Large wood shed plan

Its all about access - and airflow for you.

The career foresters up here build concrete pad greenhouses on the south sides of their homes. Usually a ground floor patio between the home and greenhouse, with a second floor deck sheltering most of the patio below.

The trick for them is they build a rack out of 2x4 for cord wood splits, and then enough room to walk down the aisle with an arm load of wood, then another rack, then another aisle, etc. The ones I have seen pictures of hold enough wood for two hard winters or three mild winters.

They could fit twice as much wood in there if the would dry it first and move it again into the shed. Or they can build big and only handle the wood once. If you got the dough, what the heck. I would do it if I had cubic cash to work with, right after I had a 383 stroker with an aggressive solid lifter cam dropped into my new Corvette.

What I am seeing in my passive solar kilns is I get about +10dF solar gain on cloudy days and +15 to 20dF on sunny days - this early in the year. If you are envisioning a building with opaque siding on it I have no idea how long it will take wood to season in there, but with no sunshine you will need a strong hand in the airflow cards.

With transparent siding and roofing you can pump up your sunshine/heat cards and get by with a weaker hand in the airflow suit. What is your time horizon for getting green wood seasoned? If you have both seasoned and dry wood in the same shed, how are you going to keep the water in the green wood from getting absorbed by the dry wood once you get the water out into the air as humidity?

It's a vexing set of problems.

You might google up "active solar lumber kiln". There is an outfit in the northern tier of states, Maine, Minnesota, I don't remember, maybe Montana, has basically a three car garage and 6 overhead doors with a full width solar collector up top. One bay has seasoned wood in it ready to sell, the second has two open overhead doors and wood in it air drying down to FSP. Third one is full, down to FSP, doors closed, and all the solar energy they collect from the full width collector up top coming in. Each bay has a set of air doors in the ceiling. The first two sets of doors are closed, the air doors in the ceiling of bay three are open, they got some fans running and a regular heat pump working as a dehumidifier. If you are comfortable in Linux you could probably run the whole thing from a smart phone with a few Arduinos and a Raspberry Pi running the 'duinos for under a grand. Just stick a fourth bay on the end for your trailer.

Before you start dirt work are you absolutely positively certain you don't want one of these instead?

I have thought about running that kind of volume, maybe 20 cords per year, in my retirement just as something to do to get gas money for my boat. On top of the 8-10 I will be burning at the house.

Somewhere around 8-10 cords annually it is time to think seriously about automation. I haven't fooled with using a bucket to load green splits into a kiln and then the same bucket to load seasoned splits from the kiln into a dump trailer, but it would drop pallet inventory to zero and save buying a forklift.

I bet 2x6 studs with 3/4" CDX sheathing will take a serious beating from a bucket before replacement is indicated.

Having shrink wrapped face cords on pallets and a dump trailer for delivery isn't going to work good without an intermediate step that will probably require whisky and motrin.

I am planning to eventually bring trailers of wood into the garage and park my truck outdoors in the winter, humping multiple cords through a man door into the house is for younger men than me.

I have 2-3 years worth of wood in my shed (depends on the winter). I still stack outside for a year or two before putting it into the woodshed where it sits for another year ... or two ... or three. Needless to say, when I do burn the wood it burns wicked good.

Just throwing this out there, and this may be out of reason for the scale of this project.

Other than the space requirements, what would be the downside of piling in rows over large in-floor vents inside said structure? Exhaust fans in the floor troughs pulling air thru these piles from above. Build dividing walls to separate years/seasons and use a front end loader to handle all the wood until it is brought to the house.

Sounds more like a barn

I thought the point of a wood shed was to keep dry during burning season? Not storing ALL of your wood.

35' by 25'? Gooood lord.

The most important thing to know about energy is conservation. Reduce your need for wood once, and the payback is lifetime. All the home improvements are important: insulation air sealing, windows, doors, etc. Then an efficient wood burner, whether it be an interior wood stove or a wood gasification boiler with adequate storage. Next wood storage and shed.

The easiest and highly effective wood storage is outside stacks with good air circulation, stacks raised off the ground to allow air circulation underneath and shield from ground moisture, and then add cover to keep the rain/snow off the stacks: roofing panels work well because they allow air circulation across the top, but never tarps. As noted below, that's what I use for the wood for my shop, stacks 4+ feet wide and 32 feet long.

I too do not want to handle/stack wood more than once. And also I want two years of wood on hand in weather protected wood sheds, three would be OK but excessive. Yesterday I finished c/s/s to fill my wood shed for the house with the wood for 2017-18, wood for 2016-17 is already in the shed. All of this is to heat the house which takes 4 cords/heating season in northern MN, mostly aspen, some birch, oak and miscellaneous.

I also have a 1500 sqft shop which similarly takes 4 cords/heating season, but no wood shed for the shop, just roofing panels over the top of the stacks to keep the rain/show off. Stacks are 4-1/2' wide of 18" splits, 32 feet long. Two stacks hold 8 generous cords. Wood for 2016-17 was c/s/s early last year with all summer to dry and will be well seasoned by fall, wood for 2017-18 is in the process of being c/s/s right now, mostly pine, some hardwoods.

