What do you think of this idea? Most all sellers around here sell recently cut wood, it's green, not seasoned. Mostly oak. I sell a few cords and it's seasoned. For wood I would sell next year, instead of doing the labor of stacking, what about just throw it in a pile, just build a mound of wood? Let it sit there until I get orders next year and then load it onto the trailer and deliver. Buyers would be told how/when it was processed. It would still be better than what buyers are getting around here. I wonder what the moisture content of white oak / red oak would be after sitting in a pile for a year? I do know it will burn because even my own dad, when he would buy wood decades ago, it would burn and it was pretty darn green. Realize that our winters are nothing like you guys have up north. Hardly anyone around here heats their house with wood. I have one customer who does heat her entire home and that's it. She burns two cords/year. My only fear is what the middle of the pile would be like, would it be ok or just what because we can have some real wet winter weather. Like, might rain for two weeks straight. You could also make a pad of pallets and build the pile on there; I have lots of pallets. Don't know if it would matter. It would be an interesting experiment. You could also make several smaller piles instead of one giant pile if it would help the wood get more airflow, breathe better. Lastly, I bet it would surely work if it's only quick-to-dry wood like red maple or cherry. The challenge there would be to get enough of those species, oak is more plentiful. Another concern is most people would probably prefer oak.
Stacked on four sides to corral it, tossed in the center. Dries just fine. If your doing 100+ cord a year, thats a lot of time devoted to stacking and then unstacking when it sells.
There are fast drying woods that I think that would work but I can’t see it with oak. I just checked some red oak that’s been css for 2 seasons. Stacked in single rows. Almost all of it was top covered but I had a little bit that wasn’t covered. I compared the two. The oak that wasn’t covered was 28%. The oak top covered was 25%.
I've put wood in piles and wood in rows. It all goes in my pole barn so it does not get rained on. Rows take a lot more work. After several years it is dry either way.
Your red oak bark looks different from our red oak. I guess it's northern red oak and I have southern red oak.
It depends on if the mound of splits was in the sun and/or mounded on pavement, concrete, gravel etc. Direct ground contact not good for drying. The red oak half cord i sold yesterday was 20 months CSS. I checked the internal moisture content with MM and at or just under 20%. Any oak i sell now will be at least 18 months CSS for "seasoned" wood. If not i will inform buyer of it. I had thought of making a "pallet pad" with a square of pallets with pallets around the edge and toss splits in. Fill it good and tarp the top in cold weather. Yes, stacking it is a pain, but in my case i like to know what i have and space is rather limited too. Can you single row stack any oak you harvest? In the sun/windy location? I have some freed up 1/2 cord racks and a bunch of red oak to process. I had thought of using these in a new area to help facilitate faster drying. Most of my stacks are multiple rows deep. Check out jrider . He mounds wood to dry.
Yawner if your going to just pile it and you have the pallets I would put them down and pile away. I'm working on a pile like mnguns did with some stacks around the outside to keep the stuff in i dump with the tractor. It happens but I hate wood laying on the ground.
I dont do pallets myself but they can have some benefit if you care to mess with them. I take anything thats touching the ground and treat it like fresh split and toss it atop my newest pile.
I would want to get the wood at least 12” off the ground with plenty of air flow. I don’t see why a pile is that much different than a stack.
If you've got the pallets I'd use them. It may not be 12" as Jack Straw would like/prefer, but it certainly beats the wood in ground contact. $.02
10+ cord 12" off the ground would dry nice. Getting it there could be interesting. There are a few variables to this question and no one answer is right for all situations.
And here we have the correct answer! You use what you've got to do the best you can in the time you've got. I've used galvanized pipe on concrete block to hold rows off the ground, old T posts to hold the ends up, stacked on 16 foot metal gates I found in the woods, and stacked between trees. I've piled on pallets. When I ran out of stuff to pile onto, I just piled. There's not a hell of a lot of difference between stacked on a wooden pallet or stacked on other pieces of firewood. Either way, the bottom layer of wood is going to rot if it is in contact with the wet ground. Some things work better and some things work just as well but take longer. The most important thing is to put up some firewood. The fire and your chimney will tell you what works and what doesn't. Almost no matter what you do, you'll be far ahead of the average goofball who tries to burn water.
I have always stacked wood in rows, off the ground and it usually dried just fine after a season. A bunch of years ago I got sick of stacking and tried the pallets on the ground, stacked the outside and threw splits in the middle. The stuff in the middle did not do well, damp, moldy, gross. Prob didn't have ideal sun/wind exposure but won't do that again.
The question that raises is, what if you had just made a big pile? No outside stacks around the perimeter. Just simply toss splits to build a mound.
Yawner Around here, it is unheard of oak drying in a year's time and being considered seasoned. Throwing everything into a pile would take longer based on my experience. If you are in the business of selling truly seasoned wood, I think you already know the answer to taking shortcuts. There have been many threads/post on here about peoples experiences with so called "seasoned" wood sellers. Good luck!
I prefer to use the term and shape of windrow vs heaped pile. A huge round pile won't dry like a long tall row of tossed splits. My "piles" are generally 12'-15' wide at the base, up to about 8' high and I run up to about 100' long although I think that dimension doesn't really matter much. What I have found to be most important when making these is that it has to be FULL sun so out in a field. Even a few hours of shade makes a huge difference. They can't fill up falling leaves as they trap in moisture and lead to mold issues. And running the piles north-south is more successful than east-west.
