how to safely heat with green/wet wood in your wood stove when you are desperate

I think this has happened to everybody that heats with a wood stove.  You're cold and the only wood available to you is green or wet.  

Of course, all of the advice is about having a first class wood shed and stocking it to the roof two years ago.  But you're cold now.

We need to dry that wood in a couple of hours.  That is what I'm going to spell out.  I need to say that before this next sentence.

Never burn green or wet wood.  Usually, it won't work because it won't ignite.  But some people have come up with ways to do it.  This is the recipe for a chimney fire which could burn your house down and kill you.  

Also, there are some people that actually advocate for burning green or wet wood.  They suggest that this is the way to have an all night fire.  I need to point out that while they can sometimes pull off the novelty of having fire for a really long time, this is a really bad idea.  I'll need to write another article to address that.  


Burn only DRY materials

      how to quickly dry green or wet wood in a desperate situation


Note that drying firewood is referred to as “seasoning firewood” by some experienced wood burning folk.  Speaking of “seasoned firewood” - you might be reading this chapter because you bought “seasoned firewood” from an “experienced wood cutter” only to discover that it is too green to burn.  You’ve been ripped off and you are going to try to make the best of an awful situation.

A general rule of thumb for dryer climates is to have all of your wood in the shed by Easter.  Summer heat and wind will serve up dry firewood by fall.  So wise.  (soggier climates might need two years or more!)

At the same time, people get into a sticky situation and then they are trying to heat their home with green or wet wood.  Not only do you need ten times more wood to heat your home, but the wood is heavier because of the water - so you are gonna put in ten times the work to get your home warm.

I want to propose a collection of strategies that will add work over perfectly dry wood, BUT the total work will be far less than if you try to burn green wood with the added bonus that your house doesn’t burn down.

Let’s talk about how to go about drying this wood fast.  Maybe getting it to be dry in two days.  In other words, burn ONLY dry wood.  Only, only, only dry wood.  We just need to put in the work to dry it quickly.  


kindling dries faster

If you need to burn in two days, you are gonna make teeny tiny kindling.  Pencil thickness or smaller.  And then do all the other tricks listed here also.  

An eight inch thick block of wood is gonna need more than a full summer of heat and wind to dry enough to be used.  That same wood made into pencil thickness could dry enough in a week of summer heat and wind.  

If you have pencil-thick kindling that is 15.5 inches long, and you cut that into three inch long pieces, and mange to expose it to summer heat and wind (or the interior of a dry house with a fan), your wood will be ready in two days.


stack it on end

Think of wood as a big bundle of thin straws.  If those straws are full of water, and you place the wood on its side, like most people do, then the water doesn’t come out easily.  But if you stand the wood on end (without plugging the bottom of the straws) then the water comes out quickly.  

I have some wood crates that I got super cheap from the craft store.  I throw weirdly shaped wood into the crates and burn that stuff first.   But if I needed to stack firewood on end, I would place it all in one of these crates.  I might put some hardware cloth (that wire mesh stuff) in the bottom to keep from plugging the bottoms of the wood.  Maybe even two or three layers for more air circulation.


bring it indoors

Bring lots of firewood indoors.  A warm home in winter tends to be mighty dry.  A lot of firewood indoors helps create an indoor mass.  Maybe store ten days worth of firewood indoors, and each day replace what you used that day.  


(warm dry) air circulation

If I hang wet laundry on a drying rack indoors, it is pretty dry in a day.  Bone dry in a day and a half.   If I hang it outdoors when the air is still, maybe a day.   With a breeze, it will be half a day.  If I hang laundry outdoors in the windy part of Montana, it will be dry in half an hour - maybe less.

If you have a bunch of firewood in your home and you are trying to dry it, a fan pointed at that wood will be a big help.


convective oven trick

If you need firewood TODAY, you could cut your firewood into pencil thick kindling, and then cut it all to about 3 to 4 inches long.   You now have kindling the size of french fries.  Now place these “french fries” onto a cookie sheet all higgle-dee-piggle-dee.  Mound a couple of inches deep.  Place in a convective oven at 115 degrees with the convection turned on for about four hours.


be careful storing firewood near the wood stove.

If you set up a stack of firewood near your wood stove in such a way that the wood has an unencumbered view of the stove, you will need to keep that wood at least 2 feet away.  Masonry (brick, rock, cob, cement) can be four inches away and the wood can touch that.

While it is true that moving the wood closer will dry it faster, it is also true that wood that close can ignite.  Be safe!


You could set up a flat stone on your wood stove and then put some firewood on that

But it is critically important that there is an air gap between the stone and the stove.  Suppose you have a big chunk of 1 inch thick granite.  If you place a piece of angle iron near the left edge of your stove, and another near the right edge, and then place your granite on top of that, you can stack firewood on top of the granite.  The granite will warm slowly and not only warm the wood, but cause air to be warmed and rise up through the wood.

