A freak windstorm last year took out a couple of sugar maples right beside my wood shed. We were out of power for 8 days from that same storm, but a different tree was the culprit of the outage. I cut the maples up at the time but procrastinated about the splitting and stacking for forever. Today I changed that! You can see the edge of the wood shed where the tree clipped it. There in the background you can see the OWB where all this maple will be used starting in about 2-3 weeks! Also, our GSD pup named Liberty! How can a pile of wood be so ugly and so awesome looking at the same time?!? Maybe it’s the puppy.
I thought someone might ask that. Short answer: no. It definitely won’t be dry enough by the time I burn it. But, as with everything in life, it’s complicated. There’s a better than 50/50 chance I’ll be putting the house on the market before the end of the year. I wanted to clean up the yard in preparation for that possibility but didn’t want to go through all the fuss of getting those two trees down to my regular splitting/stacking area. I kinda kill two birds with one stone doing it like this. Related issue: a prospective buyer may not be interested in the OWB and the 40-50 cord I have stashed down in the field, so I’ll just burn this less-than-optimal wood during shoulder season just to be rid of it.
Thats a fair enough answer J1m Good luck with the sale if you do put it on the market. If the current prospective buyer don't want the boiler or the wood, perhaps that can be put on the market as well.
It's only ugly til ya burn it! One thing I'll miss about running an owb is the ease of disposing of uglies, bark, splitter trash, etc. A guy can fit two wheelbarrows full of uglies etc in that massive Firebox per load, wash rinse and repeat until the yard and splitting area are clean. Maybe I'll keep it in service for that purpose until I get the IS dialed in sell it off.
What happens to the 40-50 cords? It would tear me up to leave it to the buyer if he did not have a proper appreciation for wood heat!
House isn’t for sale yet, a few other things have to fall in to place at work first, but it never hurts to plan for contingencies. If a buyer doesn’t want the OWB or the wood, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I really don’t want it to go that way because it’s going to be a serious PIA to get rid of an 8 year old boiler and 40-50 cord of 24” mixed hard & soft wood. Most inside stoves won’t take wood that long nor will the average homeowner want chunks as big as I have them split for the boiler. The reason we went the OWB route in the first place is because of the sprawling nature and the number of heating zones in my house. In a perfect world, the next guy will appreciate our logic on it and value it as much as we do.
Where abouts in Maine are you? I'm sure if you needed to remove all that wood after selling (if buyer doesn't want it) I could help you with that....
Had to make another stack that’s a little more pleasing to the eyes. For balance, yeah, that’s it. Balance.
