Leave it, cut it only, or split it?

I have been in a similar situation, and I have decided to cut, split and stack as much as possible every year.

Having said that, I have certain specific situations here that may or may not apply for you.

One, I am 70 years old. I want to stockpile as much as possible while I am still able.

Two, I have unlimited storage space to store wood.

Three, I live in a place that is extremely dry, and thus do not have a concern to cover or protect from rotting.

These may or may not apply.

I was cutting standing dead oak that had been dead for about 5 years. Starting to get a bit punky and carpenter ants were in some of the punky parts ( red oaks can get stump rot also which can also become a home for carpenter ants ) . I found getting it cut and split all the ants pretty much moved out/got eaten.

I also found some dead standing oak that was standing possibly quite longer than that, had no ants or bugs of any kind and was dry as a bone and as hard as a bone too. Tough on the chain.

In my area of northern new England, if the wood is up off the ground and properly top covered it lasts a long time before deterioration. If its in contact with the ground it starts rotting from the bottom up within a year. Without a good top cover I find it starts to deteriorate in about 3 to 5 years. I have run into wood in covered storage (usually old barns) that is 10 to 20 years old and great firewood.

Same rules apply to buildings, get them up off the ground on good foundation and keep a roof over them and they last quite awhile, if either the roof or the foundation goes, the building deteriorates quickly.

Gareth96 said:

I probably have enough wood for the next 3 years, and probably 5 years more worth standing dead around my property. Is it better to leave it standing till say 2 years before I need it, or cut it to length now, but not split, or just cut/split/stack it? Or some combo thereof? Thanks!

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For me it would depend on the size and species of the standing dead and if all or most the bark fallen off. Most of my standing dead is silver, red and sugar maple, smaller 14 - 20" diameter, no bark and look like toothpicks, this stuff is ready to burn after being split in 3 weeks, fresh splits usually comes in around 25% MC, 3 or 4 weeks of drying it's at 15-18% MC. The standing dead maple dries incredibly fast, love it.

The standing dead ash that still has bark on it needs at least a year, it reads high around 35-40% MC on fresh splits.

In OH, you have wet weather and humid summers. I'd cut it and split it as you have time.

C/S/S as you have space available to store the splits. I have yet to ever hear anyone complain because their wood had aged too much, unless they were trying to cut it and it was ruining a chain.

When we first moved into our house we had a BUNCH of tree service done. We opted to save some money leaving what amounted to a tall pignut hickory totem pole. Years pass and it's time for it to come down. I've dropped single digit number of trees and I'm not very good at it. This thing is on the crest of a 45 degree slope and really needs to fall one way.

I started cutting and thought something was wrong because this was way too easy. I smelled wet, rotting wood and the stuff coming out was spongy. Well, now I've really broken it and maybe a good wind will push it in any direction. So I had to finish, but boy, was that tense.

I'm concluding there's some kind of time limit between cutting and letting it blow over!

Nice to have a hedge against injury, also. I need to get a few more chords to have a "buffer" year.