Fired Up by a new idea

by Bill Gove, Sawmill & Woodlot Magazine, June/July 2000

ALL OF US GENERATE IDEAS on occasion, but how many of us have the experience of formulating a new and unique idea that ends up changing the course of our career? Very few. As the saying goes, “Many people entertain ideas: a few put them to work.”

It was just an untried but unique idea that put a Vermont forester and logger on the hard-working road to success and gave the firewood industry the concept of kiln-dried firewood.

Ray Colton of Pittsfield, Vermont had been working as a veneer log buyer, and independent logger, and a firewood producer when the idea first took shape. To satisfy his customers’ demand for dry firewood, he put green firewood on pallets throughout the summer and left it to dry while exposed to the elements. But his product depended on the vagaries of the weather. He had some demanding and fussy firewood customers at ski area condos who wanted well-dried hardwood, and wanted it available at all times.

Colton had talked about kiln drying for a few years, but in 1983 he put his idea to work. He began asking around for information on the subject of forced air-drying of firewood. But he found none. The traditionalists considered it impractical to invest money in the kiln drying of low-value product such as firewood. Colton was, however, determined.

Feeling that the cost of a new commercial kiln package wouldn’t be justified for firewood, he built his own structure, and Colton Enterprises was born.

The company produces kiln-dried firewood in just two to three days for his customers. Plus, he’s now selling the plans to his homemade firewood kiln.

Experimenting with the System

It took a while for Colton to work through the kinks of his system. When he decided to build a kiln, he was still stacking wood on pallets. Thus, he designed his kiln building around the dimension of pallets, allowing space for two pallets across and two high in each half of the building. He double sheathed the 26-by-38 foot building with Thermax in between. Green lumber from a local sawmill helped to keep the cost under control. The building was divided into two compartments, each capable of holding 13 cords of palletized wood.

The only commercial components were the doors for the kiln, purchased for about $6,000 to $7,000. Even the steam system and vent controls were contrived by Colton from his own ideas and limited knowledge of the subject.

Initially, he set up a 30 HP boiler at a cost of $20,000 for steam. But once in operation, the boiler could barely keep up with the demand, and he eventually replaced it with two larger boilers. The original heat source, a Conifer 315 gas-fired boiler, has also been replaced as the business expanded.

Colton’s lack of experience in kiln drying was surmounted by his determination to carry out his ideas. The used fans originally installed couldn’t stand the heat; he had to find fans that could push 50,000 cubic feet of 150-degree air per minute through the wood.

When setting up the control for the drying process, Colton was hampered not only by his own lack of experience but also by the discovery that to his knowledge nobody had worked out the controls.

Obviously, the kiln drying of firewood would be much different than the drying of lumber; but he didn’t need to be concerned about checking or honeycombing of the outer shell of the wood. In fact, if the firewood cracked open, this provided a wider channel for the release of moisture on the inside.

A Kiln Operator’s Paradise?

Colton’s initial efforts at kiln control were therefore strictly trial and error. At first, both the temperature and the humidity were controlled, but eventually he realized that it was not necessary to control or limit the heat input. Colton has now devised a control system based solely on humidity (wet bulb control). Air temperature is apt to approach 200 degrees after the first few hours of initial heating, and it’s kept up there.

It might seem like a kiln operator’s paradise not to have any concern over the temperature control or the checking (splitting) of the wood surface, but it’s not quite that simple. Since firewood is such a low-value product when compared with furniture-quality lumber, reduced time in the kiln is an important consideration. The faster the wood can be dried, the more likely the kiln can be profitable. Colton is normally able to get the wood dried to the desired 25 percent moisture content in two days, sometimes three. More than 1,000 pounds of water is removed from each cord of wood in the process.

Customer acceptance and demand for the steady supply of evenly dried wood exceeded expectations.

“I was also running a log job when I started the kiln in 1983,” Colton said. “I thought I would be able to continue logging at the same time. But it didn’t take long to figure out that the logging would have to go.”

A second kiln building has since been constructed and the original boiler replaced by two others, a 65 and 130 HP.

Sales Boosted by Y2K Scare

Colton originally hoped to sustain a production of about 50 cords per week, but he soon realized that he underestimated the market potential. This season, since September, the company has sold more than 3,600 cords, boosted by the Y2K scare in urban areas as well as rising fuel prices.

Colton sells and delivers wood to local ski areas, but the majority of his business now comes from the Boston area. A cord of kiln-dried wood costs $250 in the greater Boston area, from Cape Cod north, whereas a cord in Vermont runs for $165.

But Colton said that urban residents like the kiln-dried firewood because it starts easy, is insect and bug free, and has a lighter, cleaner appearance than seasoned wood.

“It’s a fresh-looking product,” he said.

To sustain an operation of this size, the company also has to operate a large firewood-processing mill. Two large shop-built deck mounted splitters in the mill are supplemented part-time by a MULTITEK 2040, which is used periodically for smaller logs.

Colton continued to develop his ideas through trial and error.

“One of the best changes I ever made,” he said, “was to switch from pallets to metal bins for holding the wood.”

At the onset of the kiln operation, he continued to stack the wood on pallets. Now he uses half cord metals bins into which the wood drops from the splitting processor with no hand labor required.

Tests have shown that 180 cubic feet of “thrown wood” is equal in wood volume to a stacked cord of 128 cubic feet, and Colton sized his half-cord bins accordingly. He discovered that thrown wood in a bin dries in the kiln just as well as stacked wood, because the air is able to move through the sticks sufficiently.

Estimating Kiln Costs

Colton recently installed truck scales and started purchasing firewood logs by weight.
Hardwood logs are calculated at 5,400 pounds to the cord; his wood cost averages out at about $50 per cord.

Despite the trial and error quality of the early days of the business, Colton’s dry kiln idea has certainly served him well. He is now selling the engineering plans and operating procedure for his firewood dry kiln. The plans, which are a blueprint to the kiln’s he’s produced, cost $1,000 and include all the specs to the kiln.

He said that there are a number of producers across the U.S. who are using his system. He has received inquiries on his web site from as far away as England and some unconventional market requests. The University of Vermont hired Colton Enterprises to build a supervised bonfire for its recent winter carnival –a job that pleased Colton not only because he is an alumnus, but also because his daughter is currently a student at the university.

When asked about the cost to set up a dry kiln operation with a single two-unit kiln building, Colton said he found it difficult to make an estimate. So much would depend on the availability and cost of used equipment, Colton said. When pressed for an estimate, he put the cost between $150,000 and $200,000.

But I asked Colton if it would be profitable to run an operation with one kiln building.

He said, “Since each half of the kiln holds about 12 cords and the wood is in the kiln for two days, the operation would be drying 12 cords a day or 84 a week,” he said. “That could probably be profitable for a crew of three men in the yard plus a truck driver.”

To set up an operation of this size is obviously beyond the means or the desire of many firewood producers. However, there are examples in the country of small investment kilns for a one-man operation. We will consider a couple of them in the Oct./Nov. issue of the magazine.
For Colton, he’s pleased that he pursued his idea despite the lack of information about the subject.

“That was a big problem,” he said. “It was a shot in the dark. But it worked, and we have a good year-round business now.”

Bill Gove is a retired forester who last worked for the Vermont Department of Parks and Forests. He is a frequent contributor to Sawmill & Woodlot magazine.