Kiln drying your own wood

[DuncanM]

Does anyone use the heat stored in their oven after using to dry their own wood?

As I'm still at the stage where I haven't finished my build (nor the wood stores) my wood is stored very hap-hazardly. about 5-6 weeks ago after a firing for pizzas I decided to shove the door full of wood I'd split earlier in the day. This wood was still very fresh (only be chopped down for a month), but after leaving it overnight (some of it was blackened but no signs of ignition).

Anyway I used that wood for a firing up last weekend and I must say that a) it was much better and dryer than the time before that and that I also dried more wood than I used (I could have easily fit 3-4x more wood than I did in my oven) leaving me with a net result of dried wood for every firing.

[surfingspider]

I do this trick but I have not tried it on such fresh wood. It works a treat. I did read that you should only put the wood in after the oven has fallen beneath 200c as it can give off resin that gets into your oven and can cause a fire hazard or something like that. Great trick though I do it each time I use my oven. before bed I pop out and chuck a few logs in and close the door up, next time I use the oven there are a few kiln dried logs inside to get me going quick.

[bathsweep]

I am a hetas registered chimney sweep I fill my oven with green split logs every morning after baking my weekly bread the wood goes in at about 180 degrees and is left with the door slightly ajar(to allow moisture to escape) it goes from 35% moisture level to less than 5% I empty the oven once it is at ambient temperture and store the wood in a dry place excellent!!

[slowfood]

in a small commercial bakery there was a fire, the reason was routine use of using the oven to dry wet firewood, the gases escaped through structural defects and condense as soot. eventually the soot mixed with the fiberous insulation caught fire (Luckily the bakers were allerted to the smoke and there was little damage.
Another school of thought is the common practise of drying wood in todays hot oven for tomorrowsfire does not make sense; The moisture that is boiled off is removed at the cost of a great deal of stored heat and that loss will make it difficult to fully saturate the thickness of the ovenwith heat when the oven is fired the next day, eliminating this practice will reduce thermal cyclingin the oven mass appreciably and contribute to the durability of the masonary.

See my build at www.fornobravo.com/forum/f21/my-l....oday-16182.html and www.fornobravo.com/forum/f43/cast....uild-17613.html
If I can help in any way please don't hesitate to contact. Thank you

[cannyfradock]

Slowfood

I don't agree with you on (NOT) using the massed heat of an outdoor domestic Wood-fired oven to dry/season future fuel. Of course you have to be sensible in allowing the oven to cool enough before using residual heat to dry out timber. The owner of the last oven I built, packed his oven with wet timber after a pizza party.......in the morning he woke up to an oven full of ashes!!!.....common sense will prevail, and with the stored heat in a correctly built oven, any steam from the wood will be easily dispelled from the fire-brick dome.

As for a wood-fired oven inside a bakery.......this is a different scenario. Mills and Bakery's have to be careful as the flour in the air can instantaneously ignite......A trip to Talgarth Mill explained all this in detail.....it may be different in the bakery you are talking about......but as I've mentioned domestic WFO's can be used successfully to dry timber........I invite debate!!!

Terry

[faz]

I expect that if you're using the oven to dry wood when you aren't going to use it for a while allows you to get a little bit more use out of the residual heat in the oven which would otherwise be wasted. I can see the point about it being a waste of heat if you're planning on firing up again in the morning, especially if you have to leave the door ajar to let steam escape, but for me I can't see that being an issue as the oven is likely to be fired up once a week at the most - unless I start to do all my cooking in the garden

[turkey]

commercially it probably makes no sense, but for a home user with no more bread to bake I expect it to be well worth the slight effort.

I wonder just how fresh a log you can dry down by doing this just once?

[DuncanM]

Turkey, I think it depends on the size of the log. The more it has been split the more moisture it'll loose.

[thestoragebed]

I've started doing this and have found that even though I'm buying wood with a 20% moisture content - by reducing this even further the wood becomes so much easier and quicker to light and produces much less smoke.

I fill the oven with wood once the embers have died and leave them there till i need the oven again.

[bookemdanno]

Personally, i'd rather stick a cast iron pot full of some casserole or pulled pork in a falling oven than a load of wood!!!