No more playing around part II...the three year plan

Some of you will remember my original "No more playing around thread", from February of this year. Basically I bought twenty 330 gallon IBC totes and filled the cages with firewood during that month.

No more playing around


Some may also recall the woodshed extension thread, where I added onto my woodshed, to give me my full second year of wood.

Woodshed extension

Well, now its time for part two, or part three I guess depending how you look at it. Anyways...I picked a spot in the woods where its fairly sunny and in the same vicinity as the cages and woodshed (all three within 100' or so of each other). I laid out some runners to lay pallets on.



I then laid down the pallets, and used two bigger pallets as ends. The ends are 5' tall. I put some angled braces on them after to keep them level and upright. This new stacking area will hold just over six full cords at 5' high. I intend to have it filled by mid September.



The first wood to be split was the Ash I recently got from the "Scrounge gone wrong" thread.

 

A lot of that Ash was already cut by the DPW, and it wasn't the length I normally process to (20"). Therefore I put that shorter wood (14-16") In a box that I can let season and move later on. I covered it with some old metal roofing leftovers I had. All told, the Ash ended up being 1.25.1.33 cords which is what I had figured it was.





I then went to town on some Red Oak I have.









If you look closely, you may notice an orange string going across the top of the stacks. This is being used to give me a guide to stack to. It doesn't really matter, but I want it to be fairly accurate. I intend to have my full three year plan done by the end of September. For me that is 24 full cords. As of right now, I have 5 cords to go to get there.

 

Nice racks & stacks. Simple and effective. The dryline is cheating though . Being a tradesperson you should have a good eye for that

 

3yrs?
Go
Go
Go

You'll feel very accomplished once you are there.

 

I do ok by eye. This stack was without a string.

 

Great job sirbuildalot
One thing I notice is with three-year plan is that the older my wood is the less I use. With everything else being the same. The older drier wood puts out more heat!

 

To be honest, I've never tried stacking on just runners. I do think the pallets offer better airflow to the stacks, offer better protection from ground water, moisture and snow, and even out low spots from the ground giving a flatter stacking surface. The pallets were all free, so no extra cost, just a little extra time spent. Literally probably 15 minutes to lay down the pallets on the runners including the ends with braces.

There is one benefit you're forgetting about though Dennis.....

The old pallets and leftover pallets make for great bonfires. These flames were tickling the clouds.

 

I do pallets on runners too.
It uses less runners and I have more pallets than runners.

 

You can almost pick out a face in this fire.

 

Great looking setup. I guess I have to count my blessings that a 3 year plan for me is only about 9-10 cords which is pretty manageable. If I had to stockpile 8 cords a year I'd wake up some morning to a marshal at the door serving me divorce papers! Respect to you for getting it done, seriously.

 

Thank you. At 3 cords a year I’d be on a 6 year plan right now. Not easy working full time, and cutting all my wood from standing tree. Ordering log length, burning less, and being at home mode would all make wood processing much quicker and easier. There are definitely levels to this stuff.

 

The good news is that if I can pull it off, I’ll only have to do 8 cord a year after this. Still a lot to come up with, but certainly doable. A good tractor with the right attachments and a fast splitter make a huge difference.

 

Yeah I think a lot about going the log length route. Bite the bullet and have a triaxle drop it all in my processing area to be dealt with when I have time. Or even buying un-split, unseasoned pieces from a tree service. Everything I have I scrounge so it's a huge time-suck getting one truckload at a time. In the end you pay for it one way or another... between fuel, oil, wear and tear/maintenance, time away from family, etc. Although for me anyway just being able to relax in front of the wood stove with my coffee after coming in from the cold somehow justifies all the work I put into getting there.

 

got tractor; no truck; 95% of my wood is less than half mile away and still struggling

 

I was able to get a little done over the weekend.

Got 6 trailer loads like this stacked. 5 Red oak, and 1 Pine.









All told, I calculate I now have 3.5 cords of the 6 done. I have about 2 cords of short logs I hope to process in the next couple of weeks, which will almost finish out the stacks. Then to finish out my full 3 year plan, I'll have to build 2-3 half cord pallet boxes and fill those.

 

Was able to add a small amount more wood to the pile.

I had a small pile of logs that I've been wanting to process. Being "smaller" diameter I processed all of them on the sawbuck with the exception of one 12" DBH Red Oak that I wasn't about to try and lift. The logs are 10' long.



Off the splitter they went and straight into the Gorilla cart for stacking. This log pile was only about 50' from the stack pile, so I didn't bother using the Super tilt trailer today.







Hard to say what I added, but it was 4 heaping carts worth. I think the cart is 34" x 52". I'm going to guess maybe 2/3rds of a cord. It rained all day Saturday, so I only worked on this for about 1.5 hours on Sunday morning.,

 

I was able to also get about another cord split and stacked. I had a pile of 5' logs that I got from my neighbor several months ago.



I used an old 5x10 trailer I have to see how much it would hold. This trailer was homemade by a previous owner I believe. It is very overbuilt. Was previously used as an asphalt roller trailer. I stacked a full cord on it and both the little Ford and the trailer did fine.






I'm hopeful I can still make my goal date of mid September to finish out this stack. I have about 1.5 cords to go.

 

I've been asking my father if I could borrow his backhoe for the last month or so. This weekend we loaded it up and brought it to my house. I was able to enlarge my processing center in the woods by a decent amount. Had to take down 10-12 trees, dig the stumps, rough grade the area, and yorkrake.

This Pine was the biggest of the trees. It was about 20" DBH and 75-80' tall.



I ended up with a decent pile of logs. Mostly Pine, but there is some Oak, and Red Maple as well.



The new area is approx 55' x 90'. Should give me much more room for log piles, implement storage, and easier turn arounds. Who knows maybe a future GTG.