It is really important to make sure that you burn the right wood on your stove. There is no point is buying a clean EcoDesign woodstove and then burning unseasoned wood or treated wood on it as you are undoing any good that you have done!

We recommend that you burn logs with no more than 20% moisture content and look out for the Ready to Burn logo if purchasing prepacked logs. If the packaging doesn’t have this logo on, there is no guarantee that you are buying wood which is dry enough to burn properly.

Burning wet wood will not only damage your stove, the flue liner and the environment but it will lead to you having to burn more logs to get the same heat output. For example, if you burn logs with less than 20% moisture you will get 5Kw of heat per hour. If you burn wood with a moisture content of 30%, you will only get 3.3Kw heat per hour from the same charge of logs. If you burn wood with a moisture content of 40%, you will only get 2.7Kw of heat per hour. In other words, you are having to burn nearly twice as much wood with a 40% moisture content to get the same heat as you would from logs with 20% moisture content.

Not only are you using twice as much wood, you are giving out more PM2.5 emissions that if your were burning Ready to Burn logs.

You wouldn’t mix your petrol with 30% water to fuel your car so you shouldn’t do the same with your wood stove.

There is no reason why you still can not harvest your own logs but just ensure that you store them properly for a minimum of 2 years and buy a moisture meter to ensure they are below 20% moisture before attempting to burn them.