Tarp on or off?

Welcome Alucard, you're gonna like it here, I guarantee it. We like pics, dogs, beer and spending your money on furthering your addiction, er I meant supplementing your hoard----and word on wisdom,,,search CL for used metal or rubber roofing for top cover, only from Nov-Mar...Tarps are junk, a waste of time and you'll be sorry you ever fooled with them-Heck, depending on the size of your stacks, galvanized metal roofing from HD or Lowes is not that expensive-Again welcome and nice to meet ya

 

Personally I don't tarp or cover. If I had a barn, it would definalty be in there. What I do is keep about 3 or 4 days worth in the house.. I have 3 stacks total. 1st stack is outside, in the weather, and is where my total supply comes from. My 2nd stack is near the stove to dry out from any rain/snow etc. and comes in from my stack outside. My 3rd stack comes from the 2nd stack near stove and it is this 3rd stack that feeds the stove..

 

Many say top covering is useless. But I think in our area, top covering is needed, more to keep the leaves out of the stacks. Yes the wood will dry without top covering, especially in the midwest where the wind always blows. I live in a valley that doesn't get a lot of wind and I'm surrounded by trees.

Here's what i do.
5 big skids total (5'4" square)
Holds 3.25 cords (about 1 years worth for me.)
Used rubber roofing screwed down to skids on the ends and into the ends of 3 splits along each side with deck screws and fender washers.

 

If I didn't have a woodshed that is what I would be doing but I wouldn't buy those cheap blue or orange tarps the sell in the stores. I would salvage some old lumber cover material or rubber roofing material (EPDM), or PVC billboard sign material (also used as roofing material). Those materials are stronger, more UV resistant and best of all you can usually find the material for free and cut them into narrow strips to fit the tops of your stacks.

I can't say I agree with the guys who don't feel the need to top cover. Sure some types of wood are resistant to rot but some WILL rot, and they will all soak up moisture from rain or snow. Also, busting through frozen ice and snow to get to your firewood after you've had a heavy wet snowfall that started to melt and then froze solid after the temperature dropped gets real old fast. Much easier to simply slide the ice and snow off your top covering then fold it back to get to your nice dry wood underneath. Still, as nice as that sounds a woodshed is even nicer.

 

The wood I'm using now is 5 years old and was never top covered. Burns Great! BUT...
I believe it was starting to degrade. Not that it isn't still good, but why let it degrade if you can store it under cover? We work way too hard to let our wood caches go bad!
Another thing is, the wood was getting soft in spots, just on the outside. Sort of grainy or pithy or dirty or flaky. Made it messy to work with and left behind a lot of mulch.

Also. Here in the mountains of Pa, the ground holds a lot of moisture, so getting the wood up off the ground is very important to me. I'm using one layer of skids underneath, but if I ever get to build a storage shed, it will have a raised floor to get more air flow. (I may double the skids up till then)

 

If all a person ever had to deal with was to sweep a little nice dry snow off the top of your stacks then I could almost condone not bothering to top cover, but my experience has been that the snow that falls and accumulates on the stack will often melt somewhat on a warmer day and seep down a few layers then re-freezes before you get to it and your splits end up embedded in frozen snow and ice. A miserable situation that can easily be avoided with a top covering.

 

Here is a little information that I mostly agree with taking in the variables that can be involved so some of the time frames might be different for some.
"There are people who insist that wood should be dried (seasoned) for at least one or two years. Experimental evidence has established that that is nearly always unnecessary, as long as the pieces of wood are cut to length and stacked. Natural airflows through the stack, and particularly through the cut cells of the pieces of wood themselves, dries them sooner than that. Experimental evidence has established that one-foot long cut pieces generally dry to acceptable levels in just two or three months. Two-foot long cut pieces take about six or seven months for similar acceptability. Four-foot long cut pieces DO require at least a year.
Associated with this, covering the woodpile with a tarp slightly improves this, but probably not enough to make the expense of a tarp worthwhile, except in a climate where rain and very high humidity is common. Similarly, split pieces of wood tend to dry slightly faster than full diameter logs, but again by minimal amounts."

 

Exactly so I cover what I will need this year!
35 mph winds can pack snow in like you would not believe.

 

I agree. Our snow here is usually very wet and heavy, so yes, I have fought to bring in wood also.

 

Just a note to anyone hitting a axe with a hammer , buy the best you can , this was a cheap small axe I had given .
Loved splitting it like this until a 5 mm piece chipped off and shot through the vein inside my elbow.
Q fountain of blood and a trip to the hospital.
They left it in by the way

 

Metal in wood is bad enough.

I use wedges and not a hatchet.

When I'd go camping in the deep woods, we'd only split using a log as the hammer.


Sent from my SM-T280 using Tapatalk

 

Good thing is her indoors bought me a six ton splitter and little axe went in the bin.

 

I like your set up Tim, and I agree with you and other top cover folks. The leaves and pine needles mat up and hold the moisture in the middle of the stacks, the snow/ slush gets in there and freezes. I use plywood scraps, 1/2 & 1/4 sheets I get for free.

 

I top cover my splits, it keeps the leaves out of the stacks in the fall, keeps the pesky squirrels from dragging black walnuts onto the pile so they can eat the nut, and keeps snow and ice out of the stack.
I use steel roofing, old fiberglass toneau covers, and old sheets of plywood.
You can see some of them in this shot from the roof

 

I'm liking what I see, nice stacks, a good split pile, plenty more rounds to play with, and a lot of room to get and store more trees/logs.