Firewood Intervention..... success story....

Next door neighbor buys his wood. He gets 3 years worth at a time so the first year it's kind of wet and by year 3 it's pretty darn dry. But that's not what this story is about. So a few years ago he had a garage added on. He had to have a few trees taken down and decided to keep the wood to burn. That wood was left in the backyard, in the shade, at the bottom of the hill in round form uncovered. He goes out every winter and swings the maul (for exercise) to slowly burn the wood, augmenting what he buys every 3 years. I decided it was time to go all in and split the wood for him with my newly acquired (this year) cub cadet. Told him I'd get him some pallets and we'd get that wood stacked and drying properly. He said that he still wanted to swing the maul at it but I could take the stuff that was starting to rot away. Fine.. He helped me load it up and I liberated that wood from it's rotting grave and stacked it for my personal use. He's a great guy and lets me scrounge in his backyard which was my reason for wanting to help him out. Also for this years wood, I recommended that he split some a little more and get it out in the sun and under cover on his driveway. He heeded my advise and is working on "speeding up the drying" of some of his wood. I tested the birch for him at 19-21% but the maple was 24%. Glad that he was receptive to my assistance but wish he would have let me split the rest of the pile.
Aerial View..

Getting ready to split. First time working the Cub Cadet horizontally.

The pile.. You can see that a lot of punk came off the outsides but being red oak, the insides were still pretty good.

Added to the stacks for this year...

 

Does your neighbor choose to work his heating seasons burning wood just like he does or does he care about improving his skills and burning a little safer? I can't knock him, I don't know him, but what you have told us about delivered splits and basically burning partially green wood every 3 years, sounds the same.... Every 3 years

 

He is very interested in learning. He's burning an old smoke dragon that is a slammer install. His wife asked me about how my wife and kids deal with the soot in the house. I told her that we have no soot and no smoke smell. He's talking about getting a new stove and has a relative that works on chimneys so I told him about getting his chimney lined and how with a new stove he'd get better efficiency. I'd be willing to bet I can get him to bump up his delivery schedule by a year so his wood will have seasoned for 16 months prior to first burning it. He's someone who just doesn't know any better but is very receptive to advise and willing to learn.

 

A true GIBIR!

 

Good looking out! Glad to hear the news.

 

Nice to hear that story. It seems like there are not too many stories of people getting through to someone about good wood storage/burning habits. I was finally able to convince my neighbor to cover the top of his stacks only, and uncover the side facing south.

I call my neighbor when he needs to open his primary air when he closes it down too soon, and smokes out the area. I can see his chimney from my kitchen window.

He does sound like a good neighbor.

 

I think most of my neighbors that burn are into stockpiling wood. They are mostly older guys that have a lot of time doing it too. Now if I could get across to the father in law. It like talking to a wall their. He thinks I'm crazy when I say I burnt so much wood because it was not dry enough.

 

On the Cub Cadet splitter, how are you liking it? I had a choice of one or the Swisher. It looked to me that the axle wasn't placed that great on teh Cub so the tire was in the way. Looking at your photo it almost looks like you'd have to straddle it even.

 

So far, I love it. That day was my first time splitting horizontal. You are correct, the placement of the axel makes splitting horizontal challenging but certainly not too bad. You don't have to straddle the wheel but you can not completely center yourself on the work area. Wood that dropped off the left side fell to the ground but i had to be sure that it didn't pile up and have the potential to fall on the engine. A work platform would be nice on the engine side. I was able to use the back of the truck to place wood that needed to be re-split. I'm a bigger fan of splitting vertically. Honda engine sips fuel and starts on the first pull every time.

 

Nice to hear your enjoying the new splitter. The part that caught my eye was the vertical splitting. Do you find it easier on your body than horizontal?
I was a die hard vertical guy too and changed to horizontal last year. I was much quicker vertical, would produce many more splits in a short amount of time. However, horizontal seems to have made life easier on my lower back. I don't go as quick but it's not about speed anymore, more about being comfortable.

 

I don't usually split off of the back of the truck which is my reason for splitting horizontal this time. I'm usually splitting from a pile that is on the ground. That said, lifting rounds up to split horizontally would be harder on my back. I find a nice comfortable round to sit on while splitting vertically kind of like @Backwoods Savage does with his milk crate. Biggest risk in hurting my back there is twisting and reaching too far for the next heavy round can cause pain. In that case, I just need to stand up, take a step to the round, take a knee, and reposition the next round to the splitter..

 

Sounds as tho you'd like a 30" pickeroon/hookeroon too.

 

Good stuff muck Did those deck wheels on the Ariens come with it? or did you put them on after?

 

Came with it, but I'm not the original owner...

Yes please... Yet another tool on my list to help drive down the cost of heating with wood.... Ya know, if I have a $60 pickeroon, I can avoid the $200 emergency room bill for my back!!

 

The only time I run mine vertical is to bust apart the big rounds I wouldn't be able to lift without killing my back. Once I get them into chunks I toss them through the processor or put it back to horizontal and split to stove size.

To split vertical means I am bending to move the log around... or if I kneel or sit that means I have to get up from a low spot a bunch of times which is pretty rough too.

But of course as with most anything, do whatever works best for you. If I'd listen to my doctor I shouldn't ever even run a broom, never mind touch firewood. He doesn't have to know

 

As a fellow back pain avoider and gravity fighter, I had high hopes that my hookeroon would help in that effort. Has turned out to be 10x better.