If you heat with wood, you may have bought a moisture meter to help you decide if your wood is dry enough to burn. But you may be using that tool in a way that is not providing you with full, complete and correct information.

The first thing to consider is that the moisture meter can not measure total wood moisture content of the entire bit of firewood you are testing. What that means is you are only really measuring the moisture content of the wood nearest the probes, not the entire moisture content of the log itself. In other words, deep down in the wood the moisture may be much higher. In fact, the interior wood moisture content may be twice as much, or more, as the surface moisture content especially in newly cut wood. You may not know that unless you test the wood properly.

The simple solution for proper testing is to always split the log you are testing and test both the outside and the inside split surface to get a better idea of the total water content of that log, and of your firewood in general. A simple and elegant solution. Test at least three logs to get a basic average.