Losing weight and making tar.

(What do you think of the new blog template?) Anyway, on with the show:-

Forget the winning numbers on the lottery. Forget the odds on Nick Clegg being Prime Minister. The numbers everyone really wants to know are - how are my drying logs losing weight?

Today we had an official 5 week weigh in and it's looking good.

At this rate they should be ready to burn in about three weeks -as someone commented, "just at the time when we no longer need to light the stove". Still, it's interesting, (to me at any rate), that they have dried out so quickly. I thought 6 or 7 months, not weeks, although they might slow down as they get nearer to being fully dry. The logs in the dampish outside shed started drying later, but now seem to be losing weight at the same rate as the ones in the conservatory. Were they out in the weather, who knows what they would be like.

Some larger sycamore logs given to me a month earlier have dried out too and we used a few of them on our recent trip. They burned easily and gave some heat, but boy did they make a lot of tar at the chimney top. I don't know if further drying out leads to less tar or not. Anyway it seems I need to attend to the chimney liner to get a better seal or risk brown streaks on the boat roof.