Cross sectional area experiment

A few posts here and there pontificating about how much space split wood takes up compared to unsplit rounds,t hat sort of thing. One of my mother's childhood hero's was Francis Bacon, anytime my sister and I got to pontificating on something Mom would interrupt and spout, "Francis Bacon did not live in vain, let us go count!".

So today I counted.

Here is the in situ sample, 56" vertical average by 111" length, with a closeup. These rounds were too skinny to stack neatly on end, mostly 8" and under. (56x111) / 144 = ~43 sqft of wood ends.



I split the whole thing,

My splits pile was "this big"


Its going on the empty pallets in the right background...

here is 111" wide:



And here is the whole sample stacked:



Finished stack runs 44 to 55" tall, 100" wide rectangle on the right. so (49.5 x 100) / 144, 34.3 sq ft there, plus the triangle on the end is about 48" of base and 24" of height on the tall end, so about 4 sqft there, 34.3 + 4 = 38.3 sqft stacked.

Not sure how many pics I can attach to one post, but closeup of the stacked splits here:



I manage to get it a bit tighter (about 10% smaller) than it was before I split it.

For my next experiment I am going to start with unsplit rounds >10" in diameter in a neatly stacked stack 4x8 foot footprint and 4' tall too see how big a stack that makes after it is split.

BrotherBart said:

And we are going where? Francis would want to know.

Click to expand...

With respect to this thread: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/suburban-woodpile-handling.136013/ I am honestly concerned that I have more rounds on the west side of the house than I can fit on my seasoning racks. If I got rounds left over I have to do something with them so I can get my boat out of the back yard this spring.

I have three more ranks like the one I split on Wednesday, plus a huge pile of larger rounds

If I am a full cord over I'll put it on craigslist. If I am a fraction of a cord over I'll give it to my hunting buddy. Might be enough to sell a full cord of green rounds and give my buddy a heavy pickup truck full.

Tonight I got a 4x8 face cord of 12" diameter rounds layed out. I am not going to split that one at the front in the pic this time around, the ones inside the rectangle just barely fit on on a 4x8 sheet of plywood. I'll split and stack that face cord, and repeat once or maybe twice now that I know ~about~ how much rack space those other three ranks of smalls will occupy.

Thanks Paul, my similar endeavors at my day job do pay pretty well. This is just for fun. Applied bio-chemistry, not so much fun.

Imma go for 4 pics in this one post. I split the whole 4x8 rectangle of rounds, but not the extra one on the end. two pics of the pile of splits. Next two are the 1) the twisty/ curved hard to stack splits that go on the top of my woodpiles, and finally the straight splits neatly stacked.

i feel pretty good that if i had gotten all straight splits out of the rounds it would have stacked out for - small splits and tightly stacked, right around one face cord. The twisty/curvy ones are going to take up more room than they really need when I add them too the top.