To season wood, must it be covered

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Just wondering why its important to get it off the ground when its all off the ground but the bottom layer any how.

If the bottom layer rots and gets infested with termites, then the next layer is sitting on rotten, termite-infested wood so it will get rotten and infested, and so on. Depends what kind of soil and drainage you have under it and how long you leave it, I guess. Seems to me that drying is faster when air can circulate underneath, that wood piled on the ground seems to get ground moisture up through the pile and mold, but that's not scientific, just what I think I've observed. I know some folks who have a gravel area for wood, seems to work fine, and some use it fast enough it doesn't matter. When I moved into my house there was a woodpile on the ground in the back yard, don't know how long it had been there but it was mostly just bug food.

Jack
 
Just wondering why its important to get it off the ground when its all off the ground but the bottom layer any how.
I don't know the technical reason but we have a junk woodpile for our tree service wood for the willow, cottonwood, pine etc. We leave it sit to dry out for a few months before we throw it in our giant wood burner/disposer and the difference between wood that's touching the ground and wood that's off the ground is dramatic. Huge difference.
Phil
 
Well after reading on here about everyone seasoning their stacks uncovered I had to try it for myself. I had been trying to season some black ash for the last year 21 months. As of yesterday it was still pretty wet. Stacked off the ground in partial sun but not covered. Finally said heck with it and covered the top.

Seasoning without cover may work further south or in areas of full sun but up here the warm season is just too short. Covered stacks for me from now on.
 
Well after reading on here about everyone seasoning their stacks uncovered I had to try it for myself. I had been trying to season some black ash for the last year 21 months. As of yesterday it was still pretty wet. Stacked off the ground in partial sun but not covered. Finally said heck with it and covered the top.

Seasoning without cover may work further south or in areas of full sun but up here the warm season is just too short. Covered stacks for me from now on.

I like to toss a cover on come Oct. to keep the wetness out before brning what's in the dooryard.

One thing to keep in mind is not all moisture's created equal. Green moisture's part of a recently living plant. The log's hanging on to it for dear life like clutches. Dead moisture's a different matter. It wicks away realtively quick.

I'm in NH at the foothill of the Whites. Far enough east we get ocean moisture. Far enough north the arctic blows off from Mt. Washington. Damn too far north to have my firewood hissing at me on a depth of February sub-zip night.
If you got rain coming, toss on a tarp. At 21 mos, that ash will check at the ends soon. Give a few days/weeks to wick off and get it under your barn. Like the others said, the cellular fiber will equilib to what's ambient moisture in time.
 
For me in Southern California at 6,000 it all depends on the year. I remember one year when we had 90 inches of rain for the year and dry wood was like refined gold. An older guy told me several years ago he went out to his woodpile every couple of days and watered his stack so it would season faster. I think his wood was green and it helped to break down the pitch in the wood. Some how he always had dry wood. Water is very expensive here too so have not tried that. If it looks like rain or drizzle I will be getting the tarps out regardless of the time of day or night, but just the top of the stacks. We are not allowed to have piles so always stacks. If the weather is predicted to be below freezing I start up my fans with timers to expedite the process. I can dry out 5 or 6 cords in less than a week for maybe $10 in electrical cost. That translates to at least $500 extra income. I never put the wood directly on the ground. I have an abundance of oak leaves so I make a bed of leaves at least 6 inches thick. Some times I will compact them to make a solid base to stack on. Getting seasoned wood is often not a problem here, but getting really dry wood is. Thanks
 
Well after reading on here about everyone seasoning their stacks uncovered I had to try it for myself. I had been trying to season some black ash for the last year 21 months. As of yesterday it was still pretty wet. Stacked off the ground in partial sun but not covered. Finally said heck with it and covered the top.

Seasoning without cover may work further south or in areas of full sun but up here the warm season is just too short. Covered stacks for me from now on.

I don't cover my wood. Not sure where you live but summer here is pretty short - about 3.5 months.
 
Hello from the UK. I leave the wood in the elements after splitting uncovered for several months - bearing the snow, rain, wind and sun. Then a few months before use we take what we'll need into a shed to dry. My belief is that the weathering process really helps the wood cells inside breakdown. A lot of seasoning aint just about drying, it's about letting water escape from the cells trapped within, and it needs the weathering process to do this IMO.
 
