Never considered where to put year 4 stacks... Input please

You are looking good on the wood stacks and can be proud of the work you've done. Now you just need a little tweaking here and there and you'll be all set. You have some of it top covered so now get the rest of it top covered. I have a feeling this fall will be wet and particularly so in your area so get it top covered as soon as you can. And don't worry, it won't rot.

First order of business is to forget the idea that wood has to have sunshine. It don't. Especially when you are more than a couple years ahead or even more than a year ahead. In the past at times we've found ourselves in a bad position with not enough wood and I recall 2 different years in particular. One year all we could get was popple and most of that was dead. We cut it during the winter and spring and by fall it was dry. It was never stacked in the sunshine but was stacked near some rows of pine trees. It didn't even get much wind. It burned just fine. Another year we did the same but that time was mostly all soft maple. For sure it was much better than the popple and it even kept the fires longer. It was a blessing for sure. Once again, that maple did not see sunshine. But, the stuff was top covered in the fall then we just took from the stacks as we needed. We would stack enough on the porch for about a week's worth of burning.

When you are looking at 3 years worth of wood, sunshine is something that is nice but not necessary. Shoot, you don't even need much wind once you are that far ahead but we still aim for that if possible. I highly suggest you start stacking more rows together. Put 3 rows together or even more. You can do like this if need be:


Don't worry, it will be nice and dry when you go to use it, even if you left it 10 years like that, it would be just fine. Oh, and on that last picture, yes I did fix the top covering. Notice the one sheet of galvanized didn't have any weight yet in that one corner. It does now.

 

Do the holzhausens if you like but realize that it is a lot more work (in my case, at least double the amount of work) to build one and there is no benefit unless you just like the looks of it. They will also actually take up much more space so if space is at a premium, I advise you stay away from them.

 

No doubt about it Scotty. You have me beat as I don't think we've ever had that much on hand. Congratulations! It's worth at least 3 atta boys!

 

Some lean in the stacks is quite normal. However, if you could stop the ground from freezing and thawing it might help. If they start leaning a little, push them back. I'll never forget, I think it was last summer when Fire Chief Steve paid is a visit and as we were taking a little walk, he spotted the stacks in the pictures below. Wow!!!!! He actually ran over to take pictures as he could not imagine any of our wood piles looking that bad. It was really funny, so here is what they looked like.

What the story is here is this was an experiment. It had been many, many years since I had left wood stacked but not covered and one year I thought why not do it again for kicks. After all, at the time there were many on the forum preaching that wood need not be covered. So, that one year we did not cut a lot of wood and I decided it would not be covered. Oh what a mess it turned out to be!!!

Long story short, I will say the wood was terrible compared with what we are accustomed to burning. The wood there was red oak, pin oak and ash. There may have been a couple cherry or elm in there to but I don't remember. I ended up covering one stack and that will be burned this coming fall but it will be a long, long, long time before we leave wood uncovered all year long. It just is not as good for burning and the stack really deteriorate quickly.

 

Very true.