I was wondering about keeping long term storage of wood chunks inside of sacks inside of my shed off the floor with wood pallets to prevent it from becoming wet.
Does this sound OK? I’ve heard of bugs or other parasites that might rot the wood and make it unusable over long term shortage when kept inside? Is this a hoax and does this sound good? Thanks
Branden
Edit: Changed topic
Hello Branden.
Unlike charcoal, wood can not be stored indefenetly. But we talk decades here. Yes, a worm hole here and there might occur but thats about it. Im sure wood stored in non sealed bags in dry space will be good for at least 10 years, probably close to 30
Welcome Branden. If you are running a gasifier, long term storage is not going to be an issue.
Welcome to the DOW Brandon
Like most thing in life there will be a lot of Depends, Depends, Depends.
The wood species.
Your shed is open ended: which way it faces.
The type of sacks.
All of these have given problems to many here. Or favored.
Here in our temperate rainforest giving shelter to woodeating bugs can maybe cost you the buildings structure woods. I cring when I see pictures of stove woods stacked against buildings exteriors. Maybe O.K. there for them. A never, ever here.
Here we have a lot of spiders that eat the woodeating bugs. Good.
After 2-3 years of wood stored, the spiders have annual nested, and multiplied in-between the wood pieces.
Handling the wood years stored then I, or one of the family gets spider bit. Very painful.
Brown Recluse spiders, or Black Widows you lose a teaspoon’s worth of flesh. If the killed flesh infects. Then a course of antibiotic shots are needed.
I am not complaining. Few mosquitoes here. Zero venomous snakes here.
Like TomH says. A woodgasifer used; is a woodeating beast.
Store the ability to process make more wood.
Regards
Steve unruh
I got bit on the side of my head by a black widow four years ago in December, pulling wood out of my stacks. That resulted in a bad week. Only slightly less painful than the two times I had Kidney Stones. Thanks for the memories MrSteve.
Just as a note for me, having the time to get wood chunked even with a chunker I seem to only have 2-3 weeks of ready chunked fuel on hand to store. That’s a pretty short shelf life to keep the beast fed, but I think I have a longer commute then most so I go through it pretty fast. Currently using 5-6 bags a day, 50lb feed bags that is. Soon I’ll be using 7-8 with a even longer commute. Wayne has wood that has been stored for many years, hardwood oak that is much more resistant to bugs and rot vs my softwoods fir and pine. Rough storage to keep bugs and moisture out of it here. Boring bark Beatles can kill trees in a few years around here and those I often take down for customers but I have not kept any for the gassifier for that reason, don’t want to somehow start a infestation in my chunk pile. My feed bags had corn chicken feed or goat feed, non of which I have yet had problems with rodents chewing the bags like @Bobmac has had happen. I would imagine a heavy grain feed bag like pig feed would attract the rodents more
Torrefaction might be an option but how to do this at scale and in a controlled way is something I don;t know about.
Maybe heat recovery from a Charcoal kiln could be made to do this.
Welcome Branden
I store my wood outside some in feed bags. We have packrats here they can chew up and make a mess of the long stored feed bags. So I like to store my wood in fence silos about 2’ to 3’ diameter and 4’ tall. Cover them with wood and a tarp. I bag up what I need and Drive On Wood.
Bob
Which could be built right on top of a pallet. 
If you really want long term storage ie SHTF scenario, I would suggest charcoal in 55 gallon barrels. It has a higher energy density and thus less space. And the process kills molds and whatever in the wood. The barrels are because it has a low ignition temperature, and it seals it to keep oxygen from getting in case of a fire.
But if you are using it as your daily driver, you probably won’t be storing it for that long.
Yes my wood is all on wood pellets. One of my silos has a opening in the bottom to shovel chucked wood out the bottom. I will probably make all my silos this way in the future. Right now I tip them over to empty them.
Bob
You need a slide plate in the bottom, then a forklift, to lift it over your gasifier and you can pull the slide out. With all the automation going on for warehouses, you might actually be able to automate the whole process. Then all I can imagine is walking by, seeing this, trying to figure out what is happening, and look in the window to see some guy in a bathrobe smoking a pipe, in an easy chair like Hugh Hefner. I’m not totally sure I want to see that, so shovel away.
Bob,
Please take pictures of your silo with opening in the bottom.
I had about 1500 lbs of chunks made up for Jacob in a fence silo. Okay but it was hard work putting the chunks into bags. I wanted some sort of chute at the bottom of the silo.
Rindert
