What you need to consider before buying kiln dried logs

If you have never used kiln dried logs in your wood burning stove, perhaps you want to understand why and what to buy when it comes to the best firewood. Unfortunately, you can find kiln dried logs on the market that may seem cheaper, but you need to be careful when buying them.

You see, some suppliers usually provide weights and crate sizes that are less than what they promise their customers, and they may even mix with other species of logs. This is the reason why you should always get kiln dried logs from reliable suppliers to get a high-quality product. This post discusses what you need to consider before buying kiln dried logs.

The best kiln dried logs you purchase

You can find kiln ash dried logs which can burn quite hot and last for a while. In the past, it was a favorite species of logs because it was the readily available species, but you can now find oak and birch which have now become popular.

Kiln-dried oak is an excellent wood that is denser than the other species. It also has thick bark and is tough when you touch it as it’s weighty. This wood has also a density that can take longer to build up the right temperature but when it does, it produces great heat compared to ashwood. Even better, it has a nice aroma, is long-lasting, and the logs are usually large.

Alternatively, you can choose kiln dried birch which is suitable for smaller stoves and it can light quite quickly, especially because of its flakey bark. Also, it can get hot much quickly and the logs are thin. So when the temperature is to the required standard, make sure that you turn down the vents to reduce the speed of burn.

This wood is a great all-round species that you can use for log stoves and can be more economical than oak and ash. Above all, you should always consider the size of your log stove before deciding on the most ideal type of kiln dried logs to use.

The quality of kiln dried logs

Whether you’re buying kiln dried logs for wood burning stoves, firewood stoves, or open fires, you need to make sure that you are buying the best firewood. That said, wood that has high moisture content can be difficult to burn. This is the reason why the wood density and moisture content can affect the amount of heat you want to produce.

Therefore, ensure that the kiln dried logs you buy should be of high-quality. Ideally, the less moisture content there is in kiln dried logs, the less water requires to be boiled away before you can generate enough heat. This is why many kiln dried logs are great as fuel for wood-burning stoves.

Oak and ash are usually denser than many other kinds of wood, so they can burn for quite long. Kiln-dried logs that are dried to 20% or even lower can produce more than twice the heat than partially or seasoned logs do. Aside from this, burning wet logs that burn for long can cause damage to your stove, meaning you should never use them as they are inefficient.

No doubt, kiln dried logs are a better alternative to cheaper logs you can buy on the market. You can decide to buy any amount of wood depending on how you want to use it. But for weekend evening wood burning, you can start with a small crate. After all, you don’t usually need many logs because they burn hotter and can get your fire started pretty quickly.

However, if you intend to use kiln dried logs regularly on your log stove as the key source of heat, perhaps you should start with a larger crate. As explained earlier, there is no exact guide as to the number of logs you may need to use because there are various factors to consider. These include the size of your room where you’re heating, the size of the stove, how hot you desire your stove to be, and the insulation of your room.

In most cases, you can have more uses for each crate of kiln dried logs because they don’t have a lot of moisture content compared to the seasoned logs. Best of all, they burn efficiently and hotter than seasoned logs, meaning you can use fewer logs and they can cause less damage to the stove as they have low moisture content.

Calorific value

When you decide to buy wood for burning, you should always consider the amount of heat that it can produce per unit of fuel, moisture content, and wood density. Therefore, this depends on your choice of species because moisture content varies between them. With hardwoods, they are usually denser and softwoods have more resins, making kiln-dried oak, ash, and birch your perfect choice.

Because hardwood species can be denser than softwood, it means a ton of hardwood logs can occupy quite a small space compared to a ton of softwood logs. Dense woods can also burn longer than those that are less dense, so you can have few top-ups to keep your stove burning. This is the reason why you need kiln dried logs, though softwoods are usually easier to source and they are cheaper despite their lack of efficiency.

Moisture content means that the water in the logs reduces fuel when you buy using weight. Unfortunately, it also tends to evaporate as steam before the logs burn hot. As a result, you use fuel energy to reduce the net energy produced as useful heat. Thankfully, kiln dried logs give you a chance to use woods that are low in moisture content.

Kiln-dried logs are also ideal for pizza ovens because they have low moisture content and the burn clean and hot. Hence, they don’t affect the taste of your food nor emit moisture. The drier the kiln-dried logs the more energy used to generate heat. This means you need less time to evaporate the water contained in the kiln-dried logs.