoyable. R & T
Thank you for sharing all your tips. It is very kind of you, and your information is very informative. I love the way you draw your ideas on your clip board and explain. Wish you the very best. I love your videos.
Love your channel. I have used the 1x1x 2.5m rolling cages and use an empty tonne bag upside down to shelter the top which goes on top like a glove. It seasons the logs within weeks
4:26 Nice woodpile! Your idea of using the cages is quite clever. I heat my home with wood here in snowy northern New England and use old sheets of metal roofing to cover my stacked firewood. It keeps the rain off, but lets the moisture out where plastic sheeting tends to hold in condensation.
I absolutely love watching your videos brother - you are for real and your brutal honesty and integrity combined with a lovely, gentle humour resonates with me - can I move in next door ? ;-) ha ha ha x
If you left it uncovered in the west of Scotland,it would still be wet the following year.It can be a hassle to gather,cut,chop and store,but it's still better than paying some bugger £50 quid a cube.Keep the vids coming,from another Land Rover obsessive,and bikes obviously
You are right about people saying ash is the best firewood. But after storing ash for over a year it is most likely to contain wood boring insects unless kiln dried. Like you my favourite is thorn. It burns hot and has very little insect damage.
I think the chucking timber into piles randomly leaves more airspace than very neat stacking. We make heaps on a base of pallets to get it off the ground and have a taurpolin over the top, but that only covers the very top. We are near the coast so very windy and good drying
Hi Max :) A tip from a birch stacker from Norway. We are using some roof plates off steel on the top off the stacks. A quick google translate search said the English name was "corrugated iron" but I`m not sure. The time the wood needs to dry will be much shorter, and because there is limited access to water, the wood will hold its color and no fungus will grow. I use to build a little roof that is a bit wider than the stack, to protect even better when the rain is not falling strait down ;) But it also helps just putting them on the top off the stack with some stones to hold them down in windy weather. We use these plates also because they lead all the water away from the stack, insted off dripping down on the wood. Plates looks something like this : 2ecffd01e1ab3e9383f0-07db7b9624bbdf022e3b5395236d5cf8.ssl.cf4.rackcdn.com/Product-800x800/017b9f1b-c44d-4d68-9320-a5cac72cdeee.jpg
Good tip! Yes corrugated iron is the name, though we would say sheets rather than plates. I've only a small experience with birch, like you're saying, you need to dry it fast or it rots very easily!
Lot of people around here call it same thing or tin ,, that's what I use on my wood piles I'll leave it sticking off side few inches more an other thing is put black plastic sheets comes in rolls put underneath your woodpile that really helped on the moisture from the ground and I know Birch is fair if u can get better hardwood,, but I don't know for sure where you're from I live in Indiana USA,,
@@garyrichmond7857 I wouldn't advise plastic at the bottom of a pile of firewood, but I'm Dutch. I would use cinder blocks and concrete mesh mats to keep fire wood of the ground.
Another great vid Max, sharing your own experience. I've lived with logs for about 15 yrs now, cutting my own wood, seasoning, splitting etc. It's a lot of work and for me as there is so much wood cutting I want to move over to solar power as I believe it would be more planet friendly thing to do. Currently looking at the costs of solar panels and battery storage. Have town gas but that will be going in a couple of months, in favour of bottled stuff.
David Jebson `Have you considered wood pellets? We recently changed from logs to pellets and it uses far less wood with a clean burn which is far hotter. No creosote and far less ash :) You can also run it on a timer, just like gas.
The old timers around (canadian prairies ) here used to make their stacks of uneven wood (small growth poplar, willow, burr oak ect) in a round stack with a hollow middle. May work for you.
Good video, all the better as it is based on practical experience through experimentation and trial and error. Useful tips about burning green wood consumes energy before it gets to provide useful heat
I think the other thing about wet wood is that the water reacts with the creosote and soot to produce sulphuric acid which then eats your stove and flue.
Tips on seasoning firewood: live in Southern California. The extremely hot, dry summers will sap the wood of all moisture in one season, no matter how you stack it.
ah, a man after my own heart, i love the process of cutting, splitting and drying wood. but i make shelters out of pallets to do it, works well for me so far, i only burn wood and on an open fire!! im burning around 6 cords a year at the minute. id post a link to my vids but it will come up as spam
This kinda living is the life, we are all brainwashed and forced to think we have to work work work chasing paper until we a retire and by that time we are too old to do the things we wanted to do. Fuck the 9-5 i am slowly but surely going to end up living my life back to basics i know ill be so much happier
Love your video s I would love to live like you been looking for a place in Wales but haven't found anything yet do you rent out one off your cabins so people can have a taster off that sort off life
First and foremost: love this guy and what he's doing. Buuuuuuut, please tell me there's a Ted round there somewhere and your real name is Ralph. How's the drainage in the lower fields?
