5 tips on drying your firewood

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There are many methods that people use to dry their firewood, some more successful than others. If you want to have dry firewood by the time winter comes around, here are a few tried and tested tips to get you sorted.

5 Essential Tips to Dry Firewood

  1. Get it early – If you are able, get the wood cut and delivered in spring or at the beginning of summer. This gives the wood around six to nine months to thoroughly dry out. Be aware that different varieties of wood, how green the logs are, or a wet or cold winter may mean that the wood will take a lot longer to dry.
  2. Cut it to size – Try to have your wood cut to the size needed to fit in your log burner or fireplace. Evenly sized wood is easier to stack and therefore dries faster than irregular shaped pieces.
  3. Season the wood – Once your freshly cut firewood has been delivered, it is best if you keep the firewood outside. Not only will the rain and sun help to season the wood, the weather also helps it dry too.
  4. Stack the wood – How you stack your firewood is important. Stacking your firewood in a single row, with a gap between a wall or a fence, will mean that the wood is able to breathe. This then lets the moisture present in the logs be drawn out by the sun and the air from both sides. This is especially important if you have some logs that are very green or wet, as they will dry a lot faster this way.
  5. Cover it up – Make sure you have a cover available to put over the top of the stack of wood. This could be a tarpaulin or piece of roofing iron. You still want to get the benefits of your wood drying in the outdoors, but without the rain continually falling upon it.

The key to well dried firewood is time. The sooner you can get your firewood stacked for the winter, the drier it will be. Don’t leave ringing your firewood supplier till autumn or even winter. Not only will your wood not have long enough to dry, but you also run the risk of missing out altogether! How do you stack your firewood? Did you build a firewood shed or do you stack it against the fence? We’d love to know, so please tell us in the comments below!