I hadn’t come across them, just looked and realised they use dehumidifiers to dry the timber, I built a cupboard in my garage about 6 feet high 8 feet wide and 2 feet deep with two large doors on the front, insulation on the top and stood an oscillating fan on a shelf to blow the air around inside the cupboard, also a desiccant type dehumidifier which gives off a small amount of heat so that helps, I was going to insulate the doors but realised that the humidifier would overheat if I did that, probably what I should’ve done was insulate the doors and put the humidifier on a thermostat. Now the disappointing bit for you, sorry. I only use it for drying out firewood which is carefully stacked to allow air to pass between each piece and it works incredibly well, just reduced the moisture content down from 25% to 10 in about three weeks, the amount of water produced is staggering about a gallon a day to start with.
If you wanted to dry planks of green timber my set up would split them to b-ggery, so you would need to slow the whole process right down and monitor it very carefully. What you have to allow time for is the moisture in the centre migrating to the ends of the boards to evaporate, I call this wicking, imagine the wick in an oil lamp, not so much migrates sideways to the surface of the boards - as it moves along the tubes that the wood is made of.
Cost was £10 for a secondhand fan and I think the dehumidifier was £130 from eco-air plus the cupboard.
I hope this helps, and if you decide to go down this route I’m sure we would all love to hear and see all about it. Ian
