Well, I’m going to tell you the rules, right now. These are not the rules you’ll find elsewhere on the intertunnel about drying firewood. I know, because before I gave up on that information enterprise, I checked them all out. They’re all wrong. Forget them. This is how you do it:

First, get a nice mix of hardwood. People get confused about burning hardwood and softwood, and start arguing, and hitting each other with axes, and nothing gets done. It’s interesting, but basically all wood is simply two ingredients: cellulose and lignin. Different kinds of wood have different ratios of those substances, and a varying melange of trace elements. If you like, you can read all about calcium carbonate and compare the trace amounts of manganese compared to boron over at Wikiwhatsis. Study up on alkenes and alkynes and alkanes to your heart’s content. But leave me out of it.

Why do you want hardwood? Because it’s denser. All other things being equal, denser is better. That’s about it. Oak makes great firewood. Maple makes good firewood. Birch makes good firewood. Around here, that’s about all you’ll get in your firewood delivery. Oak is the best, because it’s the densest. Denser wood burns longer and so you get to sleep three straight hours instead of two-and-a-half because you’re tending the stove, and if the fire goes out, it’s in the thirties in your living room in a hurry.

Oak is great for another reason. You see, when you burn wood, it becomes pyrolized. Pyrolosis is what happens to wood when you heat it up. It chars, and releases volatiles. It’s the volatiles that burn. That’s why flames appear in the air above a fire. It’s hard to get pyrolosis going if your wood isn’t seasoned correctly. Please notice I didn’t say “wet.” If the internal moisture content of your firewood is low, you can throw it in the furnace soaking wet on the outside, even caked with ice, and it will burn fine. Dry on the outside and wet on the inside won’t burn.

Another factor to consider is called coaling. Good luck looking that up on the intertunnel. I’ll explain it as best I can, seeing as how I barely understand it myself. Good firewood, like nicely dried oak, is dense, has a lot of BTUs in each junk, and burns longer than species like pine. It also coals nicely. Coaling is what happens when the wood is completely pyrolized, and slowly combusts with nearly no flame. In a furnace like ours, you can get quite a show in the observation window when you’ve got the air intakes just right, the fire just right, and the firewood just right. The charcoal remnants of the original logs emit some volatiles, but no smoke. The volatiles are ignited in the air above the fire, just under the baffle that leads out to the flue. They dance around like the aurora borealis. The wood is all black, and doesn’t seem to really be on fire, but it’s slowly consumed and gives off beaucoup heat. That’s coaling, and you want it.

So, how are you going to get it? Like this.

• Stack your split logs in single rows. Never in a pile or with rows touching each other. Air has to circulate all around to dry the wood
• Never try to dry your wood inside a structure or up against a structure of any kind. Sunshine and wind are your friend
• The rows of logs should run vaguely east to west. The sun is in the south in our hemisphere. You want it shining on the long face of your woodpiles, not the ends
• The woodpiles can be five feet high or so, to save space, but higher is a PIA
• The wood piles should not be on turf or soil if you can avoid it. Moisture will come up out of the earth and set you back. Pavement is great for this. If you don’t have any, put down heavy plastic first
• If you’re on pavement, you don’t have to put the wood up on anything. On bare ground, use pallets or something to get it up out of the muck
• Put your first row on the southernmost part of the area you’re stacking wood in, at noon
• Look at where the first row’s shadow falls. Put the second row up against the shadow, but not in it. The sun will shine on the face of every row, all day, more or less, if you repeat this strategy with every row.
• You don’t need any kind of props to hold a firewood rick. Stack logs in alternating layers of three junks on the ends of the rows. They’ll hold
• Your firewood will dry faster if you cover the top so rainwater or snowmelt doesn’t filter down into the center of the rows, but don’t cover the faces under any circumstances. If your firewood is 16″ long, cut OSB into 18″ strips and plop it on top of the rows. With barely an inch of overhang, the faces of the logs get wet during rainstorms, but that will help you, not hurt you. When the sun comes out, the wetness wants out of butt ends of the logs, and they split open nicely. That lets air get further into your junks. That helps get moisture out of the interior of the junks

That’s it. I’ve dried eight cords of wood in my back yard parking area in less than two months. And I have a moisture meter, so I’m not funning about it being dry. I took a sample from the middle of the pile, split it, and laid the moisture meter on the fresh face. Under 20% moisture in there and you’re good to go.

And what’s it like, to burn firewood for your heat? It’s fine, as long as you show no enthusiasm but don’t complain.