Greg if you happen to live in a smoke control zone (your local authority will be able to inform you of there are any relivant to you) then legally you need to use a Defra approved stove, which because of the approval process will cost you extra. If not in a smoke control zone, then it's fine. If your putting it in a home then there are regulations about how it should be done (which are generally sensible to follow) and you will need to get it signed off by local building control if you want to insure your house or sell it (legally think you have to do it but not sure on that so you'd have to check.
i'm in a smoke control zone and everyone burns wood, you can smell it in the evening when going outside, i live in a small town on the edge of Dartmoor national park. lots of wood burning down this way. most people take no notice and it isnt enforced either
Careful with hawthorn - it has a high calorific value and can burn fire grates if allowed to run hot. (I was a tree worker and sold wood) How many of those cages do you burn in an average year??
Thanks man, really helpful. Nice set up you have there with the firewood. How many acres of woodland I wonder to sustainably produce all of that for your wood burner?
Small tip, leave a bit of fallen and take some live standing as well. Amazing what lives in both dead standing and fallen that's useful to the health of the woods. I used to "clean up" windfall until I stopped to think on it. Only a suggestion thought.
It takes just over 2000 kj to vaporise 1l water, to put that in terms of electricity saving/wood drying terms, every kg of water evaporated by the sun is equivalent of running a 500 watt heater for an hour. (I think)
Does leaving it out exposed to the elements defeat the object ?? im thinking rain how can it burn if it is wet through ??? would it not be better under cover ??
Nope! When you're seasoning you want to drive the moisture out from deep inside the fibres of the wood, the best way to do that is by exposing the ends of the wood to as much air as possible. So covering them up when seasoning would actually slow the process down as you would be stopping the air flow. The way I have them stacked up or in cages, the wood is a breezy spot and they dry out very quickly after rain. Once seasoned, then it is beneficial to keep dry, I tend to have a sheet of plywood over the cage I am currently using to keep the rain off. Hope that makes sense!
I found that if I left the wood in an good un-sheltered open area exposed to the elements including rain, when it came to temperatures were at or below freezing, the water in the wood would freeze (Ice) and expand. This would help open up the grain causing fishers (Natural splits). When summer time came and the wood pile was exposed to sunlight and heat the wood would dry better. It would be noticeable by seeing more fishers caused by shrinkage. I could season wood in a year for my stove by leaving it exposed to all elements this way. Great vids by the way, Thanks.
rain water doesn't penetrate through the top layer and thus re dries out very quickly, the aim is to dry the center of the log for soot free efficient burning
FREE wood, as long as its wood of any description and you can cut to fit in the stove. I don't know about the other types as I have never used any unless it was for free.
Seasoned firewood means dry firewood. Cut it, stack it, cover the top not the sides so the air can move through and dry it properly. You need to cover your wood or it's not going to dry properly. Itll just start to rot.
bottom layer should be bark side down and the top layer should be bark side up to A) stop the bugs from eating the wood and B) to protect the wood from the the rain, also you can add a roof on top of your stack for further protection from the rain. But most importantly you must allow for adquate spacing between the stacks of wood so it can dry out.
I do make some money from youtube, it's about £1 per thousand views (or about £7 per day at the current rate of views). I make the videos to share a bit of what I've picked up along the way and hopefully to inspire a few people into trying some stuff for themselves.
Maximus Ironthumper Cool! I sometimes think I would like to live a life like you, as the complexities of modern life can be unnaturally stressful and not good for ones well being. I think I would be the perfect candidate for a life that you live being a practical, common sense individual.
Max says ti's better to burn dry rather than wet wood because "you waste some of the heat driving the water out of the wet wood. I think this is incorrect; wether the wood is wet, moist or dry an equal _mass_ of a particular type of wood will have a particular calorific value, so when it burns the same amount of heat is created. This assumes that the degree of combustion is the same, for each sample. The question of what happens to the boiled off moisture is separate. It may increase the amount of creosote formed. I don't know about this, perhaps someone else has the facts.
Surely heat and temperature are different things. Dry wood burns quickly and so the temperature is greater. Wet wood burns slowly and is cooler. Same heat, different burn rates, different temperatures.
