The Forestry Forum

Hello Again,

Im attaching a poorly illustrated depiction of my drying tent. I have a stickered 5' tall by 2.5' wide stack of poplar siding (.5"x6.5"x9' pieces)  

it is all contained underneath a large piece of plastic. Box fan on medium blowing diagonally across from one side, and the dehumidifier receiving opposite of that. The wood was cut in 3 different batches, so the MC varies from board to board - some as high as my wagner meter goes, and some ranging from 10% - 20% Just curious to see if you guys have any objections or qualifications to my process. 


(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/49978/IMG_1718.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1531344625)
 

Effectively it's just controlled air drying, inside a tent. 

You have a fan to move the air, the air picks up water from the wet wood, you have a DH to remove humidity from the air. Rinse and repeat. The wood will eventually dry down to whatever you can drop the humidity level inside the tent too. The power the DH is using ends up as a small amount of heat in the tent, so that helps the drying. So if you can keep the humidity in the tent down to 50% RH, then your wood will eventually dry to ~10%. The pieces that are at 10% already, will basically sit there and do nothing. 

If the DH is on the small side, it might struggle to keep the humidity down, but even at 70% wood will still be heading towards 14%, and as it looses water, the DH will be able to "catch up".

There are all sorts of variables with drying wood. It's possible to dry some species too fast or too slow etc, but what you have will basically work.