Finally getting ahead of firewood needs, closing in on the 'three year' plan

15 Aug 2018- finally hit three years' worth of firewood on the property! Got the final two cord on Sat., Andrea stacked the last holz haus on Sat. and Sun..



This last one came out the best; very straight and round, more taper in the outer ring than some others.



This holz haus (means 'round house') is actually square (the one on the right); it follows the pallets below it:



And this one on the right I like to call the Leaning tower of Holz Haus due to a 'high gravity zone' just to the right of the haus apparently:



Anyway, using an average of four cord a year, this is a full three years worth of firewood. Two cord are two years old, two cord were 'semi- seasoned' this spring and so we will be OK this winter. Next winter, all of the wood will be ~2 years old or better, and the winter after that the wood left to use that year will be 3+ years old. Now if we can just maintain replacing 4 cord or so each year, we should always have fully seasoned wood every winter.

Brian

 

Good on ya Brian.
I'm still a work in progress, like in so many ways.

 

Good job. Gotta feel good to have it done. Maintaining 4 cord will seem like nothing now

 

Great job!
I have been working on the 3 year plan since I learned about it here. I used the excellent calculator here on the hoarders resource site and figured out that I have about 8 cords. Some of it is green, green oak and won't probably be ready next year, but that is fine, all part of the plan. Always scrounging wood from somewhere. I have a smaller insert fireplace (2.3 cubic feet) and went through 3.5 to 4 cords last year, so not there yet.
Local park district had an oak blow over and I got these rounds plus another truckload. My brother got about the same.

 

Lookin' good Aje1967 . Those are some big rounds.

 

Great stacks BDF . Very impressive work!

 

Yes, pretty good size. Needed some help lifting some of them. The other truckload had smaller sizes and some ash they cut at the same time. Nice guy running the show at the park district and appreciate him keeping me in mind when they cut something down.

 

How many square feet are you heating? What insert do you have? I'm just curious because I bought a used Osburn 2200 this summer and it has the same size firebox. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will do this winter. I'm using it to heat roughly 1700 sq ft.

 

Well, as to the work: my wife Andrea stacked everything in that photo. I had a broken wrist earlier in the year, and she finds stacking firewood..... therapeutic. OK, it is therapeutic. Who am I to deny her that therapy?

and all at the same time. She does not find a chainsaw therapeutic or even acceptably pleasant to be around (she does not use my saws). Splitting wood is OK with her but of course she cannot handle the bigger wood (Easy Boys!, and yes, there is a self- depreciating joke in there).

Brian

 

Kudos to your wife. You're a lucky man indeed! I don't think my wife would like that kind of therapy, but I'll suggest it to her when I think the time is right. If I am not heard from on FHC for over a week please alert the authorities.

 

Yeah, and we should probably not believe the suicide note if the authorities find you chopped up and in the freezer, right?

Brian

 

BDF as always, you have a great sense of humor. I fully expect an update on how well the stove performs with DRY wood.

Also, with your recent renovation, I assume you also increased insulation and reduced air infiltration. I am curious if that will reduce wood consumption.

 

Yes, the second floor will be insulated with 6" of wall insulation, the ceiling (attic floor) with 12" of insulation, so that should make a huge difference from before when there was NO insulation in the walls, and 4" of Rockwool in the ceiling. Plus the entire second floor is now tight.

The plan is to wait until the siding is done and winter comes, then have an insulation contractor thermal image the house to see where and how badly it is leaking heat on the first floor. They will pull one layer of vinyl in each bay as needed and blow in cellulose insulation. Because the house is non- standard construction, it has a lot of cross- pieces of wood in the wall bays so filling all of them will no doubt require multiple insertion points in some (many? most?) of the wall bays, so that will be an exercise in striking a balance between spending a fortune on insulation vs. spending less and still getting the bulk of the benefit of insulation with an acceptable amount of acceptable 'heat leaks'.

And I certainly do expect a great improvement in both heating and cooling of the house.

As to the humor, mostly it is just life happening right before my very eyes: I actually knew a gentleman who was working to raise a boat in Maine that was <believed> to be carrying drugs. The authorities wanted the contraband, he would get the boat. He was contacted surreptitiously and told 'not be find the boat' and offered a sum of money to make sure that happened but the boat was worth a great deal more than the sum offered. A few weeks later, he was found in the woods, shot four times in the cheat and no weapon was found. The police could not determine it if was a suicide of if there was foul play involved- now discarding the obviously bad news that the man died, the police considering suicide, given the circumstances, was simply hilarious beyond all belief. So it is not so much my sense of humor but rather the absolute absurdity of so much of the world at work here.

Brian

 

Or maybe instead of CSS, CSF, that is cut, split, and fed into one or both of our wood stoves. Hey, it would save on cremation fees!

 

I think it will do ok for that amount of space. I use it to help out the furnace as it is not big enough to heat the whole house. It keeps the areas of the house we are in most of the time very comfortable.
The house has a field stone fireplace and had a heat sucker fireplace. We had this insert fireplace put in and the company that installed it said that this was the largest that would fit. I don't know if that was the case as the whole old fireplace was removed and there was a ton of room plus they had to put tin pieces around the fireplace to cover up the fact that the fireplace did not fill up the fieldstone opening. We love the fireplace but wish it were large enough to heat more of the space.