Solar Kiln by Ricky Alexander

hi why do you drive lumber in the first place well here in Georgia and pretty much all over the country except maybe in Arizona the valleys dries you're going to get is about 12% of but if you can get lumber below 22% you have no risk of developing fungus and most the fungus today indicator rot or mold and most bugs won't get it at below 20% it weighs half the weight of wet lumber it splice and strong that nails and screws better and it's easier to glue a holds glue better and it machines better if you try to cut 12% lumber it has a little bit of the fuzzies on it if it's too wet which is you can sand off but it finishes easier and it would won't it will shrink and swell less in environments like your carport or somewhere where you don't have hvh it's the education system so I actually did that mud bench for my brother in air drive would I even glued up panels for it and if they they're doing great they haven't cracked or anything it's been three years so it works fine for some applications I also submit other advantages for it people that use hand tools a lot like planes and that sort of thing find it higher or 12% wood or air drive would actually planes and works better same thing for ladies like that it's not as brittle like says it's better in rooms that you don't have HVAC system HVAC systems and it's low-cost right now we have 30 cents more foot in it now I'm going to have to machine it get it straight lined and in claim but I have a table saw and a planer so it's going to be the cost of the electricity but it's not that much I won't have that much in this would you know if I use it just the air time and to get the most out of air drying room and do this yourself of course you want to seal the ends as soon as the tree is cut it doesn't really do any good if you wait a day or two it might help a little but not much you really need to do it right after and the log is going to be wet when you do that so it's a little difficult to do we had quite a bit of trouble doing it but we have found that even latex paint will work but they make an anchor seal and stuff like that you just basically have to wipe it off wipe it off wipe it off and put it on real quick and it'll stick then when you make a stack for it if you've been to our solve our own stations we've gone over this but you really need at least eight inches above the ground before you start to stack the twelve inches is better we've always just used one row of concrete blocks and that works fine necesita Angeles we've got to have dry stickers between them if you use the same species of wood you can use stickers that have milk us but it does sometimes create a molding problem so the dry stickers are much better if you can use dry stickers you want to start with a flat base so you don't program in your wood Avvo to begin with or something like that so I just basically just pull strings on the corner box doesn't have to be level flat it just has to be flat so just pull some strings and put all the rest of your supports at the same height and the same plane and good shape particularly when you're first cutting the wood has like two types of water and it goes free water is the water that's into capillaries it's not really bound to the wood it comes out really fast probably in less than a week so you lose probably 30% of all of the water in a week and we found that and that's the reason you see us put those fans in front of it when we first cut them and put stacks up and we'll put those fans on for how long two days that's all it took and all that does it cuts way down on the mobile group because once you kind of dry that wood the mold doesn't want to grow as much but that's all you have to do but you don't want to leave it on there for a real long time because that's too fast you'll start splitting it so for a couple of days to get that free water out it's fine and the water that's left in there is you know has two hydrogen's and a wood fiber has a lot of hydroxyl groups and you have family law forces there too much more difficult to get that out of that takes it'll get down to a 12% in a year we found even an inch and a quarter while I was doing my research I think render cost something that was very interesting this guy is some fine woodworking calm it is this is a really good video of describing hair drying and actually killed process too but he puts 10 on top of the stack has a little separator putting top of the stack in the 10 it puts like a little framework there and he puts up this black plastic here is called shade cloth you get that from landscape greenhouse supply stores I don't know how much it cost yet but we're going to look into its relaxing like to do this oh yeah I've never used it before but I thought that's a very clever way to do that because when it rains it'll hit that cloth it will keep the rain from hit - but it still will breathe there I thought that's pretty ingenious so we're the wood that's on the trailer now which is about two-thirds of what we felt last time we're going to set up like this you know mr. October why not just air dry it's still at 12% we'll get a post beetles and some other insects but most appeals the below 20% is usually pretty good post beetles will get in it even at 12% and of course if you just air dry you will have to fight with stain and mold issues we found in the past if we cut our wood in the middle of the winter of course you don't have much mobile Road when it's that cold it's usually a pretty dry time of year and we don't have near as much trouble with mold if you cut July good luck especially with pine or poplar but so that's why we try to avoid cutting in the summertime so kind of helps that a little bit but it's more likely to crack if airflow is mental more as opposed to direct sound in other words if you don't take your time to do your stacks right you go too wide too tall or maybe even the weather just doesn't like you that year you'll get a lot more cracking so having a kilns that kind of speed that up might help that less variabilities of weather weather does cause problems sometimes you can count on 10% loss even accounting for after you cut off your checking on the end if you didn't get your steel if you're in sealing anything even after all of that you will have 10% engraving laughs and I find that a good bit my cutoff fan is huge but that's okay I spent a fortune for this wood so I'm feeling