Oh yeah! Any reason to go to the mountains is good! Hoping to get up to Benezett this month to check out the elk! We'll take the Rock and Roll tour bus and SxS and just hang out for the weekend.
Since reaching the coveted 3 year mark, I find myself adding stacks. The addiction is real. I have started to sell a little each year to help offset fuel and maintenance costs. So I say sell a little, and then replace as needed.
Just go slowwwwwwwwwww..... Go half throttle on yer saw.... so if me math is right, 58 face cords are roughly 29 "full" cord and you're burning 4 to 5 full cord a year, yea... slow down so you don't make termite food!
You say "face cord", I say "wazzat? ". Depending on how long the pieces are, that's anywhere from a 1/4 to 1/2 of a full cord. For argument's sake, let's say 1/3 of a full cord is a face cord. So you're sitting on about 20 cords of wood and you say that will last you 6-7 years. I'd say stop. Why? Unless that firewood is completely under cover (i.e. top covered and up off the ground), or in a building/wood shed, you're going to lose some of it to rot. 20 cords for me is only about two years worth so I'd personally keep cutting, but I've had 5 years of firewood piled up before, in neat stacks, and I lost a lot of it due to rot. It's why 100% of my firewood goes into a woodshed as soon as it's C/S/S.
Let the wood run out once...and let her pay the oil bill... AND be a little cold. She'll change her mind!!!
Never enough! Selling it just doesn't seem like enough payoff for the days and days of back breaking labor.
Im starting to have a fear of loosing some wood to rot as you were saying. I'm 5 years out and top cover but still get rain on the sides of some of my stacks and the pieces get quite saturated. It worries me but the rain does dry very quickly when the sun hits the stacks or wind blows. I have a few stacks that were stacked uneven and tight and they stay wet longer toward the bottom few rows where the water runs back in a little. When I get to those stacks I'm going to put them under the lean to at the beginning of spring instead of waiting until mid September to keep all water off for the entire spring and summer till burning season. Hopefully they'll be ok? I think I'm just noticing it more this year because of the monsoon rains we've been having. I don't think we've had a stretch of 3 days without rain yet all spring and summer and a lot of torrential rains.
I would keep going, but develop some wood snobbery - only get the easy to get and/or high quality firewood. Nice straight hardwood that you can drive right up to - get it. Pine tree in the bottom of a ravine - pass.
We've never had rot in stacks that were top covered...unless the top covering leaks. As for rain hitting the sides, that would take a super long time before any rot happened and then if so, it would probably be an inch or so only on the ends which would cause no problems burning. 5 years in the stack is a piece of cake! 10 years won't bother but I can't say after 20 years what might happen.
If wet edges are a problem, then the top edges of the stacks need to be extended further to allow dripping to land on the ground. That can be accomplished fairly easily, depending on what is being used for a top cover. If a tarp or roof rubber, use sticks that lay on the top of the stacks, that extend beyond the top row of splits Sent from my SM-T280 using Tapatalk
Good point! I sold a fare amount of firewood a few years back and it did give me a little spending money. Not sure I'm up for that any more!
