Drying red oak for flooring

[breese]

I have 2000 bf of quarter sawn red oak stickered in my pole barn.  Sawed to 1 1/8 thickness 3 and 4 inches wide.  Boards will ultimately be used for flooring in my new house.  Sawed in early May this year, upstate NY.
Kiln drying costs about 40 cents a BF and involves many trips in my pickup to get the entire amount to the kiln.  I'm looking for an easier way to dry the wood, ideally leaving it in place. 
What moisture content should I be shooting for?  Is it possible to get the wood to a stable M/C just using fans in the pole barn?

Thanks for any suggestions.
Andy

[Larry]

Neighbor built a new house few years ago.  I sawed red oak for floors and trim early in the spring.  Air dried till about November and moved it all into the front room of his house.  He has a fireplace with some kind of insert that blows hot air.  Kept the house heated all winter and by spring the oak was at 7% MC.  Machined all the wood for him and everything came out great.

The flooring guys say your wood should be in the 6 to 8% to keep shrinkage and subsequent cracks to a minimum.  I pretty much agree with them.  You will never get the wood that dry in a pole barn.  I would guess the best you would see will be something like 12%.  One thing on your side is the wood is all quarter sawn so it will only shrink about half as much as flat sawn.  Narrow strip flooring...I might be tempted to put it down at a little higher MC than what is recommended.  No experience laying it at a higher MC...so my advice is good for what ya paid for it.

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

Hey, Breese!

Larry has given you the "straight and narrow" so to speak, already. ;D

If you have power in the pole barn, you can use a simple room dehumidifier.
You would have to do this right now, before the temps drop too low.  The
home type dehumidifiers are not meant to work at very low temps.

Work some poly under the stack, so that you won't be trying to dry the gound  or trying to dry concrete.  Enclose the stack with poly.  Put the dehumidifier inside this tent and a box fan (they were on sale at many places for $9 recently as end-of-summer specials) to stir the air a bit.  Hook a garden hose to the water output fitting on the dehumidifier, so you won't have to worry with dumping water every day.  The "tent" of polyethylene must be fairly well sealed for this to work. Put the unit on a cheap timer and have it run every day during the warmest eight hours. Keep the circulating box fan on all the time. This works.   I would expect you can get 'er done in three weeks.


I lucked out on a reconditioned dehumidifier one day at Big Lots.  Even if you pay retail for yours, your total cost should be less that 1/3 of the cost to have it done at a kiln.  Even a small window unit air conditioner can do it, if you drain the condensation outside of the tent, but it would do the work much slower. If the oncoming winter doesn't let you finish drying, you can always complete the process by moving the wood inside. 

Larry's suggestion is also good, if you have room to bring wood inside.   The dry winter
air will definitely do the job in New York.  It probably would do it, even in Georgia.   The indoor average relative humidity will be pretty low for you, even if you don't have a wood burning heater such as what Larry's neighbor had.

Phil L.

[beenthere]

Good info from Larry and Phil, IMO.

Would only add that having a good idea what the moisture content is now, and then keep track of it while attempting to dry it in place will be good so you know when "the three weeks is up"   
Once it is dry, you will want to hold it at that dry mc and not allow it to gain moisture before running it into flooring and nailing it down. A lot of planning to do to time it right.

[breese]

Thanks for the help guys.  I'm going to try the fan/dehumidifier method. 

[Buzz-sawyer]

If you are tight on the green....and you have one available, one of the best routes to go on this deal, is an old obsolete window unit.....they put off a lot of heat , and remove a ton off moisture...... and are usually free....a modern efficient unit wont work at this too well at all ;)