My family room is only heated by wood. Last year I replaced a thirty+ year old Soap Stone II stove with a Country Canyon wood stove. On average I burned about 2 1/2 cord per year. Last season I burned 3 1/2 cord of mainly oak. I attribute the increase to a colder winter, a brand new stove as well as the fact that the wood was not that dry. Starting last year I shifted from ordering cut/spit/seasoned wood to purchasing a truckload of log length. Roughly 3 1/2 cord per load. Please understand that I am still working out the details, and I'll be burning not so dry wood again this year. I know that I should not be burning un-seasoned wood. Starting next year, the wood will have 1 season of drying. Eventually I'd like to get to the point where my wood has two or three seasons of drying. About 8 years ago, I built a rack that holds a face cord. It's rather sturdy, but it's prone to tipping over. I planned to replace that with a woodshed that holds 1 cord. The wood has been purchased, I just need to find time to build it. Now that I've joined this site and see how many of you store your wood, I've started to wonder if a 1 cord woodshed is the way to go. From what I've seen, I'd be better off with an area to stack my wood on homemade racks. Looking for comments on storing my wood. For now I need to plan on storing 6 cord of wood. Eventually I'll need to be able to stack or store up to 9 cord. Thank you for your responses. Jason from RI.
Welcome Jason! Honestly if you need ease get pallets... A wood shed is great but they can only hold so much. It sounds like you will need to store around 11 full cord to dry three years in advance. I use pallets lined up and filled three rows deep. I'll take a picture for you today. If you top cover them for winter and spring you will allow them to dry nicely. Oak isn't burn able until the end of the second year truthfully... If you can buy dead standing ash and you will have a fantastic year. You can tell by the sizzle when loading and the amount of creosote your stove produce how dry the wood is. ( there shouldn't be either sizzle or tons of creosote. Ash is 30% moister when it's alive so it burns great If it's dead standing for a year or so. Oak is a very dense wet wood for a few years and log form doesn't dry with most woods. It needs to be split right away and stacked. I did have a wood shed and it got dry wood moved into it for a years worth of burning right before winter usually and it worked great for that but for drying Oak it's gonna be a bit of a pain given how long it takes to dry. In other words using it to keep wood dry and clean in the winter is a more reasonable idea given your situation.
Welcome! I'm thinking similar to Pete. You are are the right track with planning on getting ahead. It's a lot of work but well worth it. Having room to store more than 1 years wood is important. I actually bought a carport this year. I got one that is 18x21 and I can fit multiple years if wood in there. I went with the carport because it was a lot cheaper then building a shed. And like Pete said pallets are great. You can use them and just cover your stacks or you can fill the bottom of a wood shed with pallets.
As soon as I am done processing this load of logs, another load of logs will be dropped. Depending on the weather, I am hoping to process all of that wood, and then get another load dropped. That will give me 6 cords in the drying out process. I'll have another load of logs dropped in the spring. Like you've said, it's a ton of work to get things going, but once I hit a stable state it the amount of work will stabilize.
Welcome to FHC! Sounds like a game plan. We've pretty much all have been in your shoes. But once your ahead it gets easier and you'll get better burns. Then you'll really get to start seeing the reward's of the seeds that were sown... Good luck, brother... Keep us posted...
You might have missed this, but a simple solar kiln is perfect in your situation, and not expensive at all. If you tent up a couple of cords of oak this year in a sunny location, by next fall they will be ready to burn and under the 20% MC you are looking for. being behind on seasoning is why I tried this, and found it to work amazingly well, when I was a new burner. Here is a link to the thread I started on my process.
