Calculated Industries 7440 AccuMASTER XT Digital Moisture Meter | Handheld |Pin Type | Backlit LCD Display | Detects Leaks, Damp and Moisture in Wood, Walls, Ceilings, Carpet and Firewood

This is my first moisture meter, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I'm very pleased with it. I use it for checking my firewood to see if it's ready to burn. It seems very well built. You have to push with a little force to get the prongs to go into the wood and I was a bit worried that those little pins might be fragile, but they are not. They are sturdy and the case seems to be up to the task as well.I've played around with it a bit - testing a piece of wood and then leaving it in the house for a while and everytime I test it again, the moisture level has gone down just as you would think it should. I like the fact that it will shut itself off if I forget to do it. One little surprise feature is the beeping that indicates moisture level. If the level is really low, the beeping is slow. Then as you go up in moisture, it beeps faster. The cutoff for burnable firewood is 20% and if the unit measures over 20% is beeps quite fast, sort of like It's saying, "This wood is not ready!".I should also mention that the readings I get are consistent with what I see when I burn the wood. If I measure a piece at say 18%, it lights right up and burns with no steaming or hissing. If I measure one at 22%, then there will be some of the steaming and hissing after I put it on the fire.It comes with a 9v battery and I was pleased to see that it was an alkaline battery, which should last for quite a while. It seems like most things that come with batteries come with the cheapest ones possible - this was a pleasant surprise.December, 2024I stumbled on this review that I'd done back in 2017 when I first bought the meter. (I just recommended this product to a friend and looked up my order). I can report that it is still working after about 7 years of use! I replaced the battery one time so far. I heat with wood and cut 4 or 5 cords a year - I have used this meter 100's of times since I got it and it's still going strong.

It works great, but you should note that besides moisture it also picks up metal as well, so it can lead to false positives if there's metal behind what you're testing. And Amazon, stop saying my review violated some guidelines I didn't violate anything.

For hardwoods, I haven't had much luck inserting the pins into my firewood (the pins bend) so I use the pinless mode. By hovering the meter over my (other) palm, the sensing pad just beings to read above zero at around half an inch separation, increasing to 100% when in contact with my (other) palm. For split firewood, I can get very reproducible readings if the sensing pad is flat, in direct contact with the log end (which requires the log end to be flat), and if I place the pad in roughly the same location on the end. To hold the meter flat to the wood surface, I grip astride the display rather than by the red bumpers, so most of the time I listen for the rate of the chirps. The readings are plausible based on how easily the logs burn, with the caveat that the wood needs to be seasoned enough that the moisture content within half an inch or so of the flat surface that the pad is measuring is representative of the log. The end could also be unrepresentively wetter than the middle if it was recently rained on or otherwise subject to high humidity. I suppose I might choose which stack to draw from next based upon log-end measurements in the piles, then if I had concerns, cut a log in half so that I could get a measurement the center for confirmation.For firewood stored outside for airtight stoves in humid climates, the range of interest for water content is (say) 10 to 30 percent. It would be helpful if the chirps' rate, slow-to-rapid, could apply to a smaller range of readings to allow the user to better discriminate without consulting the display. This could perhaps be achieved (say) by using pitch to indicate range and rate to indicate the reading within that range.Inside the house, the logs continue drying for a time, so the meter is helpful choosing which logs and how many to bring in (perhaps fewer logs need grace the living room than if logs are chosen at random). When it comes to fueling the stove, the meter is helpful to choose which logs to pull next from the rack. Checking of the ends, and heft relative to the log size, serve to confirm the choice.