Solar tarping

[neverbilly]

Local to me it works best. When we get rain, it rains hard and long. I fiddled with pallets and tarps for years before I built my kilns, my best results (at my house) was cinderblocks, pallets on them, then a plastic sheet covering the pallet, then stack the wood, then top cover.

I built my kilns to stand on the already established cinder blocks.

Part of it is splash zone. Wood close to the ground gets splashed on by subsequent rain drops hitting the puddles and the wood struggles to get dry. Plus it gets dirt on the wood that has to be carried into the house and takes up space in the firebox, and then get carried back out of the house in the ash bucket. No thanks.

The other, I think local to me, is when the sun comes back out and hits the water saturated dirt, a lot of that "ground water" gets re-evaporated into the air. I can see it sometimes if we have a hard rain over night and then bright sun first thing in the morning. It looks like fog rising out of the ground, no stuff.

Bottom line, it works for me at this address.

Thanks for detailed answer. You say you put a "plastic sheet covering the pallet." Can you describe the plastic sheet? And what purpose does that serve?

 

[Poindexter]

@neverbilly , just any old scrap of plastic. Before I built my kilns I was running pallets on cinderblocks, my wood pile (and pallet road) was about 60 feet long. So cinderblocks on grade, pallets, cordwood, covered on top.

One year I had a bunch of plastic that wasn't going to cut it as top cover anymore, so I took some of the bigger pieces and laid them on some of the pallets as a vapor barrier between the cordwood and the lawn. I literally just laid plastic scraps on the pallets, then stacked my cordwood, then top covered as usual. I didn't know if it would make any difference, but I had the scrap, so I tried it. That year the wood that was top covered with vapor barrier under it got drier and burned better (at my house) than the other wood further down the row that was top covered on bare pallets with underneath air flow.

Your mileage may vary. I did take some actual pictures last weekend, but I just can't see posting them. Just pretend you are putting that ground cloth thingy under a camping tent under part of your stacks and see if it makes a difference at your house.