I would make a woodshed like you're planning, and then throw together some racks for the rest of your wood. That way you have at least a cord of storage that you can move wood into before it's burned so it won't get rained on, snowed on, etc I used to use pallets to stack on, but have started just laying down scrap lumber or small branches/saplings to stack on and pounding t-posts in at the ends to stack against. Either way will work fine
Welcome to the land of the woodenheads! The only real advice I can give you is do what works best for you and your budget. I built 3 racks that hold .96 cord each. (See the picture below.) They are nice, but at about $40, plus time to build them, they aren't good for much except for putting one on my covered porch for the burn season. As I began to amass many cord of wood, about 14 now, I turned to pallets, which I cut in half, and cast metal fence posts. See my avatar and the picture below, that's a bunch of red oak on pallets held with only one fence post on each end. This setup greatly reduced my costs as the pallets are free and the posts are $5.00 or so each. On my property there is a former goat shed that I just started using for wood storage this year. I moved about 2 cord of the oldest, about 4 year old, oak, ash and some hickory, into it to make room in the wood lot for this years ash and more oak. None of my wood, against some beliefs, has ever been top covered. Starting in mid to late September I just move the estimated amount of wood needed for about 1/2 of the burn season onto my porch, then later in the season I bring more to the porch and let the surface moisture dry before I use it. Now by utilizing the old shed I'll wont have to wait on surface moisture to dry. Everyone has their own way of doing things. You will find some great ideas here. Use this information to build a system that fits your needs. A good working system makes the whole wood burning game more fun and much easier. GOOD LUCK & GOOD BURNING!!
Here is the easiest method I have come up with. The shed was for the dry wood just before winter hit and I could pack tight about 2.5 cord in it. Another method I used for a long time was wood bins. They work very well and keep it organized beautifully.
I don't like a woodshed, unless its for storing already seasoned wood. Not unless you make a vented wood shed for airflow, its the same as coving up the entire stack of wood with a tarp, it won't dry properly. I think we all use pallets. I won't cover the top of them the first two years, I only cover the tops of the wood I'll burn that winter just to keep the weather off that seasons wood. by having it open, you get the most sun and airflow across it.
That's also what I do until winter and spring. It is better uncovered through the hot months. The rain can soak in between your wood and rot it depending on climate. In Michigan it's not uncommon to have that happen. It's a trial and error thing for most. Actually I tested the kiln idea as well and it works great to dry fast. You can actually see the water running off the plastic in the hot months.
I've seen a lot more rot with it totally covered. Tried it a few winters ago, with a tarp on all sides, the wood wasn't dry and half of it had rotten. So, in hot weather months it would act like a kiln, but in wet/cold months it acted as a haven for bugs to dine...
Thanks. It was a cheap pallet build. It took about $160 total after shingles and stain. It's rock solid although a buddy has it now. We built a fence where it sat and has to move or get rid of it. For that price I'll build a better one next year hopefully. Just to clarify top covering isn't a kiln. I tried a kiln and liked the results years ago. I do however top cover every year just before winter and leave it through spring without bug issues. My wood is far dryer that way here in Michigan.
Welcome to the forum Jason. It sounds like you are trying to get ahead and we recommend being 3 years ahead on the wood supply and that is split and stacked. Like you, I do not like storing wood inside a wood shed unless it has first dried outdoors. As for the wood racks, we feel they simply are not needed and just adds to the expense needlessly. Here is how we do it. You'll notice nothing purchased in these wood stacks. We do lay down some saplings we cut in the woods for stacking the wood off the ground. Nothing on the ends needed. These stay up nicely. You'll notice old galvanized roofing for the top covering. We do the splitting and stacking in the spring but do not top cover until the fall or early winter. It works out really well. We've done this for over 50 years and haven't yet found an improvement. We do move enough wood for the winter into the barn in October but the rest stays outdoors.
For sure you never want to totally cover a wood pile. That seals in the moisture. Yet, going around the country we see it done every so often. But it just does not pay to do that at all. Top covering is all that is needed. This still allows air flow through the wood pile to better dry it.
Backwoods, the statement that totally sealing a wood pile is bad, is a false statement. I understand that you are skeptical, but for new burners, or those with lass space that you have, keeping 3 years+ on hand is just not possible. In this case, keeping your wood totally covered in plastic, in a solar kiln fashion, is not only recommend, but essential IMHO. I understand that you have done it your way for 50+ years, but just because you have not found an improvement to the system you have doesn't mean there are no improvements. The OP is going to have wet wood next year unless he finds a solution. The solution is buying already dry wood for Texas$$$,or setting up a kiln for a couple of bucks.
