Drying milled wood?

[redprospector]

I've built, and used a few kiln's both propane fired (back when you could afford propane), and solar.
It's easy to collect heat, with a kiln you need to figure out how to hold it.
If you build a heat collector on the side of your kiln you can put a good 2' layer of lava rock in the bottom of the collector. That will pretty much hold enough heat to last all night. To transfer the heat to the kiln you need a few small louvered fans (seperate from your circulation fans), these can be hooked to a thermostat. The kiln needs to stay at a fairly constant temp. 24 hours a day or you'll run into problem's.
A good household de-humidifier is a must in my opinion. It works way better than the condensation type kiln's I've seen. You can run a hose from the water tray/tank right out the wall. It's amazing how much water will run out the hose. The last kiln I built held 2000 bd. ft. and I needed 2 pretty good size household de-humidifier's to even try to keep up.
I've had the best luck leaving the circulation fan's running all the time. Keep that air flowing!
Get some kind of moisture meter, or you're just shooting in the dark.
Kiln's don't have to be as complicated as some people make them out to be.
But there's more to them than some think.

Hope this help's some,

Andy

 

[SilverBox]

Don't mind me SB I'm kind of a safety nut, and keep the ideas coming.
They have greenboard too that's made for higher humidity environments.

I'm not a safety nut, but I don't want to do something stupid either .

I've seen green/purple (its not green anymore ) turn to mush also from to much moisture, but hardibacker/durarock/densheild you can pretty much throw in a bucket of water and it will be ok.

 

[SilverBox]

I've built, and used a few kiln's both propane fired (back when you could afford propane), and solar.
It's easy to collect heat, with a kiln you need to figure out how to hold it.
If you build a heat collector on the side of your kiln you can put a good 2' layer of lava rock in the bottom of the collector. That will pretty much hold enough heat to last all night. To transfer the heat to the kiln you need a few small louvered fans (seperate from your circulation fans), these can be hooked to a thermostat. The kiln needs to stay at a fairly constant temp. 24 hours a day or you'll run into problem's.
A good household de-humidifier is a must in my opinion. It works way better than the condensation type kiln's I've seen. You can run a hose from the water tray/tank right out the wall. It's amazing how much water will run out the hose. The last kiln I built held 2000 bd. ft. and I needed 2 pretty good size household de-humidifier's to even try to keep up.
I've had the best luck leaving the circulation fan's running all the time. Keep that air flowing!
Get some kind of moisture meter, or you're just shooting in the dark.
Kiln's don't have to be as complicated as some people make them out to be.
But there's more to them than some think.

Hope this help's some,

Andy

!! nice post. what brand/model of household dehumidifier were you using?

+1

 

[redprospector]

!! nice post. what brand/model of household dehumidifier were you using?

+1

That's been a few years ago so I can't remember the model's but they were some of the bigger one's they made. One of them was a Sear's, and the other I had had since the 70's but I do remember I bought it from Western Auto.

Andy