To season wood naturally can take up to 2 years. Kiln drying is the process of artificially drying out hardwood logs in a kiln chamber, reducing the drying time needed to produce wood fuel of a suitable moisture content. The wood is stacked in a kiln chamber that is carefully controlled in terms of humidity, temperature and air circulation rate.
Kiln drying was first introduced for commercial timber to offset defects caused by the natural drying process, and is now also the preferred method for seasoning wood fuel. It offers a number of advantages over natural air dried wood (see the "Why buy kiln dried wood" tab) but the bottom line is it produces far superior wood fuel.
- Does your wood or multi fuel stove tar up?
- Is your wood burner difficult to get started?
- Is heat wasted drying the wood rather than heating your home?
- Does your chimney or flu blacken, or require frequent cleaning?
- Is your wood burning stove slow to produce heat once it gets started?
- Does your stove require frequent cleaning an sweeping?
If the answer is yes to one or more of these questions then you should try kiln-dried wood as your current wood source is poor quality and has too high a moisture content.
Kiln dried wood logs have a moisture content of 15% compared to naturally seasoned wood which has a moisture content of 20-25%. This gives kiln-dried wood a number of advantages:
- Kiln dried wood burns hotter and longer. When burning high moisture wood, most of the energy goes into drying the wood out. Burning kiln dried wood is up to 80% more efficient.
- Dry wood burns clean, it is environmentally friendly; wet wood causes pollution.
- As it burns much cleaner, there are less stove and flue problems
- Kiln-dried wood is 2-3 times more efficient which means you save money AND storage space
In addition, the active heating process in the kiln means:
- Kiln dried is bug and insect free: the wood is guaranteed to be bug and insect free! Beetles, ants, termites will not survive the kiln drying process
- Mold Free: Mold spores will not survive in the kiln leaving your kiln dried logs mold free.
- the wood is cleaner: clean wood looks and smells much better and can be stored inside your house rather than outside
- Kiln-dried gives the perfect yule time real wood fire aroma!