Hello everyone.I was wondering if any one out there who stores there wood vertically has ever checked the moister content to find that it varies from top to bottom?My space has a concrete slab floor that had not been insulated below grade.
ALso here in downeast maine,The temperature has been abnormally high and with the lack of cold and all the rain of late the ambient humidity is high.Or at least I feel it is high . In my shop today it is 55% humidity.I thought the ambient humidity should be at or about 25%. Didn’t know if the hydrometer that I just hung on the wall needed to be calibrated or not.
Any comments or thoughts are welcome Thank-you,Correy
Replies
Correy,
I like to store lumber vertically for convenience, but I sticker and restack the wood for a project horizontally, and a few feet off the floor, a couple of weeks before starting a job for precisely the reason you asked about. Wood stored vertically will often have much more moisture in the floor end of the board where it is cool and damp, especially on concrete, than at the top of the board which can be in the warmest driest air in the shop up near the ceiling.
In New England, in the winter, an indoor relative humidity of around 25% is fairly typical when the outdoor temperatures are well below freezing, which leaves very little moisture in the air. This winter, at least here in Connecticut, the weather has been warm and damp with heavy rain and my accurately calibrated hygrometer has been steadily showing an indoor RH of 45% to 55%, so your meter is probably accurate.
John W.
"I thought the ambient humidity should be at or about 25%." I live in the Great Northwest, 9 miles out in the Sound from Seattle. Have never, ever seen the needle even close to 25%. I doubt even our house gets that dry, LOL.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Ho boy, I grew up in a house where we had an oil heater. The weather could get to -30 and if you could hold the inside temp to near 70 I think the RH would get to almost 0%. I never got a nose bleed from it but it would just burn from the lack of humidity. I bet the woodwork was as shrunk as could be.
Back in the days when I was newly-transplanted and a realy whimp about the weather, that was probably the case with our house, because I kept the temp up around 70° or 72°. Realllllly dry (oil heat here also). Now, it's set at 64°, sometimes even 63°, most of the daytime; 57° at night. And it's not air tight, so the moisture gets back into the house.
Makes you glad to not be in the desert, eh?forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Oh wow! At what temp does hypothermia set in?
Hydrometer: Instrument for measuring the density of a liquid. Surely you must mean hygrometer: Instrument for measuring humidity or relative humidity of the air. I have an analytic sling spychrometer to help you calibrate your hygrometer, if I can find it here somewhere, but I suppose you don't want to come down to WV anytime soon. Wish I could answer your real question but I would only guess that it doesn't make much difference what position your wood was stored in as far as the moisture content is concerned. Once the free moisture is gone, the remaining moisture is not subject to gravity but only to evaporation.
Correy,
Just a thought but could the wood also be wicking moisture from the concrete floor?
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
Use whatever tool needed to Git 'r Done!
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled