I very seldom will take anything smaller that 8" and every single piece of wood I stack will be split. Absolutely no rounds of any size because it will not dry until at least split in half.
I am having a really hard time understanding this. I understand that you could get more mass because with triangles fitted into a rectangle the wood pile would have less air space, but that is only in terms of a given pile of wood. In that case your CORD of wood has more mass...and thus more btu's...because it has less air space, but that means nothing in terms of burning. If you take a 12 inch round and weigh it, it has just as much mass as if you split that same round four ways. You may be able to configure the (4) pieces into the pile of wood better than it as a round into a rack better, and even into a wood stove better, but it is not going to change the overall btu's available in a given pile of wood. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted; and even a woodsplitter cannot change that. It really does not matter if 100 trees are burned in a big bon fire as tree length wood, packed into a woodstove and burned, or chipped up and burned in a boiler; it is all the same in terms of BTU's because the mass has not changed. But the real question is, where are you putting that extra mass? If it is inside a wood stove, you can get more btu's per loading of the wood stove. And in terms of relative size, you could get more mass in a given area if it is stacked better, but it is impossible to get more mass out of wood by splitting it.