good also like I said we've been talking about in the south and pretty much all over the country itself in a really far out west and that's a proper sentence about what you might get and you can can do that for inside good idea to have a kiln for these are these reasons anything above a hundred and forty will kill the fungus and any insects that are there including post fields that's what we're going for right now we definitely want to make sure we build something we don't have any little creatures coming out of it at some point a carefully controlled environment will definitely speed up the process specially with heat at it and you'll have much less loss we're going to worry about that ten percent or greater shrinkage the quality is greatly improved and oh we talked about this a lot but most inside the home space is thirty eight percent is pretty average for the humidity inside of your home which means the moisture content in the would have shown this to be that the data for that would be 7 to 8 percent 7 percent be an ideal 6 percent would work as well but when you go to 6 percent you have some other problems we'll talk about some how is that safe for the tiny bringing wood into your instance in your home better environment it's a 12% but put it back in my house or somewhere in my shop while I'm running the air and everything a week one last question about that once it's in your basement is it necessary to stick it after it's dry to 12 percent goodbye yes and no yes it is if you want it to be consistent say if I stack a big old tall stack and I say I want to use ten of those board that first one and the stacks going to be very different from that last one if I take that my shot and let let it get stable or the same for the rest of them I'll have to leave it in there quite a bit longer to make sure they're all the same but comes I'm freaked out and they rotate to love we don't we love you come do it we don't open invitation thank you have a rotating day yeah Oh baby I'll rotate it a good bit though I end up moving it around more than I really should but it's an endeavor to move a whole stack of lumber trustee doesn't think that long but it's a lot of work okay I just thought I'd throw this out there I read this when I'm doing my research although this is kind of push it in perspective I hate to read it I'll read it try Oh shrinks one percent for every three percent change in moisture content MC of course your content so in our example if we take a two and a half inch wide board 3/4 Florrie lose its three percent moisture it changes 1% or 0.025 inches doesn't sound like much but for a blue line if you have six thousand you'll not only see it the Blues not holding in that line so say we had a flooring this 30 feet wide you know the width of the board wide you would be losing 4 inches over that span how do you know why they tell you to bring that flooring in and let it acclimate to your house 4 inches over third notice employees that they didn't do that but I thought that was pretty interesting that's the cooler that puts it in perspective and you go help if your 2% huh okay there's a lot of options out there for kills the first one is really what most industry uses is the old gas fire or electric there's a lot they heat them steam that sort of thing and then you get complete control they're very fast you can go from the tree standing to the market in about three weeks depending on fast you can transport it's very fast you be sized to fit any size operation some of these killings or as big as big buildings and they fit thousands and thousands of board feet in there at a time food they're very expensive to build even in a small scale it produces excellent quality wood that's why most industry this is what they do riki that second bullet there's quite a lot of people don't like dried wood as I Drive that past against case I'll get back in a case hardened which means the surface layer is very hard comparatively and that in sour water can't get out because there's just so much ends to get to it and we'll have a transport system in there so it just has to get out when you split it it's going to get the next one is a dehumidifier kiln it works very well they're very cheap to build they're a little more expensive to run but not bad he told me or I remember from the past it's about thirty dollars for a change in your electric wheel for the month that's not bad it's the one thing that's a little disadvantage to it but you get used to them but it's easier to make a mistake if you get to 6% and you just you know don't want to go on vacation that week when you get back you've got yourself a mess you may have ruined every piece in there I can say you get the space hardening if you get it to love and you can I found this while I was doing my research as well and I thought this is a very good publication on that type of kiln but you can see the dehumidifier in the back right there it's very similar to a solar kiln that it doesn't have a clerk they'll have to have some sort of heat source in there probably the heat from the fans might even be enough but he has four attic fans in line oh by the way even with a tea humidifying Kim you have to have earplugs you have to keep that air moving all the time but you can use cheapo fans you have you have to use anything fancy but the motor the heat from the motor might be enough depends on a bigger statute how much you're trying to drive it is very simple design there's no reason for the having the big steep thing on this type of hill but you can't it's very similar to solar you'll see look I got a question of the sharp tip if you're using those fans you're also bringing outside of the area well no no no no these are collector so I'm going inside look at this ruse or good you're recirculating there that's inside there but you have to have air movement though keep everything even otherwise the middle of the stack won't have we'll have a very different moisture content than the outside of the stack trying to keep it consistent through the stack Oh anyway it's still that picture getting back to your discussion about other tended operation for you because I'll make for sometime if you're faced with having to take the thing for some period of time like two weeks what's a good way to do that turn it off turn it off sure not one I've heard it for it is it not funny long as it's low enough you don't have mold I mean you