What I learned this year

It seems that each year of burning provides an important lesson or 10. What I will take from this season is the following:
1- If you think the wood may be wet, leave it be
2- Wood will soak up moisture in the right setting
3- NO MORE TARPS!

All three items are related to the issue I ran into over the last couple weeks. The tarp had some low spots and holes that combined to soak some areas in the pile. The cold weather created ice over an inch thick in many spots in the stack. The stove has not seemed as hot as it should have been while this wood was coming off the stack. Finally got by those spots and into wood that was obviously dry, and the stove took off. Bottom line is I won't be using tarps any longer.

 

Tarps definitely suck when they pool up and spring a leak. Sorry you had to deal with that.

 

I see a wood shed in your future

 

X2

My experience is that some types of wood will absorb the rainwater more than others. Good to keep it all dry when your getting ready to burn. In my experience Tulip and sweet birch even when dry will soak up the rainwater as others I'm sure. I'm going to build a wood shed for this very reason.

 

I often fantasize about having one. Look at the avatar pic JS. My needs are more like a wood barn. Not happening. Something will change, just not sure what and/or how.

 

The Red Oak with the bark on it was a culprit. Also, I had taken a standing dead oak that had an inch of rot around the perimeter. That soaked up the water big time.

 

The best thing that I have found with tarps is to get a bit of a slope on top of the pile by mounding uglies up on top and along with some plywood scraps to form a hard roof. That way you are able to encourage runoff and discourage puddling.

 

I use to lay 2x's over the woodstack/under the tarp, it helped with pooling water.
Ive gotta' bunch of cherry and walnut that is punky on the outside inch or so which is wet also. It'll dry this summer.

 

Good points on how to tarp over the tops of the stacks ....and only on the top of the stack !! My family is in construction .....and we came across some very thick tyvek material . We fold it over twice so that it over hangs each side of the stack by a few inches . Then , since we are a family of masons , we put the smaller "jumbo" blocks on the top of the tyvek to holdit down . Never leaks , blows off , or fails ! I agree that tarps are unreliable for this application .