How do you store your wood?

[NonProfit (Hans Riem)]

We moved our of the suburbs a few years back because we needed a larger house to care for my parents. We had a LONG to-do list (including an extensive basement remodel), but finally got around to stacking wood.

We have a fireplace, and this year purchased an insert, a steel box which keeps more of the heat in the room, as well as a cast iron cook stove.

I’ve been cutting naturally fallen wood for most of the spring and now have a pile of decent size. I could just store it under a tarp, but I’m wondering if anyone has (or has seen) unusual/interesting wood racks or sheds which might act as inspiration.

Thanks!

[ForbiddenTuna (Cody Edison Tate)]

The North family likes to make crates to store their fuel chunks in, you could maybe find IBC totes and cut a lid out the top.

I store it in sacks in my lesser used outbuildings. Firewood we just stack on a pallet and throw a tarp over. We don’t have a stove, just fireplaces so it isn’t used often. It’s more of an emergency thing.

[Wayne (Wayne Keith ( Springville AL ))]

Good morning Hans .

We cut and split about a year’s worth of saw mill slabs and pile under an open shed attached to the hay barn .

Before winter we will stack about 5-6 weeks worth of wood on a trailer and park under a shed that is 20 feet from our porch .

The wood is placed in a little 4 wheel wagon that is kept on the porch and rolled into the house then put in a container by the heater which holds about 2-3 days of wood.

Any questions about storing gasifier wood is covered well in the Wood Supply thread .

Thanks Wayne

[SteveUnruh]

Hello HansR.
I do not know your location, local conditions, or local woods. These all do have great influences on how you must handle and store your fuel woods.
Example. I must accommodate at least 88 inches to 120 inches of raining falling a year. Yes. Visualize every square foot covered with water 1 1/2 time as high as the average man.
Others talk about 8-10-12 feet of accumulated Great Lakes effect snow.

In all cases you must first get those piles, loose rows stacked up off the ground to sun and wind/air dry.
My made up from pallets drying area:

10 foot by 40 foot three pallets high for under air circulation. I have a time or two over winter stored excessive wood as tractor moved short logs that were even at end of summer by ground contact laying, bottom sides dense heavy wet; part rotten, and bugs burrowed.
Black plastic covered down, I have to run out the base skirts by 4-6 feet to keep the rains run-offs from seeping back underneath, and ground rising up further rotting the wood.

End of summer true dried then moved again and winter stored in this older wooden shed building:

(ignore the mess. we are moving and boxed and materials now in the wood storage space)
Last winter one there were 6.5 foot high by 16 foot rows across this space:

This last remains row is my “summer” wood. Frost again this morning. Needed a warming fire. 54F yesterday evening. Needed a going to bed fire.

If you live in a place with wood eating bugs you store AWAY from your wooden framed buildings!! Do NOT infest your own buildings.

Here is a decent eastern Canadian based info source:

A non-commercial service in support of responsible home heating with wood -...

Firewood topic with 10 sub-topics. Read and study them all.

Piles stacked no matter how covered you will lose the heating effectiveness of the whole bottom of that cone stack.
I’ve been that dumb-dumb lazy. Wife’s Father taught me to be much better.
Sweat the wood moving around to enjoy later the best in-house comfort heating.
Regards
Steve Unruh

[r_wesseling (Rindert Wesseling (Louisville,CO))]

Here is a quick and easy way to store chunks. I put a tarp over it to keep rain and snow off. This worked out well. This is from when Jacob did his cross country trip.
Rindert

[NonProfit (Hans Riem)]

@SteveUnruh

I do not know your location, local conditions, or local woods. These all do have great influences on how you must handle and store your fuel woods.

Good thoughts Steve. Thank you. We get a lot of rain in the spring and potentially heavy snow load. Wood is mostly Oak, Maple, and Walnut. Keeping the bugs away from the house is important. Good insights, thanks.

[TheIrishEngineer (Thomas Foster (Whitley city, Kentucky))]

Not just wood, I’m interested in seeing how people store their charcoal as well?

[r_wesseling (Rindert Wesseling (Louisville,CO))]

@TheIrishEngineer

I’m interested in seeing how people store their charcoal as well?

I’d like to see that too. Is Garry @glgilmore still arround?
Rindert

[Woodrunner (Göran kindervall)]

Well this is how i store my charcoal, the worst solution in my opinion, i’ve had trouble with jackdaw birdies pinching holes in strategic spots, looking for goodies (garbage), this lead to rain filled the bags.

This is now re-dried, waiting for sifting, then im going to put it in smaller bags to store indoor.

Funny notice: bags left open, and transparent bags are left alone by the birds, seems to prove my theory, they’re clever, those birdies.

[SteveUnruh]

Hello HansR.
Different location. Different woods. Different perspectives.
4-5 years ago in the past a big old healthy live cottonwood tree was dropped that was never completely cut up. Left ground laying that I have finished savaging last Fall. It was clogging up our west side yard:

Note I have just rough steel wedges block split it. Have it up off the ground. Rick/single row stacked to final dry and season. That black is a now a mold grown. This can only be taken inside the house once fine split an armload at a time to not trigger molds allergies reactions.
All of the smaller branches and leaders were burnt up last winter already. Stored, overstocked, in the back of the pickup bed. Under a large portable air circulating, six-legged cabana cover. Then taken onto the front porch a wheelbarrow at a time. Arm loaded then directly into the woodstove.

