Same here. I find it comical when folks get fussy about keeping them all exactly the same length. We have lots of bonfires, but I do try to err on the short side, so that they all fit in the wood stove.
Tractors and wood! Show your pics
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It’s been a pretty warm winter and I’ve only gone thru 3-1/4 face cords so far. My woodshed has a capacity of 24 face cords and we use an average of 6 to heat our 2000 sq ft house thru the winter. Stacked floor to roof, each row of my woodshed holds 1-1/2 face cords.
I’ve been burning mostly cherry so far this winter, a welcome treat after many years of ash. A couple fell down over in my parents woods a couple years ago and I got right on them. That’s my favorite wood to burn.
Last year, I only filled the woodshed halfway, and I used the other half for working on splitting big rounds on rainy days. I split those sitting down with the splitter in the vertical position. I split the smaller stuff outside, on non rainy days, with the splitter in the horizontal position.
I just added the woodshed to the back of my pole barn last spring. If we keep getting these mild winters, I’ll probably just keep filling it half full every year. It’s kind of handy to keep the other half open for splitting on rainy days.
I’ve been burning mostly cherry so far this winter, a welcome treat after many years of ash. A couple fell down over in my parents woods a couple years ago and I got right on them. That’s my favorite wood to burn.
Last year, I only filled the woodshed halfway, and I used the other half for working on splitting big rounds on rainy days. I split those sitting down with the splitter in the vertical position. I split the smaller stuff outside, on non rainy days, with the splitter in the horizontal position.
I just added the woodshed to the back of my pole barn last spring. If we keep getting these mild winters, I’ll probably just keep filling it half full every year. It’s kind of handy to keep the other half open for splitting on rainy days.
goeduck
Super Member
If the firewood pieces aren't all approximately the same length the rows get too far apart, and the stacks get wonky. I dry for 3 years so I don't need or want much space between.
Gordon Gould
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Wonder why don't you like ash ?? We have white ash here - no borer yet but threateningly close - it is considered a pretty good firewood source. Cherry makes a good hot fire though. Not much of that here.
gg
I can usually hit 16 +/- 1” pretty easily without measuring but I’ve been cutting firewood for almost 50 years. Our own wood stove has a shorter firebox than my parents had while I was growing up (I made all their firewood by the time I was 15 and some of it starting when I was in grade school). That took a little adjustment because I used to cut them about 20” long.
Those longer pieces could be stacked higher outside, and remain stable.
My parents and I both moved out of that old house on the edge of town on the same year. They moved onto my moms parents farm, where they have a natural gas well and no more need for firewood.
I got married and my wife and I moved into a 1000 ft addition that my brother added to the back of my grandma’s (on my dad’s side) 1000 ft ranch house. We put in the small wood stove then.
There were a couple of old 36’ x 46’ x 16’ timber framed barns here, that my great great grandad had put up in the 1880’s. I stored my firewood in one of those for about 15 years. It seasoned very well, stacked inside and I would always cut enough to stay 4-5 years ahead.
Unfortunately, the barns had to be replaced after the roofs and foundations failed at the same time. Maintenance had not been kept up in the years since my grandpa had passed. I dismantled the old barns and salvaged most of the wood that was still solid (mostly American chestnut).
I used a lot of that to make shops and a loft inside my new pole barn. My latest “project” was the woodshed on the back of that Stockade building’s back porch. I used some of the 9” and 6” square hand hewn timber’s for framing, along with the sawed oak rafters and chestnut siding boards. I also cut up some of the old white oak floor planks from those old barns for “sticker” boards to hold my stacks up.
The woodshed lean-to is 7 ft wide x 25 ft long and I can stack the firewood floor to roof inside by hand. I would have made it wider, but the roofing tin sheets (Extra pieces used by Stockade to protect the tin siding and roofing during shipment) were only 8 ft long.
The stacks of 16” long firewood are quite stable inside there, up to 9 ft high. It probably helps a lot, that they are just 7 ft wide.
Maybe someday, after all the dying ash is cleared (that don’t need much seasoning time), I’ll go back to cutting 4-5 years worth, and use the full 24 face cord capacity of that woodshed. For now, staying just two years ahead and using half of it works real good. Plus I can keep my field car (Durango) out of the weather.
I had my firewood stacked outside on pallets for a few years, after I took down the last of the old barns and before I completed the woodshed. I hated that. There’s not much worse than dealing with tarps under snow (I covered the tops of the stacks with tarps), and those 16” pieces could not be stacked very high.
The woodshed works great. I have a stone driveway around back. The side porch on our house (right next to the wood stove) holds 1/2 face cord which is about what I can fit in my tractor bucket. When I use that up, I can have it refilled in minutes, no matter how deep the snow is outside.
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Mostly because it makes so much ash, which has to be cleaned out of my little stove so often. Cherry, maple, oak, and walnut are just so much better, when it comes to that. The ash does season fast, and splits easy, but I’m just getting tired of cleaning ashes so often.
I’m thinking another 3-5 years is about all I’ll have to put up with that because there are not many live ones left around here now, thanks to the emerald borer. There are hundreds, of dead and dying ones in our woods and hedgerows right now. I can’t say that I’ll miss them when they are gone.
John_Mc
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You are one of the few lucky areas in Vermont (so far). To my knowledge, no one has actually reported EAB here in Monkton, but I'm sure it's here, and we are already considered an infested area. It has been in surrounding towns for years. Often, the real damage doesn't show up in the trees until the EAB has been there for years (sometimes even after the worst of the infestation has come and gone.)
Map of EAB in Vermont:
Public Information Map
vtanr.maps.arcgis.com
keony
Silver Member
Here we had the EAB years ago and ALL of the ash are dead here, been burning it for years. Ash burns nice but as noted before cherry etc is better, hotter with better coals. And yes, ash makes more ash but I clean the ash tray daily anyway.
Gordon Gould
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You are one of the few lucky areas in Vermont (so far). To my knowledge, no one has actually reported EAB here in Monkton, but I'm sure it's here, and we are already considered an infested area. It has been in surrounding towns for years. Often, the real damage doesn't show up in the trees until the EAB has been there for years (sometimes even after the worst of the infestation has come and gone.)
Map of EAB in Vermont:
Public Information Map
I've looked at that map many times. I wish they would put a date on it. It seems like year(s) before it changes - at least in our area.
gg
Ash is the only wood I know, that has so little moisture in it during the winter, that it could be burnt unseasoned. That could be handy if you ever ran low on wood in the late winter. Of course that don’t matter now around here because all of them are dead anyhow.
I always stayed several years ahead on my firewood supply, so I never took advantage of that, back when they were all healthy. Back then, ash made up less than 25 % of the wood we burnt. For the last 15 years (ever since the eab threat emerged) ash had made up more than 90% of what we have been burning.
That is the main reason that I am so sick of it right now. I’m sure that a day will come, after it’s long gone, when I will start missing it. It really does split easy, compared to most others. I probably wouldn’t even have a hydraulic splitter, if ash was all that I burned.
I always stayed several years ahead on my firewood supply, so I never took advantage of that, back when they were all healthy. Back then, ash made up less than 25 % of the wood we burnt. For the last 15 years (ever since the eab threat emerged) ash had made up more than 90% of what we have been burning.
That is the main reason that I am so sick of it right now. I’m sure that a day will come, after it’s long gone, when I will start missing it. It really does split easy, compared to most others. I probably wouldn’t even have a hydraulic splitter, if ash was all that I burned.