# Back Yard Lumber Drying



## Allen Tomaszek (Dec 11, 2010)

I've always been fascinated with the "small" way to do things. Not everyone has a lot of space or money and whenever I find interesting small scale ways to do things I generally give them a try.

Here's one I tried recently and only moderately recommend it but it does work. Drying lumber in the rafters of your garage (or attic). I read about it before and thought I'd give it a go.

I had a great urban sourced log from a friend that had been sitting in the back of his place for a couple of years looking like it had some nice spalting going on.








We made a nice little pile of 6/4 and 8/4 book matched sets and let it air dry for a year to get the moisture content down. After this photo I moved it to a covered area with plenty of air circulation.








Last month I decided to put it up in the rafters of my garage. It's just a standard 2 car garage. Nothing fancy. No fans. Just some heat and some time.








On an average day the temperature difference between the ground level and the rafters of the garage is about 20 degrees. On hot days the difference can be even higher. Today it was a 30 degree difference and the RH was around 30%.


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## Allen Tomaszek (Dec 11, 2010)

Here's a picture of the stacked lumber. The one difficulty of this method is to get the lumber up there and to ensure your rafters can support the weight. I'm not an engineer and have no idea if what I have up here is actually safe but it didn't cave in so I figure I'm good for now. I think I'm going to reinforce it though if I try this again.








After about a month of drying in the rafters here's what I found today. Dry enough for me. The 8/4 boards in the middle of the stack were at 8% so I think if I leave it up here for another week or two even those will come down some more.








In the end I spent no additional money to dry this stock and just used mother nature. Low budget and small scale. I think I like it.


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## aardvark (Sep 29, 2011)

Hey Allen.
If you need advice on load capacity of that attic space just ask.
I can calculate it for you or give you a heads up on how to beef the area up.
My real job is (when there is work, which is sparse these days) I'm an architect.
That looks like a lot of weight for an attic in a standard garage.

Just e-mail me.


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## ETWW (Mar 27, 2011)

An attic space is a very good place to dry lumber in small amounts. As you discovered with your thermal hygrometer, as the temperature increases, the RH decreases. The 120 degrees at 30% RH equates to a 5.4% EMC. At night when the attic space cools and the RH rises, it actually conditions your wood to relieve any drying stresses...just like a solar kiln.

Just don't overload the joists and bring everything down. :no:


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## Allen Tomaszek (Dec 11, 2010)

Figure out the load? What kind of fun is that? I think I'll flirt with death a little longer if that's OK... :laughing: There's just something about not dying after doing something you know isn't a good idea that's just a little bit satisfying.

Seriously though. I'll probably take you up on your offer Dan. My teenagers all think I need to hang around long enough to send them to college or something so I should probably be a little safer than not.

It is much like a solar kiln ETWW. I think sometimes people believe they need an "official" kiln to dry their lumber and many people don't try because of lack of space, money, friendly zoning or neighbors. This is one way I had read about when I was first learning to dry wood and had never tried it out. 

Plus it's an interesting story to tell customers when they wonder where the wood I sell comes from and how it was produced. Someone's going to think it's pretty cool.

From my perspective, it was free and I have 200bf more dried lumber ready to go. I'll take everyone's advice though and be a little safer about it next time.


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## aardvark (Sep 29, 2011)

Well, If nothing else, if it went up without a collapse, as moisture weight comes out...it's safer.


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