I just thought of this... if you don't want to stack and just have piles of splits... if you have a tractor, you could load (and stack) your FEL directly from your splitter. Then, when full, take it to your pile and dump. I do wonder... my FEL bucket is not huge, the bigger the bucket, the less you have to leave your splitter and dump. Might need a bigger bucket! The nice thing about the above is that you could measure the cubic feet of your bucket and know exactly how much wood is in a pile of splits. OTOH, if you have room on your land, you could just windrow the rounds like jrider and have your splitter be mobile, and just move it along the windrow of rounds and as you split, toss to your windrow of splits. Yep, that's what I'm gonna do, lol. (I can't do this at my house but I can do it at my pasture. I've been making a long windrow of rounds there.) Also, what do you guys think about putting pallets down to make your pile of splits? If you sell the wood in a year, no big deal, on ground is fine but I will have some sitting longer than a year (lots of firewood this year), and that wood touching the ground will get punky. And what about the pallets? Would you put bricks under the corners of them to keep them from touching the ground? I am going to do a mixture this year. I have been making stacks. Will also do piles of splits and a windrow. Lastly, will also experiment with solar kilns to season in months, not years.
I've seen guys make big platforms out of skids and just pile on there, rot shouldn't be a problem with most wood if you get it dried in a couple of years or so, I had about a cord of maple (silver maple and hard maple) sitting on the ground for almost a year, loaded it and stacked it up on pallets for a family friend and she's been very happy with it. I, too, would like to make a solar kiln. Connex painted all black, maybe put some vent fans on the ends and load it up with IBC totes of stacked wood? Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
I am not sure what 'Connex,' is, maybe a shipping container? I have read about people wanting to use black paint on them but I don't recall the outcome. From all of my reading, using black paint, in general, to absorb heat doesn't work so well. Essentially, what you do is use plastic wrap on pallet structures or IBC totes to allow sunlight in. Vent a couple of ends or corners to allow moisture escape. A hot summer will, supposedly, do it. BTW, wood on the ground for longer than a few months doesn't work here. Even oak.
Yep, connex=shipping container just another name I learned of. I've never actually seen one built either so it could be a very expensive fail. All that firewood was OK after the year but some of it was a bit questionable. Hope to see some kinda kiln in the future. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
Yawner . I use the pallet method. I split right into my bucket and dump on the pallets. The wood doesn't stay there to long until it's sold. I know 4 buckets is a 1/2 cord so I pretty much have an idea of how much is there.
Windrow is a great way to do it if you have the space. The secret is not crowding yourself in the processing area. I use four parallel lanes. The outside lane, I windrow logs for a few days. I then run down the row of logs cutting into rounds. Usually accompanied by my skidsteer and grapple to lift and cut the big ones. All the rounds are now landing in the second row. I then leave my splitter attached to my UTV and run it down the third row (lane), splitting the rounds from the second row. I either split into the skidsteer bucket or just stack it directly to pallets in a fourth parallel row. More than not, I use the bucket as it's just saves steps and easier to stack out of the bucket. If you use bricks under your pallets, you will need six. The pallets will sag in the middle if you only use bricks on the corners.
Yikes! $26k is a bit more than i can go on this project. Lol My buddy bought a 40' sea can for $1800. Payed a couple hundred to have it picked up and moved to his property to store salt. I've often thought about firewood storage but not sure i can even justify that
Yeah, the one in the link is definitely 'to the extreme'. I just wanted to show that it has been and could be done. I'm sure there are several members on this forum with the ingenuity to come with ideas for a shipping container kiln that would do the trick for a lot less $$. The cheapest way for me to do a kiln is to be several years ahead on my firewood so I don't need one!
For those of you that use Facebook, there's a group called Kiln Drying Wood. Tons of good information about homemade kilns.
As a few of you mentioned, windrows of splits only works well in FULL sun meaning zero shade if the sun is up. I leared the hard way one season years ago.