I wish you well on your wood storage project.

jebatty said:

The most important thing to know about energy is conservation. Reduce your need for wood once, and the payback is lifetime. All the home improvements are important: insulation air sealing, windows, doors, etc. Then an efficient wood burner, whether it be an interior wood stove or a wood gasification boiler with adequate storage. Next wood storage and shed.

The easiest and highly effective wood storage is outside stacks with good air circulation, stacks raised off the ground to allow air circulation underneath and shield from ground moisture, and then add cover to keep the rain/snow off the stacks: roofing panels work well because they allow air circulation across the top, but never tarps. As noted below, that's what I use for the wood for my shop, stacks 4+ feet wide and 32 feet long.

I too do not want to handle/stack wood more than once. And also I want two years of wood on hand in weather protected wood sheds, three would be OK but excessive. Yesterday I finished c/s/s to fill my wood shed for the house with the wood for 2017-18, wood for 2016-17 is already in the shed. All of this is to heat the house which takes 4 cords/heating season in northern MN, mostly aspen, some birch, oak and miscellaneous.

I also have a 1500 sqft shop which similarly takes 4 cords/heating season, but no wood shed for the shop, just roofing panels over the top of the stacks to keep the rain/show off. Stacks are 4-1/2' wide of 18" splits, 32 feet long. Two stacks hold 8 generous cords. Wood for 2016-17 was c/s/s early last year with all summer to dry and will be well seasoned by fall, wood for 2017-18 is in the process of being c/s/s right now, mostly pine, some hardwoods.

I wish you well on your wood storage project.

Click to expand...

Jim, the photos do not appear to have come through on my browser. Anyone else have this problem?

What about maybe leaving a cord or three in a pile on the ground next to the splitter for 4-6 weeks to let it dry down to fiber saturation point, and then stack in the conveniently nearby woodbarn?

Hope this works better on the pictures.

KenLockett said:

Jim, the photos do not appear to have come through on my browser. Anyone else have this problem?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Let's talk space from a woodpile footprint perspective. 30 cord = 3840 ft^3 (yikes). Let's consider the height of stacks. I stack inside similar to your desired outcome: C/S/S, forget for a few years, burn, repeat (well, constantly C/S/S for future at ~the same rate of annual usage). Accordingly, I can stack 8 feet high and have never had a stack fall. Moreover, my stacks all touch each other/lean on each other--airflow is good because I have a corn crib with slatted sides with SW exposure (direct sun & prevailing wind direction.) OK. So if you're stacking 8ft high, you need a footprint of 480 ft^2, minimum. That's a lot of wood! My "footprint" in the crib is ~6 ft by 32 ft, so 192 ft^2, 8 ft high = 12 cord capacity which is perfect for my 3 year supply. I have had good success with wood drying in this configuration for the past 3 winters with no issues. My stacks are 6 ft long, 8 ft high and have contact with each other. Each stack is ~72 ft^3 as I'm cutting 18-20 in splits. The corn crib floor is rough-sawn 2x plank with 1/4-1/2 " gap between planks, about 18" off of the ground. Slatted walls have ~1/2" air gap and surround the crib on the W, S, and E sides (N side conjoined with adjacent barn, old wood siding with hand-cut nails--neat!). SO, FWIW, I believe you are on the right track and this thing can work. Air flow is good for me as is the elevation off of the ground. That said, I don't have a fancy moisture meter nor do I obsess over that. BUT, after 2, 3 years in the crib, it all burns, hot as Hades, without sizzling, and without mucking up my glass or chimney. BTW, this part of the forum is my favorite because I love wood shed design and stuff like this--lets me get my geek on.

Cheers,
Clinton

Building a three year supply woodshed is super nice to have.

The one I have has overhead garage doors on the ends to the prevailing wind and directly opposite. I put a trailer load of 10 foot logs in the center of that shed during the winter. I cut, split and stack in there out of the weather. Then don't handle it until it is time to move it to burn.

It sounds like time is important enough for you to do it right. How you move it when it is time to burn might be the final gain in efficiency. It is best to move a week's supply of wood, or more and not have to worry about frequent resupplying. If a cold front is coming, you can plan ahead.

I use an ATV trailer that can be parked next to the boiler for one unit in the shop. It holds a week's supply. For the wood stove in the house, I use a wheelbarrow that is OK to park in the mudroom (3 wheeler). That also holds a week's supply, unless it is extra cold.

Some people have a forklift or a tractor with a front end loader to move pallets or racks. If you had that, you could store the racks outside in the dryer times, and store in a tighter setup in the shed for the wet times.

I have never seen a post here where someone says their wood shed is too big and they should have built smaller.

I have zero experience stacking tight like this, but you have encouraging responses from several folks that have.

I don't think this plan, as I understand it, would work very well with birch. I think if you get into some birch it would be better to leave it in a pile (unstacked) beside the splitter for a month or so to let it air dry rapidly down to <30% MC before stacking it into the shed plan I think I hear you describing. Apparently with other hard woods it isn't a problem, but the longer birch stays above 30%MC the moldier it gets.

IIRC you cut mostly or even exclusively oak...

3 year woodshed. does that mean 3 years of ready to burn wood, or this year with 2 more on standby? If I only have 2 years, can I burn the shed? which would make it 4 years, cause it took 8 months and 2 weeks to build the shed?