Where my wood piles are located receives partial sun at best and that is not something I am willing to change as I want close access to the stacks when I am running the sauna stove and firepit. I cut a lot of wood and have no problem stockpiling two years worth to get it to dry but I do expect it to dry eventually.

Before I came on here I always had the understanding that in my conditions, softwood like aspen would rot before it would season and this has been confirmed. I had done this little uncovered experiment after reading many threads on here about seasoning uncovered.

Of course if I stacked it up the hill in full sun it would be a different story but I don't want to carry wood 150 feet every time I have a fire.
 
Here in the lower mitten my stacks fully exposed to sun and wind have no problem drying fully in one season or less, but I give them two or more anyway. In Oct I move 3+ cord under a screened in roofed porch on the second floor. The stacks are still exposed on three sides but basically top covered. I will also pull snow covered wood from from the stacks over winter as needed to replenish my store under the porch. I notice very little difference. I think of a stick of wood as a bundle of little tiny straws. The moisture pretty much can only leave through the ends of the straws. When precipitation occurs it wets the ends of the straws and creates a siphon that through osmosis or the creation of an equilibrium pulls moisture out.
 
Keep top cover bit above the pile, put branches / small trees on top of wood pile so that whatever cover you put is lifted from the wood, air circulates under the covering, but snow does not make wood wet.

As many has said, keep wood off the ground, pallets are good, pallets on top of concrete blocks better, add tarpaulin to ground below those pallets and moisture from ground will not get to wood at all and no grass etc. grows under so air moves under the wood pile, which helps air to move from bottom of pile to top of pile as sun heats the pile, I guess English word is convection for that effect, gravity operated air movement, it is like having slow fan at bottom of pile to blow upwards. Concrete blocks help even there would be tarpaulin under on ground.

Here I face my woodpile south to west, sun helps with drying and I don't have cover during spring and when it does not rain during early to mid summer, when it rains I cover my wood... right, at autumn I don't take cover off, air starts to be so moist that wood is not drying any more and wood is covered until next spring and dry air.

I do keep sides uncovered of course so that air moves trough the pile and under the cover.

My place is in swamp, so drying firewood is sometimes bit of an challenge, for example birch that is 3ft long and stacked to very loosely, each layer 90 degrees different direction and 1-2ft between each split log, it tends to mold and even after a year, when I remove bark, it is wet under the bark, so it takes at least 2 years for those to dry up here.

Might dry faster if I take bark off completely, but it should dry when it is split and no new water has entered into wood, but not on my yard, despite the sun and wind.

In our climate, from March to June is usually best drying season, other times it is bit hopeless to get wood dry, so I try to get best of this time frame, ideally I should have all firewood made by beginning of March, but in practice there is so much to do that I chop wood year around.

Old guys say, that you should have at least two years worth of seasoned firewood all the time and you make wood for 3rd and 4th year in a future, not sure how true this is for where you live, our climate is unpredictable, we can have very cold winters or winters without much chill at all, so better have extra firewood for that cold spell.

Hopefully some of this has some use for you, different wood, climate etc. of course requires different approaches. If we all could just season our firewood in Death Valley, seasoning would be not an issue :)
 
Put the moisture meter to the black ash I had been storing uncovered since October of 14' and it was still 35 percent measured on a fresh split. That's going to take some time to dry yet.
 
Well I put my cabin stacks in full sun and stacked North to South so I would expect they will dry much better than the sauna stacks that are in 85% shade. Will be interesting to see how quickly they dry. Even it late afternoon they had full sun exposure.
 
I have issues with wood during the winter with very unpredictable weather. Much of the time my income is related to what I can sell and when. Selling damp or wet wood while it is raining does not work so well. I have not had too much of a problem with the wood being on the ground or slightly above ground, but it makes no sense not to cover wood when it rains or snows. Snow causes the wood to get wetter than rain because it can take several days to completely melt. I capitalize on freezing days or dry days with fans. When conditions are right I can turn several cords of wet wood into nice burnable wood in a week. Yes it does take extra effort, but sometimes very worth it. Thanks
 
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