Teakwood Solar Kiln

teakwood · March 02, 2023, 07:14:02 AM

Thanks guys

I don't see a future where i would need more drying capacity, i'm almost running out of wood to dry, can't saw fast enough with all the other things going on. but that's ok, i'm armed with lots of dry lumber now, ready for clients. got about 1000 selected deckboards ready for the 4sider. lots of boards for paneling orders.

the beam order fell through, well that's part of the business. i got about 10 estimates out, some will come back as orders.

I don't sell lots of beams, they are freaking expensive, if i go bigger mill you know how it goes, bigger that, bigger this, then you need to upgrade that. I like the operation i have now, and at my age i don't want to invest a lot more, now it's time to save up some for my retirement.
I think i need a new car :D :

oh, the electricity bill came in, one full month of 24/7 drying 875kw, 200$. thought it would be less but i think the DH's sucks lots of juice. it's ok, i dried a multiple times the value of lumber in this month

Ianab · March 02, 2023, 02:08:30 PM

Quote from: teakwood on March 02, 2023, 07:14:02 AMoh, the electricity bill came in, one full month of 24/7 drying 875kw, 200$. thought it would be less but i think the DH's sucks lots of juice. it's ok, i dried a multiple times the value of lumber in this month

My maths says that's a bit over 1 kw/h of power. Probably about right for a couple of D/H units running full time. It's also why the conventional solar kiln plan uses venting to dump the moisture. Not as fast as using DHs, but then the fans might only need 0,1 kw, and only be running 1/2 the day at that I guess it comes back to the cheap / good / fast equation, as usual.

teakwood · March 02, 2023, 10:17:59 PM

The DH is 370watt each and each fan is 160watt . 2x DH and 4x fans = 1.380 kw/h

I needed to dry fast and did lots of lumber, will keep running like this until may, then rainseason starts and it will be alot cloudier and more humid. So maybe i turn the kiln off sometimes, I don't know yet

Ianab · March 03, 2023, 01:30:45 AM

Quote from: teakwood on March 02, 2023, 10:17:59 PM= 1.380 kw/h

Yeah, the power draw basically checks out then. I suspect the drying will simply be slower in the more cloudy weather, but with the naturally warm climate the kiln should still dry. Even without the sun you are still adding 1.3 kw of energy into the kiln system, that can be used to evaporate water. If you are able to set the DHs to a certain humidity level (say 40%), then they will switch off if the drying is slow, rather than struggling to remove every last drop of water from the air. With slower drying maybe they only need a 50% duty cycle. Might take 2X as long, but the power draw will be down too.

So yeah, some more experimenting.

teakwood · March 03, 2023, 06:59:24 AM

that's a freaking good idea, the DH's do have a humidity button and i had them on continuous, so i will switch them to 40% and see what happens.

and yes the kiln will work in the rainseason also, with 2-3 hours of sun he warms up pretty good and will hold that heat, the DH's put out alot of heat thru their exhaust fans so that helps too. it will be slower for sure. we will see if cost-benefits makes any sense or just stall the kiln during rain season.

YellowHammer · March 03, 2023, 07:28:12 AM

What is the total Hp of all the DH units combined?

teakwood · March 03, 2023, 07:10:53 PM

0.74kw, so pretty much 1hp

changed the DH settings to 40% and at day they stopped working (the lumber is at the end of its circle). Will see if they start again at night. but it doesn't makes much sense to run them full when there is low humidity inside the kiln.

doc henderson · March 03, 2023, 11:16:18 PM

agreed!

teakwood · March 08, 2023, 06:55:00 AM

That was a superb idea, now the DH's individually shut of at day and get back to work at night, when the humidity passes 40%.

what amazes me is that inside the kiln there are 2 different climates although it's only one chamber. the left side is loaded with 3/4" boards green from the sawmill and the DH is working 24/7 but the right side has 1" boards which where air dried for about 3 weeks and the DH shuts off because they are a lot drier already.

GlazierDude · June 05, 2023, 11:13:58 PM

Been reading a ton on the forum here the past 6 months and Teakwood I've gotta say, your operation is one of my favorites. Thanks so much for sharing the pics and info from your various projects, it's so much fun to see what you are working on. You are quite the craftsman, this may be the worlds finest wood built kiln! Best wishes!

teakwood · June 06, 2023, 07:43:33 AM

Thanks alot.

the kiln is definitively a moneymaker, makes me 1300$ every month. it's now working since 4 months and has dried 23 loads of teakwood. this year has been so good that we can't keep up with sawing, storage is always half empty. the plan was to fill it up in the dryseason and then not having to saw in the wetseason but we need to keep producing or i will run out of wood in 2 months.

Went to visit my number 1 client, an american house developer in a touristy area.

the sealing is from another company, the rest is my wood

tule peak timber · June 06, 2023, 08:28:36 AM

Nice, keep it up! 8)

caveman · June 06, 2023, 08:40:17 PM

That is stunning. I'm glad the solar kiln has been successful.