don't want to turn it off the second day you put it in there but if you get pretty close you can turn it off overtly but if you're in a hurry and you just forget to turn it off leave you can really mess up okay this is the best one I like a lot of guys would go by these old decompression chambers from the Navy you know they sell them dirt cheap and they'll make one of these kind of kills and these all they do water will vaporize people enough back you might throw it in there pull a good vacuum you don't have to heat it up to leave it it it will come out of it very fast but they don't have the same sort of problem that heating and pulling the air out I mean the moisture out has you won't have case argument you can pull it out fast one I thought you can't really see it I was framing we were able to it will do up to a thousand foot or foot capacity kill now in this style can do up to two hundred thousand four feet a year looking out read about that one seven is also useful whenever you're trying to leave big pieces of stuff yeah that's just this is the way to do that I owe a simple I would just throw it an attic so we've done that and it does work it but you have to remember that different woods have optimum drying schedules in other words oak will drive very differently from pine will drive very differently from popular as far as time from the same environment but if you really want simple is all you have to do to solve this equation hi our plan we're going to build a solar flare till as close as possible to the proven methods that other people have already done we're not going to try to reinvent the wheel here and a real good source of a whole lot of information about this is Virginia Tech and several other colleges Virginia Tech kind of really got all that started when we build it we're going to record the moisture content every day or so a couple days depending on where we are in the process and we're going to record that humidity vent position is these little slides I'm gonna have on the windows on the back of the cube and I'm going to draw lines hi this is a publication that I primarily use for this it's by Virginia Tech as I mentioned it's very good this one they have two publications one the first one they give was for a big kill all the over a thousand wood feet and this one I thanks for 500 or 600 or something like that and it's really basically this design good publication bill all right thanks some of the elements you got to keep in mind when you're designing a kiln okay the size of the collector which is your glass on the front or putting all that pledge glass so not place class either as little exit that putting the clear plastic stuff okay what's called down for every square foot of that collector should be enough to dry 10 board feet of your lumber inside of there if you keep that constant then you're not going to overheat that's what we're trying to accomplish it that way we don't have to solve any equation we should be able to dry a load in about a month that's a load that's coming out of the tree the loads we're going to be putting in there are twelve percent already and that should be a little more forgiving because all we've got to do is get it from 12 to 8 now suspected me less than a week how many four feet below we're getting there okay listen up high temperature better I'm sorry is the upside temperature butter with January or July we're getting there to get the slope of the roof would be approximately the latitude of the location in the wilderness 34 degrees and up to 10 degrees above that if you're going to use a lot in the winter now I've kind of kicked around 45 for a long time because that's really close to 34 but I ended up going with 40 40 degrees from a slope of my way so that will mean that I will be able to not have to worry so much in the summer of getting too hot it won't be as he fish it in the summer which is okay with me I don't want to be moving with the middle of the summer either and but it's more efficient in the winter which is six degrees above our optimal 40 degrees I figure that's a good happy meeting the nice thing about a solar kill and the reason it works so well is you have that overnight relaxed so it'll get up the temperature and for a couple hours after sunset it'll still be pretty warm in there but overnight it'll get all the way down to close to the over item but it'll probably keep the moisture from the overnight for coming in and we'll let your would relax a little bit it'll kind of give it time for the more embedded water molecules to work their way to the outside again we have a really good friend that has one of these and he does this for that he does for him with it remember my boring thing so he has to have it right before he sells at 40 this is the only way he eats and that's what biggest thing he said was it's very forgiving you don't have to have to be a scientist to do this once you get the design right and get a feel for how it dries your wood it's very easy very good you don't have to measure every day is temperature or anything like that hi this little all right this is a stack of the wood in my case this is tad over 36 inches wide about 40 but I got to figure my separation between divorce so I'm going to figure 3 feet wide the kiln is 14 feet long so I can use 12th at lumber I have people foot of separation all the way around on the sides and on the ends so I have good air flow around the stack so my stack is 36 inches wide basically I can go up to 36 inches high and I don't mean I can do 36 rows of one inch one a lumber got my stickers that's 19 rows of wood so that's 7 right at 704 feet I figured I'm going to be able to put a little bit right here too I think I can get 700 four feet in mine so what do I need for my collector can't go over 70 okay also a couple of other neat things or things you wanted this little difficulty of my drawing just baffle right here all you're trying to do is keep the airflow boat against the collector to collect off that heat bring it around to the front of the stack this will be sealed off on the bottom and we want to go through the stack as much as we can come back around go back up here okay you get the idea this little piece of flat stuff here it looks like it's different from the stack we don't want direct sunlight on our it so we'll have to put some kind of firewood ten whatever them think up so that our Sun lights not please clear