What’s your process from stack to stove?

I copied this from an old post of mine...some things in these pics have changed (different trucks, and no longer wheel the wood rack into the basement, it just stays in the attached basement garage...oh, and different furnace now too) but the basic system is the same...maybe a little long winded, so feel free to just look at the pics

"I am a couple years in doing it this way now, and I am pretty happy with it all...except last winter, it was so warm I couldn't always get to the wood shed with the forklift due to the muddy yard...some strategically placed concrete will remedy that though. Normally I can sneak across the yard first thing in the morning before things thaw out, even on warmer days.

So I've been mulling over a way to manually handle my firewood less. My system has evolved over time to this. I cut to length (usually) right where I drop the tree, load on the truck, then split right off the truck, and stack immediately from the splitter onto my stacks at the back of the property. In the past, I built 8' long racks that allowed me to load up ~1/2 cord at a time right out of my main stacks, then I would carry them to the woodshed (using my dads 5k# AC forklift). This worked great, but, then I gotta hump wood into the house every day all winter long. I thought about carrying a rack at a time into the attached garage, but that means borrowing dads forklift each time I wanna move a rack, and those 8' long racks would take up too much room in the garage.

So I started looking for a small 4x4 loader tractor...too expensive, went looking for a small forklift...all the affordable stuff was junk. Then I thought, wait a minute! I know the perfect machine! Dad has a Prime Mover L-812 mini forklift that he had plans for many moons ago (never happened though). A lot of you guys would recognize this machine as a "stander" with a concrete dumper on the front, this is the less popular (rare) optional forklift model, and it has been modified to be a "rider". The ole girl has just been sitting in the back of the machinery shed sinking into the ground for going on 25-30 years now. Dad said I was welcome to have it if I could use it, so I went and dug it out. The new Honda motor that was on it had long been scrounged for a log splitter project, but I had a used replacement laying around, so no biggie there. I got 'er running in short order and after some quick measurements, I realized this was gonna be perfect! I built a dozen new tall/narrow racks that hold roughly a 1/3 of a cord each, and a heavy duty wheeled cart to set the racks on so that I can wheel a rack full of wood right into my furnace room.

I still load the racks out of the "main hoard stacks", then store the racks in the woodshed nice and dry for the winter, now I only have to "fetch wood" every couple weeks using my new toy!
At some point...whenever I get "caught up",I plan on giving my lil workhorse a proper fresh paint job, she's earned it.

The racks. 4' wide x 5.5' tall and 20" deep, they hold about 1/3 cord or so of 22" long wood. The bottom lumber is just landscape timbers and the rest is 2x4 PT, with a lil metal reinforcement in the bottom corners and across the top.
The HD cart I built to wheel the racks right into the furnace room through the basement garage. I used this the first year, but have since quit doing it this way due to bug issues in the house. Now I just leave the rack sitting on the forklift out in the attached garage, it's only 30' or so away from the furnace and I can still load the furnace in mah bloomers if I wanna...and sometimes it happens! (want pics proof of that Eric VW ?)
This is a rack mounted on the HD cart. Also, notice the forklift just has the single drive wheels at this point, I later fabbed up dual wheel adapters to make treks across the yard "less evident"...works surprisingly well considering how small the tires are and how much weight is on 'em when loaded. Duals are on in the next pic.
A full rack of Oak is about as much as she wants to handle. (~1000#)
This is about where I park it now. In this pic I was loading onto the HD cart. (the oily cardboard is from having the van newly oil sprayed...life in the rust belt is great)
Wheeling a couple weeks worth of BTUs right through the basement door here.
This is where I was parking the rack when I was still taking it into the basement. Right next to the Yukon...as seen in the next pic.
I now have the Yukon wood/oil whole house furnace on standby duty the last couple winters... I installed a Drolet Tundra wood furnace as an add-on to the Yukon...kind of a long story...its basically an experiment."

As I said at the beginning, different furnace(s) now, the Drolet and the Yukon are both gone, have a Kuuma VF100 in place since 2018. Oh, and the lil forklift never did get that new paint yet .
That's my setup

 

Thats a nice setup!! I really like that little forklift that things got to be super handy for a lot of jobs.

 

Thanks.
It has worked out to be handier than a shirt pocket...when I first got it I thought it would at least be good enough until I get a loader tractor, but it's worked out well enough that I have stopped looking for a loader tractor...if I need to do something that a forklift won't do, I can still use dads Bobcat, they are just 1/4 mile down the road.

 

Wheelbarrow a day from one of the stacks and fill the rack by the woodstove. Always go to farthest stack first figuring easier to get to the closest stack if we get a lot of snow.
If storm pending or sometimes just for convenience, stack 1/2 a face cord on front porch right outside the door, but find myself like many have mentioned in this thread, don't use it and go to the stack every day and get a wheelbarrow load. Like the exercise too.

 

Steps:
1. Stack wood next to boiler.
2. Remove from stack and place in boiler.
3. There is no step 3...you're done.

 

Is your wood delivered/dumped already split?

 

No, but the title of the thread was stack to stove so that's all I covered.

The majority of my wood gets hauled in on a tri-axle to my neighbor/BIL's house. It is either from tree removal work or sawmill rejects. I'll cut and split it over there and stack it next to the boiler. I also have a reputation as a guy who can make a tree that fell in a yard go away, so I get some from that too.

One year we got 20+ loads of RR tie cants (untreated). That was the best stuff ever. Cut it, split it once, and stack it.

 

I move my firewood splits from my stacks here -


Using a 2-wheeler


To here


From that deck rack through that door using a log bag/carrier. The wood stove is about 6steps into the house.

 

Wow I’m not sure I have enough life left to hoard that much wood. Impressive.

 

Well... I'm on the 3yr plan.

We burn 3-4 cord of firewood each heating season. The math works out to having 12 cords stacked.

Thanks, but there are many others with similar wood stacks.

 

About the same as Mike, we have a few years stacked. It has taken 2 really good years of hoarding to get that critical mass of years worth of wood. Following years I plan to hoard maybe a year's worth. Perhaps there will be years ahead where I do very little hoarding. But while I have energy I kinda thought that getting well ahead would allow me to maintain from here on out.

I reckon I could have bought a few years' supply, using that as my critical mass, hoarding a years' worth from there on out.

SCA

 

Load truck at stacks
Back up to basement window (probably 60 yards from stacks slide wood through window into cart go inside and move cart through the basement to the stove Unload and stack near the stove.
This is probably at least 2 weeks worth counting what is in the cart

 

Start of season (first frost to kill bugs)
Tractor with carryall loaded on rear and full totes to porch and woodshed close to house till full. Totes are emptied I use the bucket.
Carry two canvas bags in from the woodshed to set by the stove. One with littler pieces to start fires and the other with big pieces for all nighters. The porch rack is saved for her to pull pieces in or a quick sock footed dash.

Then the carryall on the tractor gets loaded at the stack and parked loaded under the leanto on back of shop. I pull out of it as needed armload at a time for shop stove and rack inside the shop to top off. I reload from the stacks as needed with the tractor carryall leaving shed and porch for the house. I had some stacked under the eave of the leanto last year but didn’t do that this year though I should’ve. Save tractor runs out to snow covered stacks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Thanks, I was just curious.
My system isn't the most efficient so I'm always looking for ways to improve.