Old Greenhorn · June 06, 2023, 08:57:51 PM

The woodwork is beautiful, no doubt, very impressive.
But your solar kiln story is one of the best success stories I think I have read on the forum for such a short timeline. I couldn't find it, but I am pretty sure I saw you write somewhere, not very long ago, that you were 'thinking' of building a kiln. Then started it (and this thread) shortly after. Now your have been running it 4 months and showing revenue, steady revenue, every month and it is now driving other parts of your business harder. Not only do I find the pretty incredible, I find it amazing as well as impressive.
I could not be happier for you, but for sure you earned it, every bit of it. You are going to be the Bargemonkey of Costa Rica in no time. :D ;D

Southside · June 06, 2023, 10:27:26 PM

Wow - what a house. What is the floor? How big is that place? What does a pad like that sell for there?

teakwood · June 07, 2023, 07:25:06 AM

The floor is stamped concrete burnt with acid. it's his thing, he perfected this technique and is using it on all his houses

Lots are between 200k to 1 million $. This house is at least 800m2 (8600 sqft), it's big. the house will be 1.5-2million $, i have no idea how much the land was as its on a real big property, i would guess at least 3 acres. it has alot of garden, they planted lots of fruit trees, there is a hidden 60000 gallon water tank with recycled waste water for the irrigation of the garden

teakwood · June 09, 2023, 08:02:58 AM

Quote from: Old Greenhorn on June 06, 2023, 08:57:51 PMBut your solar kiln story is one of the best success stories I think I have read on the forum for such a short timeline. I couldn't find it, but I am pretty sure I saw you write somewhere, not very long ago, that you were 'thinking' of building a kiln. Then started it (and this thread) shortly after. Now your have been running it 4 months and showing revenue, steady revenue, every month and it is now driving other parts of your business harder. Not only do I find the pretty incredible, I find it amazing as well as impressive.

Thanks. I think i started thinking about a kiln last October and started building December/ January. started using the kiln at the end of January and have it working 24/7 since. when i get into a project i go full in, want to have it done. i don't have the space to have several ongoing projects laying around. you guys encouraged me and i went for it and yes, the whole kiln built is a success story but remember i'm no hobby dryer/ sawmiller. I have a full time lumber operation here and make a living out of it, the kiln was just the missing piece in this chain. So i knew the kiln would make me some money i just never imagined it would work out that good.

Men do i have a nice business opportunity, the big teak sawmill that closed (where i bought all the machines from, forklift, conveyer, sliding table saw...) has alot of teak lumber laying around. they gave me a very good price for 1.5x4" lumber, already planed and kiln dried, like 35% of my market value, so i think i go for it. use some of the quarry dollars i have pilling up :D. just need to find a market to resell, im thinking as deckboards, but normally i sell 1x4, 1x5 deckboards.

doc henderson · June 09, 2023, 09:55:34 AM

I am not sure if you are talking nominal size or not, but can the wood be re-sawn into something closer to what you would sell?

customsawyer · June 09, 2023, 07:38:19 PM

I would probably be all over that deal. I would try to find or make a market for it before I started resawing it. Half the time when you find that market you'll start cutting your own trees different as the new market is more profitable.

teakwood · June 10, 2023, 07:42:45 AM

Was looking at the lumber yesterday, the deal just got a little less interesting. the packs look great but we put one down with the forklift and i went thru it a little bit. they where all cut of the center of the log. boards where sawn around the pit and then when a 4x4 center block was left they cut that in half. that means several things, all boards are bowed, some alot, some less. for deck boards that's not a dealbraker, i can work with that putting them thru the 4 sider and bring them down from 1.5" to 1.25". width is 4.25" so that's easily straightened with my molder. but they also have the center hole in them, 90% of the boards. teak has a pencil big soft hole in its center and it's a defect, so thats another concern. Lots of split and cracked pieces also, that means i have to dismantle the whole packs and go thru it one by one and shorten the bad pieces

these are the planed once 1.5x4"

and these are the 1.8x4", air dried, rough sawn. look at that bow!! I told the foreman, why do you guys put them with the same bow direction when stickering?? if you alter the bow they can be straightened pretty good in the drying process. Lack of training for the workers and no interest from management to address the issue :

. what a lost of money. they do cut most of the pieces up in 1-3' sections because they would have gone to the fingerjointer machine

teakwood · September 14, 2023, 07:40:19 AM

Update: Now it's rainseason, although a pretty soft one, enough rain but lots of sunshine also. I was scratching my head over why the kiln is getting hotter way quicker than in dryseason. It's 1.5h of sunshine and the kiln hits 45 degrees. i ask the neighbors teakcompany foreman, he told me have you heard of the high radiation rates we had these days. That makes sense.

So although a solar kiln, it works 24/7, 365d in this climate. I couldn't be happier.

caveman · September 14, 2023, 02:51:34 PM

Ramon, it is hard for me to believe that it was last December when we were discussing the viability of you making a solar kiln. I'm not sure how many loads you have run through yours since you built it, but it seems like quite a few.

teakwood · September 15, 2023, 07:54:16 AM

I'm at the 28th load. Remember it's a small kiln, about 2.5m3 per load but at 28 loads that's about 3 triaxle truck loads and the monthly electrical bill is about 200$, so that's pretty acceptable.

teakwood · February 11, 2024, 09:34:12 AM

Well, the kiln is working since exactly 1 year and i put 35 loads thru it. the kiln was probably on for 10 month in this period. so it dried 70 stacks, roughly 9000 boards, made me (saved me) 12000$ minus 2000$ electrical bill. that's 10k in profit, i'm way more flexible with my own kiln now, speeded up my process and at least saved me another 3k in labor for not needing to stack and unstack to send it out to another drier. that adds up to at least 15-17k profit, the kiln costed me 2400$ in materials, without my labor (i don't get paid anyways)

Total annual profit = 15000 $

Thanks for all the help!

caveman · February 11, 2024, 08:31:23 PM

I'm glad it worked out well for you. Depending on demand, it might be time to build another one or two. Ours does not have the volume put through it that yours has, but it is the only thing that we have that makes us money without us working. It does a really good job drying wood to boot.