Actually, water will boil at much lower than 95° F in a really deep vacuum. I can fill a chamber with 75° F water and pull full vacuum and bring it up to a rolling boil. As a matter of fact, at a 10,000 micron vacuum which is easily obtainable with the right chamber and a good rotary vane pump, water will boil at 53° F. See this chart for more information:
http://www.jbind.com/pdf/Cross-Reference-of-Boiling-Temps.pdf
As for keeping water from your pump...it depends on the kind of pump you are running. If you are running an oil filled rotary vane pump, water vapor WILL NOT hurt it at all. They are made for this purpose. I am talking about the kinds of pumps used for HVAC work. The primary reason to pull a vacuum on an HVAC system is to boil off the water in the system before introducing freon. The water in an HVAC system also contains acids and such. It is recommended when doing this king of work to change the oil after every use but this is primarily because the water vapor contaminates the oil make the pump less efficient, not because it will damage the pump. By the way, I got the HVAC info directly from a licensed HVAC contractor who used to do HVAC work for me when I was building houses. The pump info I got directly from the head technician at JB Industries which is one of the premier manufacturers of quality vacuum pumps in the US.
Also, from personal experience...I test every vacuum chamber I make by filling it partially with water and pulling a full vacuum until the water is under a rolling boil. Once my oil level starts to get higher in the pump or I start pulling a lesser quality vacuum, I will change the oil. I have set this oil aside to let it separate and you would be surprised how much water is in it. I have been doing this with the same pump for 3 years of hard use and nothing has happened to my pump.
As for using vacuum to remove the water form wood...it can be done without heat but not very efficiently. If the wood is already air dried, it will take 15-20 hours of the pump running continuously at full vacuum to remove the water. You will not see much, if any water being removed as it will be boiling the water off and it will be coming out of the wood as vapor. Drying green wood with vacuum and no heat will take much longer and is simply not worth it.