[possible future image goes here]

A few “smart” people have put firewood directly on top of the wood stove.  Their house burned down.  Be the “smart” that doesn’t have quote marks.


create a lot of really good firewood racks

Indoors and outdoors.  Good, solid racks are the foundation for firewood drying habits.  If you find yourself so desperate for fuel that you are attempting to turbo dry green or wet wood, this is the perfect time to do the math that points out the real problem:  you need more firewood racks.  

If you build them they are a thousand times more likely to magically fill with firewood.  




You can do this.  it will be more work, but it will actually be less work.  In the long run you will have lots of excellent wood sheds and the only wood you burn is stuff that is very dry.  That is the least amount of work.  

Just so!
I have burned way to much green and damp wood in my fireplace. Miserable. Very smoky. I am smarter now and have managed to get a year ahead in my cutting, so I have year-old wood to burn. Damp logs get placed at the bottom of the rack so they have a few weeks to dry in the house before burning.

Simply splitting the logs speeds drying a huge amount. Green sticks an inch or two in diameter won't dry in a year unless split. Split once in half and they dry quickly. Bark is designed to hold in water.

If you are going out to harvest wood, harvesting dead standing is about ten times better than harvesting green wood.

My personal worry is about the chimney.  I have a friend who burns fresh wood and needs the chimney cleaned twice a winter. I think it is worse because they bank the fire at night and let the green wood smolder.

Our chimney guy says small, hot fires, with mass near the stove to keep the heat, is the way to go.  His advise is, if we have to use fresh wood, chop it small, bring it inside a few days before, and the day before, bring it near enough to the stove to get heat, but outside the...can't remember the technical name, but there is a safety zone the city requires around all live flame where the house and stuff are hard to burn. It's usually rock or brick on top if fireproof plywood or something. Mostly, i suspect it's about sparks.  Drying fresh wood needs to be beyond that, he says.

The rocks also help hold the heat which is nice.

He also suggested to start burning the green wood BEFORE running out of the aged wood.  That way we can mix aged wood at least 20% to help keep the fire smaller and hotter.

We get the chimney cleaned at least every other year and the guy always complains it's too clean. We should be going 4 years between sweeping at the way we burn our woodstove.  We burn most days in the winter.

r ranson wrote:I think it is worse because they bank the fire at night and let the green wood smolder.

Excellent point!  NEVER try to run a fire through the night.  

I have seen this way too many times.  People try to burn a huge block of wood - usually a bit on the green or wet side, with the air intake substantially closed, as they go to bed.    A very bad idea all around.

Instead, burn fast, hot fires during the day.   When the fire is over, shut the air intake completely off.  When going to bed, there is no fire and the air intake is 100% closed.  This is the way!

r ranson wrote:He also suggested to start burning the green wood BEFORE running out of the aged wood.  That way we can mix aged wood at least 20% to help keep the fire smaller and hotter.

While this is "less bad" I would push for drying that green wood, somehow, before trying to burn it.

The majority of my 11 acres is in trees.  I have learned to mark the dead standing trees in the summer when they can be easily identified.  That way I can spot them easier in the winter for cutting.

I made a boo-boo with my kindling this year. Normally I leave the thinner bits of my coppice wood in piles and after a year or six months they can just be broken to length - easy! However I neglected to get the sticks up over the summer and of course we aren't getting enough dry weather to dry them out now. Even after a couple of weeks in the wood shed the sticks are still a bit damp - not ideal for fire starting! If I could leave them in the house a week or so then they are dry enough, but I've run out of the good stuff and need kindling now! I've found a quick cheat; by putting them in my stove bottom oven (which I use for drying herbs/mushrooms etc.) overnight, the kindling is dry enough to use straight away....lesson learnt (perhaps). The lower oven get warm, but never hot enough to be a fire hazard.

Greenwood in the wood stove doesn't do too well. Seasoned wood that's not green but is outside in the snow works quite well though. If it's damp on the outside it only goesl so far to the center of the wood. Good hardwood can be split in the middle of a snowstorm out the back door laid up against the house. Bring it in and once you throw it in a hot fire it will quickly be dry. I have gone many years without a woodshed in Pennsylvania and had a nice hot fire all night long in my airtight stove. Yes I let it damp down all night long and started up in the morning. The idea is to start one fire a winter and it will burn till the 1st of spring. And that is with sometimes wet or snowy (but not green) wood. Just knock off the snow and throw it in the fire and it will be completely dry seasoned wood if that's what you started with when you were stocking up your winter supply in the late summer and fall. This is from many years of experience of heating with only wood.

paul wheaton wrote:If you are going out to harvest wood, harvesting dead standing is about ten times better than harvesting green wood.