Now here is a clay soil root-bound, years dead was standing Fir tree. Then bugs and woodpecker holed attacked. Rot weakened the winds snapped it at six feet in the lower trunk and it came down mid-winter:

I had to section it to clear the dogs walking pathway.
See the white mushrooms growth on it already? It has already lost 30% weight from rot loss.
Burnable, yes. Storable, NO.
The roadside bandmill site my wife is harvesting sawn dust, rotten woods sections, and years maple/cottonwood/alder leaf accumulations for our new raised bed planters:

Some few Fir edging slab boards she pulled out I’ll be able to cut up, store and use.
Some more cottonwood remains dumped off butts and gnarly sections . . . .maybe can be firewooded up too once I move up the 34 ton hydraulic wood splitter.
But how to cover store to not grow non-edible mushrooms and spoors spewing molds, eh?
Off the ground. Hard covered. Open sided for ventilation. NO TARPS. Tarps makes for rots and decays.

Just like meats. Just like vegetables. Just like fruits.
You can only safely long term store usually the best, the healthiest, least blemished of what was live harvested.
This applies to wood-for-fuels too. Some exceptions. Fruit woods from died trees seem to hold up well.
Walnut died trees, not. We were all coughing by the time I used up the last of three cords of “free” walnut died tree wood that was not two years dried seasoned. Molds.

Consider most of what I’ve pictured in these “free” woods as road-killed meat. More apt to sicken you then nourish you.
Regards
Steve Unruh

[JohanM (Johan Mattsson (Sweden))]

This is how we store our wood. Cut, split and loaded onto self-emptying wagons with front-end tractorloader bucket and then stored/parked in a southfacing forest edge for most effective warm blow-through drying (not the most effective drying technique but it is the most effective way for the low work input that I found).

Some of it directly (the most dry) dumped directly into the winterstorage for drying there since I don’t have more self-emptying wagons (very open and airy though)
I would like to double the storage in size this year but we’ll see if I have(take) the time for it, you never know when something happens so you lose a season of firewood cutting so two years worth would be ideal.

Pallets under for aircirculation but they don’t hold up so well driving/pushing the wood in/up.

Before the fall rains start the wagons get dumped there and pushed in with the tractor for winter storage and picked up with these cut-up oiltanks for indoor storage made to use for firewood handling instead, half a cord in each with made brackets to use with front end loader and put in the boiler room

The firewood for the shop and the same for my dad’s house is cut, split and stored directly onto these steel pallets raised from the ground and holds a cord of wood (haven’t put a roof on this one yet).
These were used for transporting and storing insulation bales (they are stackable but if I do then I can’t reach up to the firewood )

Perhaps not the way to go for everybody but I prioritized easy and fast functionality before beauty but I do admire others with nice rows of beautifully stacked firewood

[NonProfit (Hans Riem)]

That is very impressive Johan! This shows me I have MUCH cutting left to do.

[JohanM (Johan Mattsson (Sweden))]

That depends on how much firewood you are going to use in a year, we use about 10 cords for the house and a cord for the workshop (only heated when we work there) plus a cord or two for my dad.
I don’t think that this is an average amount of wood that most people need/use.

[madflower69 (Sean Omalley)]

@NonProfit

This shows me I have MUCH cutting left to do.

The average house around here can be heated using like 5-6 face cords a year but varies widely.

Methods to Season Firewood:

Cut to required fireplace length
Split for quicker drying
Removal of bark
Air dried for a minimum of six months
Stacked and dried in an open area with good air flow (I was told at least a foot between rows) 
Maintain a cover over the top of wood (not sides)
"Season" wood during months of low humidity
Keep the wood off the ground

https://forestry.ca.uky.edu/firewood-drying

[JohanM (Johan Mattsson (Sweden))]

I am now learning from the link that Sean provided (and other sites) that in america you do not really use cords as a firewood measurement, you use face cords instead and if I then recalculate my use to 20” face cords it becomes about 24 face cords for our house and 3-4 face cords 12-14” long for the workshop, those converted tank things I bring in then hold almost 2,5 face cords together.
Sorry for not understanding or studying up properly to begin with

[TheIrishEngineer (Thomas Foster (Whitley city, Kentucky))]

In a dream world I would love to have a storage container that I could insulate and make one giant kiln out of there’s a couple of simple heaters and a way to get the moisture out of the container

[Pelletpower (Joep Kruijssen)]

We use about 24 m3/8 cords a year. I dont know how much face cord that is, it seems to vary in depth.

[JohanM (Johan Mattsson (Sweden))]

As I understand it a face cord is just the ‘face’ of a cord, the surface area, i.e. 4feet by 8feet (about 3m2) and then you give the length of the wood.

[JohanM (Johan Mattsson (Sweden))]

I think that mother nature can help out and take that workload to kilndry firewood off of me so I can do other things instead

[r_wesseling (Rindert Wesseling (Louisville,CO))]

Big confusion. Originally a cord was 4x4x8 ft his would equal 128 cubic feet, or 3.62 cubic meters. Then people started trying to be deceptive when they were selling firewood so they invented face cords and stove cords. Americans love to do that.