the top of the booth ever now we're not going to put plain wood in here we're going to put wood in here that needs to be planted so probably wouldn't hurt it anyway but I think that's why they do that all of the inside of the kiln has to be painted black even the wood supporting the glass and everything everything has to be painted black and they gave a couple of nice options for doing it this aluminum roof coating is not black it's gray but it would seal up any cracks or anything and you having your construction work and I'm going to use OSD on the inside so that would seal up here with speed but it's great you have to paint it black after you get through this is actually a paint that's made for this thing I imagine it's pretty expensive but this is leak stopper is something you can get at Home Depot and stuff like that it's pretty it's kind of rubberized paint and there's a couple of options out there now that restore paint that you put on Dex I doubt that they sell it in black but but I haven't looked at and one more is that liner stuff you put in truck bed liners I know they sell that in the gallon belt note that may be too expensive for already you can imagine it would take two or three gallons but the guy that lives next to my hand he does use paint and it looks like OSP painted it's fine it don't have a look free ah alright this is a indicator say it go to Jory hey alright you know you don't I got a huge catch hi we're going to start even though we're going to be on a trailer I didn't draw the trailer they won't miss we're going to put them on skids so if we need to use that trailer for anything we're just gonna take daddy's tractor and we're going to drag that thing off support the end of it put another sport would pull the trailer up some more support the other end of it drive off okay so we can use this on the ground as much as we want to or you know all right so the way I figured when I grabbed it with the track router or this same see-sawing so I put two other six by six is diesel six by six is by the way they're going to be pressure treated to across the front in the back even where the framing is going to be for the ends we're going to lap the end so that it won't want a scissor we're going to screw the heck out of it alright then we put our floor sheeting now it's going to be osp's alright we'll just add the framing front wall framing pretty simple 30 inches to basically buy the back wall so this angle is 40 degrees i after that as we do the frame you want to show you on the back these are our louvers there's your openings to control your temperatures got some of the top and on the bottom on the top you open a wider it gets cooler on the bottom you get more airflow it doesn't necessarily cool it off it's still something to eat okay so your bottom is going to have like a little bit of adjustment the top some load adjustment to get into hot open a wide going to cool it off real fast okay especially that slope proof okay all right then we're going to add the sheathing on the inside alright remember we're going to seal them up as best we can oh we forgot our insulation in the walls got to insulate the walls too then we're going to add the sheathing we unused as close as we can to cut the cut so that we've got a seal but it's okay if it leaks a little bit especially on the inside because don't forget about that time angle now we don't care and then the fan support without the veal does these have to come in from the inside 18 inches oh they're about not an exact measurement but we don't want to be right next to the window we want to have air flow still going by with that wind all right and those fans can be anything okay then on the bottom of that fan support we're going to add our plastic or it could be wood or whatever to fold up plastic up figure be easy to tie up to keep it from the airflow going through the stuff we're going to use our hearty plank on the outside high on the back side this is dad and I had a lot of trouble with this I was going to do such a wide opening and bill to get it open so I actually found some online that did the same thing and this is six up 14 feet wide so can't build a 14 foot door that swings very easy so we're going to put a center door that's removable but doesn't swing it's just going to build have handles on the side and we'll just be able to take it loose at top and by others move it out of the way and then the other doors will swing okay and there's our louvers at the bottom these frames around it is going to have a board on it will slide in a slide that much all lines a number of them so we can keep an idea how much do we have to keep air flow in there to maintain the temperature if you don't have B if say you load it up and you only have 250 board feet of lumber it's going to get hotter so you have to have the ability to adjust your kill it works for a given or which we do think your slider would be in the same able definitely have to change for the whole load or will change with a whole lot of burdens what would have change during the drying cycle yeah they would I was thinking with what you're going to do for sure remember the best pieces in there for sure this is the most important thing to monitor is how fast that moisture is coming down and I've got a formula for that in those publications for how fast you want it to come down at what humidity level for to be safe that has got to be right but that is not something that changes in one day no I'm saying that I got a little time to figure out when do I need to make a change when do I need to make a change and we'll get a feel for that I'm hoping that remember now I don't need 700 board feet of dried lumber at a time so I suspect we'll be using this partially filled pretty often I don't want to dry my wig you know a year half before I'm gonna use it I want to dry it pretty close to one run using I wanted to be 7% when I play with it so what else do we have to cover here let's high as fans you put it in there could you have pictures of the hanging I'm being a little house man 14:8 all right yeah hope you enjoy

Channel: Gwinnett Woodworkers

Views: 145,965

Keywords: gwinnett woodworkers association, gwinnett woodworkers, gwa, woodworking, woodworking clubs, woodworking projects, woodworking classes, lumber kiln, drying lumber, solar kiln

Id: EJ-Ffy-KHe0

Length: 32min 13sec (1933 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2015