The Book of Building Fires by S. Coulthard

Author:S. Coulthard [Coulthard, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2018-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

MOISTURE METERS

If you want to test how dry your logs are, invest in a moisture meter. These simple, handheld devices tell you in seconds whether the firewood you’ve just had delivered is properly seasoned, or it can give you an accurate idea of how much further your log stack has to dry.

Most moisture meters have two sharp prongs on the end, which you press into the piece of timber you’re testing. The meter uses a low electrical current to test the proportion of water to wood in any given sample. Sounds easy, but logs have a habit of giving off unreliable readings, especially if you test the outside of a crateful or the dry end of damp log.

The wettest part of any log will be at its heart, so you’ll need to split any wood you are testing. Just prodding the end or pre-split surface (which dries out more quickly) will give you a false reading. Similarly, if you have a well-seasoned crate of logs that’s just been rained on, testing the outer surfaces would give too wet a reading.

As with any good experiment, run your test more than once by checking several logs. A mix of samples from inside and outside the stack or crate will help even out any huge variations. You should also test in more than one spot on the same log and average the results. Remember—you want a reading of around 20 percent or less, and certainly no more than 25 percent.

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