THIS is why we season firewood

[British Red]

A tree surgeon buddy brought us a Willow he had felled for being unsafe last week.

The rounds were crazy heavy so I split them for seasoning straight away.

I think the video below shows just how much water is in Willow in a wet Winter.

https://flic.kr/p/2mXWsDo

 

[Kadushu]

That's willow for you. About the wettest wood I've encountered was ailanthus. It was as heavy as lead when green but dried to something like balsa wood.

 

[British Red]

That's willow for you. About the wettest wood I've encountered was ailanthus. It was as heavy as lead when green but dried to something like balsa wood.

I normally leave it a while then split but this stuff was so heavy it was easier just to split it straight away. I was getting a face full of sap each time I hit it with the maul

 

[Robson Valley]

There's another good reason, a little bit of physics. It takes 540 calories to evaporate one gram of water >>water vapor or steam. That wet wood, if you could get it to burn, will suck up 540 calories of heat energy to send each gram of wood water up your chimney.

That's heat that you can't ever see in your house.

Now, the same 540 calories of heat energy will come from the surrounding environment to evaporate the wood water, "seasoning" the wood, we call it. It's agonizingly slow but this works to your advantage when you set and light an evening fire. Much less "fire power" is going up the chimney.