If you rely on wood for home heating, you know how important it is to have well-seasoned firewood.
Whether you're planning to cut, split, and season it yourself or purchase it from a reliable source, making sure it's well-seasoned can mean the difference between smokey, cool fire and an efficiently warm home.
With this in mind, we're sharing some important tips and tricks for how to season firewood.
What Does Seasoned Firewood Mean?
You'll typically want to let wood dry for six to 12 months before using it - the longer, the better. If you're planning to cut, split, and season your own wood for fall and winter use, you should start in the spring to give it plenty of time to dry.
Here are some tricks for how to dry firewood quickly:
- Cut and split the wood into smaller pieces so they'll dry faster. A RuggedMade log splitter can be fitted with a 6-way wedge to make this job much easier and faster.
- Remove the bark from the wood. It's more work upfront, but it can reduce drying time.
- Stack the firewood outside in a well-ventilated space to allow air to flow around it. Keep it off the ground by using flat patio stones, concrete, or pallets as a foundation. For up to a quarter of a cord, you can use a RuggedMade drying rack. Make sure your woodpile is in a covered area to keep rain and snow off it, but also where it has plenty of air circulation around it and sunlight exposure.
- Time it right. Drying wood during the months with the lowest humidity will help speed up the process.
How to Tell if Firewood Is Seasoned?
When wood is dry enough to burn safely, it will look different from fresher wood. It will take on a grayer color, and you'll see splitting and cracking on the ends of the logs. It should also feel lighter than fresh wood because of its lower water content. If you bang two pieces together, they should make a hollow sound. For a more scientific test, a moisture meter can measure the moisture content inside a log to show if your wood is seasoned properly.
Now that you know how to season firewood, take your wood-heating game to the next level by learning which woods burn the best. Read our Best Wood for Burning article to learn more.