Agree, but I get a lot of green wood. 2 years ago a neighbor cut down a tree he didn't like. I offered to cut it up and remove it and he was happy to get the help. Now it's perfect and is making wonderful fires.

Last week I cut down a tree in the back yard that was too close to the house and getting too big, shading my peach trees and garden. Sopping wet. By next winter it'll be fine.

Green wood is fine IF you give it plenty of time to dry. Every year I see neighbors cutting down large old trees.

By the way, my Carbon Monoxide detector went off yesterday! Quite a shock. Turns out someone closed the chimney flue with a large block of wood and coals still smoldering. I was sound asleep and the detector is right outside my bedroom door. Plenty loud enough. Aired out the house and opened the flue and the alarm didn't go off again. But it's a wakeup call. Next time I am in town I'm buying another one, just in case. The one I have (that worked) is old and covered with grunge. Just dumb luck it still is working.

I have never cut any tree in my homestead, yet my firewood shack is always full. I use only what beavers have cut on my land. And they cut only green trees.
I cut it, split it, and let it sit at least 2 years.
I have two willow baskets for firewood. From a shed I bring a basket full of 30 cm (12 inch) splitted logs (that's the size of my firebox) and I place it on a masonry bench by the wood stove. While this basket is drying even more on a bench, I use logs from another basket, standing there already for a few days. The top of the bench under baskets is roughly 35-45 degrees Celsius (100-110 F roughly) for many hours after I burn the wood in a stove.
Also, I have a simple, cheap humidity meter - you pinch a log with a meter and it returns information about water percentage the wood contains. I never use anything than has more than 20%, preferably below 15%. A freshly cut by beavers alder has over 50%.

I’m storing firewood in the greenhouse this winter.

This year it’s because hail knocked holes in the polycarbonate glazing and I haven’t repaired it yet.  Just tied an old tarp over it, then chicken wire over the tarp to keep the tarp from flapping/ self destructing in the wind.  (Whick is working well for now.

It might be that I will continue the practice.  I don’t imagine using it all as growing space.

The wood is mass, and may also temper the swings in humidity.

Wood that has been in the snow I dry before burning.  I never knew standing it on its end speeds the drying, though.  Thanks for that bit!

Throwing some dry wood in next to the green wood can help it burn hot enough to keep creosote down.
The dry wood will burn fast and leave the fire-dried green wood to burn slow.
It will steal heat from your fire at first but does eventually add some heat.

paul wheaton wrote:If you are going out to harvest wood, harvesting dead standing is about ten times better than harvesting green wood.

I was grateful for the beaver pond that had killed a lot of hardwood, mostly elm, on the homestead -- years before we bought the place. It wasn't hard to get to it and pull out logs with the tractor in winter. That meant we had already seasoned wood throughout the several years we lived in the house.

I moved into the Red House in Lyndonville Vt  in the late fall.  i built a wood stove out of the tank from a electric water heater. I borrowed a chainsaw and ground the rakers off of the chain thinking it would cut better. ( it didn't) . I found a logger who had a yard where he was dragging trees into, to cut them into logs and the trucks would load them and take them to the mill. He let me cut some up and take them home.  I also worked at a saw mill at the time where we were cutting rail road ties.  the slabs were sent some where for processing and i took the ends home to burn. usually 6-8 inches long  the dimensions of a railroad tie, they would dry out pretty fast but the firewood was green as green could be . it was sizzling and boiling off the water as it burned. I also purchased a firewood permit and went to the designated cutting area and harvested wood.  Several times the rakerless chain narrowly missed body parts as it kicked back. I had to re-think that.  One year is good for drying, two years dry almost burns too fast. A homemade kiln works good if you have the set up. plastic on the ground, then. pallets, then firewood stacked, then black plastic covering it and then a vent  or piece of stove pipe in the top with screen to keep hornets out and it will dry real purty like.

Join Paul, Beau, and other heating experts this Saturday, January 10th, at 10:00 am MT for a live discussion on how to heat your home when the only wood available is green or wet.



Click "Notify Me" on youtube to be the first to receive a notification when we go live.

Feel free to leave any questions here that you would like us to address during the live event. Hope to see you there!!

Andrés Bernal wrote:Join Paul, Beau, and other heating experts this Saturday, January 10th, at 10:00 am MT for a live discussion on how to heat your home when the only wood available is green or wet.



Click "Notify Me" on youtube to be the first to receive a notification when we go live.

Feel free to leave any questions here that you would like us to address during the live event. Hope to see you there!!

Due to some technical difficultes the live smackdown has been postponed to next saturday. Leave your questions here so the panel can tackle them next week :)