Seasoning firewood

[sfby]

I've been given some logs which I'm splitting and leaving for a year or so to dry out before burning.

There's quite a number of smaller branches (7 - 10 cm diameter) which are difficult to chop with an axe - will these season OK without chopping or do I need to split these as well?

TIA

[coccinelle]

Yes, I have piles of such and they burn very well. Splitting logs makes the drying out time quicker that's all.

[sue11]

Hello as per coccinelle's answer we have found that smaller logs do not seem to need splitting before burning.
I have copied quite an informative paragraph from http://www.wildeye.co.uk/trees/firewood.html
Hope it helps, we only acquired a wood burner when we moved house last year and I tried to do a bit of research on firewood. The website also tells you which wood is best to burn. We also bought a moisture tester to tell us how dry the logs are ideally wood needs to be 20% or less to burn well.
The website info follows:

Seasoning
So what is seasoning? Essentially it is making wood fit for burning – by reducing its water content – usually by leaving it for a period of time in the right conditions. All wood contains water. Freshly-cut wood can be up to 45% water, while well-seasoned firewood generally has a 20–25% moisture content. Well seasoned firewood is easier to light, produces more heat, and burns cleaner.
If you try to burn green wood, the heat produced by combustion must dry the wood before it will burn, using up a large percentage of the available energy in the process. This results in less heat delivered to your home, and gallons of acidic water in the form of creosote deposited in your chimney. This can eat through the chimney lining and cause significant damage. The problem is that as wet wood burns slowly, with little heat, the chimney flue does not get a chance to warm up. There is little draw (air moving up the chimney) which doesn’t help the combustion, and the flue remains a cold surface on which the creosote condenses. Dry wood will burn hot – heating up the flue, creating a fast draw, and shooting the smaller amount of vapours out of the chimney before they get a chance to condense.
The first step to drive the water out of the wood is to cut it into lengths – let’s say about 12–18 inches long (or less if your fireplace/woodburning stove requires this). Tree branches and trunks contain thousands of microscopic tubes which carry water from the roots to the leaves, and these tubes can stay full of water for years after the tree has been felled (or pruned). Cutting the wood to shorter lengths opens these tubes to the atmosphere which increases evaporation.
The second step is splitting any logs that are more than say six inches in diameter. This increases the surface area of the wood exposed to the elements and therefore also enhances drying. So the cutting and splitting of logs should be done as soon as possible after the wood is harvested – not just before you want to burn it. You can get mechanical splitters, and attachments for a tractor, when you have large quantities to split, but they are not cheap.
For the average user a maul is the tool needed. A maul is a type of axe with a heavy, wide head especially for splitting logs – you can buy one from a forestry supplier for about £40 new. A maul does not need to be particularly sharp – unlike a narrow felling axe which slices at wood and needs to be sharpened regularly. You can use a felling axe for splitting logs but it is much harder work than a maul. The trick with a maul is to let the weight of the head do the work – swing the maul over your shoulder and let the head fall on to the log without forcing it down. The wide head will force the log apart. It’s also important to have the log you are splitting at a good height – on a tree stump or larger log about 18 inches to 2 feet off the ground is ideal – this makes the job easier and avoids back damage.
It takes a bit of practice to start with, but once you’ve ‘got your eye in’ you should be impressively splitting each log first time every hit – and be able to keep this up for a few hours at a time without feeling exhausted. It’s a task I thoroughly enjoy – and have always referred to it as ‘earning my cow pie’!

[sfby]

Thanks Sue - very useful link