Its the constant damp and humidity here. Seeminly there is no way that wood will last 25 years here unless you wrap it with Tyvek, like the wood framing in my house. We can get rain here for months on end. 2 years ago I think we set the record for 100 some odd days with rain every day from February though May. Some years we simply cannot dry firewood enough outside. Two and three summers ago here we did not have any summer. It snowed late and rained on and off right through the fall. It has been cooler and wetter than normal here in the PNW for the last 5 years with late snows in to April and May. I had a lot of snow here last year. My wood last year did not dry out completely, and it finally dried this summer when we had no rain for 3 months. That was the first dry spell in many years here. I have my wood on pallets under tarps now, and a half cord on my front porch racks. We are on the storm track today and tomorrow with 100 MPH wind gusts on the coast and 2-3 inches of rain in the metro metro areas, and I will likely get a half foot of rain in the next 2 days. When hurricane Sandy hit the east coast we got a Pinapple express from Hawaill with warm wet and humid storms here. I got a half a foot of rain in that one over 3 days. I was up in Seattle at that time and it rained 3 inches the day I was there.
I dunno how to keep wood dry enough here. Short of building a monster shed or barn for it, which is what my ex resorted to doing a few years ago. Just having a roof is not enough. I can build up to a 10x20 shed here w/o a permit. I may just cover an area between my house and the garage, and use that for storing 2 cords of wood. Its on a concrete slab and if I put in pallets I can rack the wood there and keep it open to the outside air, but out of the rain.
Here is a photo of my rain gauges from October. The bucket on the right is for October, 13-14 inches and near full. The one on the left if from the Pinapple express at the end of October.
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