I posted this photo of my 5x10 trailer with an unstacked "heaping" load under the "First Burn Tonight" thread the other day: I removed the stair boards from the galvanized stringers today and filled the pit unstacked, just strategically thrown in. All that was left was a small pile I put to the left of the door. Its amazing what you can get into that Bilco pit, even more if you take the time to stack it in. My furnace is about 8' away in the basement. The wood, and its associated critters, stays "outside" in the cold until being placed directly into the furnace.
I've been hauling out heaped trailer loads of unstacked wood like that to sell. I timbered out 120 trees last May and I'm selling the remaining tops (mostly rounds, some bigger splits) as face cords (1/3 cord) on a "load/haul your own" basis via Craigslist. I'm down to about 35 tops left. It normally stacks out to right about 2 face cords, so there is just under 2/3 cord in the Bilco pit unstacked. Bilco doors do come in bigger sizes than the model I have . I bought this one when I built my house simply as an outside entrance to the basement, then discovered the beauty of storing wood there during the winter. If I would have realized it then back in "83", I would have gotten a bigger one!
Hard for me to say because I don't use it all up before filling it again. The bottom half of that pit will not get burned until late spring "shoulder season" next year. I just keep topping it off when I use about a 1/3 - 1/2 of it with loads from my smaller "JD Sabre/garden cart" during the winter. The ground is usually too soft (unless we get a real good freeze up which we have not had here the past few years) to drive a big load like that up the yard without really messing up my lawn. So I run small loads up early in the morning while "barely frozen" on the surface from "overnight lows".
Good deal. I forgot about the ground not freezing. Been many years since I lived in SW Pa. Ground froze here , (inch or 2 on the surface) in the past few days. Norm is, it'll be froze solid over 3' by January. 41° now though, may thaw if we get some sun. Forecast is for rain next week. A warm Oct so far.
