covering a wood pile

only when it rains

Jags said:

If you cover, it is the tops only. Yes, it helps keep the moisture off, but that is surface moisture, not cellular moister. Big difference. Surface will dry darn near as fast as your driveway, cellular is what "seasoning" is all about.

I think the biggest benefit to covering a stack is when it comes time to burn. No snow or ice on the wood.

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+1

Yup. Cover the top only.

We leave the wood uncovered the first summer and fall. Cover the top before the snow flies. I just covered the wood we cut last winter. It was split and stacked in April. I just covered them and used old galvanized roofing. It works great. Tarps are the worst way to cover them.

I'll chime in here and add: If you know you are going to have a couple days of monsoon weather, and you are in November........I'd cover the WHOLE thing, .........top & sides.

(Uncover when the weather clears).

After all..........I don't wanna risk ruining all that nice air-dried seasoning I've been doing all year long. ESPECIALLY when I'm in "burning season!"

-Soupy1957

Jags said:

If you cover, it is the tops only. Yes, it helps keep the moisture off, but that is surface moisture, not cellular moister. Big difference. Surface will dry darn near as fast as your driveway, cellular is what "seasoning" is all about.

I think the biggest benefit to covering a stack is when it comes time to burn. No snow or ice on the wood.

Click to expand...

+ Whatever number we're up to now . . . only top covered in my pre-woodshed years . . . well year . . . having a woodshed truly rocks.

Jags said:

If you cover, it is the tops only. Yes, it helps keep the moisture off, but that is surface moisture, not cellular moister. Big difference. Surface will dry darn near as fast as your driveway, cellular is what "seasoning" is all about.

I think the biggest benefit to covering a stack is when it comes time to burn. No snow or ice on the wood.

Click to expand...

I wonder about this in the Pacific Northwest. We are about to enter our rainy season, where the wood will probably not dry out completely for about 4 months. Would you say that it's worth covering the stack, or is the wood still drying on the inside?

This is for wood that might get burned in '10/11, but probably for the following year.

Ok, but I should probably cover the top, even if it's totally green wood?

I live in Seattle and top cover with tarps.....let it hang down a foot or so on each side....at Target the have 10 by 25 3mm sheeting that is cheap ($8) and effective....if you don't cover I find it slows the seasoning way down and your wood looks bad in the end(dirty, fungus,mold)

soupy1957 said:

I'll chime in here and add: If you know you are going to have a couple days of monsoon weather, and you are in November........I'd cover the WHOLE thing, .........top & sides.

(Uncover when the weather clears).

After all..........I don't wanna risk ruining all that nice air-dried seasoning I've been doing all year long. ESPECIALLY when I'm in "burning season!"

-Soupy1957

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Soupy, you seem to me to be a rather intelligent man and that is why I am totally puzzled as to why you feel you need to cover the WHOLE thing. In the first place, covering the whole thing would trap any and all moisture that is in the wood or ground and you don't want that. In the second place, well, I have no idea why anyone would cover the sides of a wood pile. Even if the rain came with strong wind blowing the rain almost sideways, I still would never think of covering the sides. If it gets wet, it will usually dry within hours after the rain stops. Once again, top covering only.

I say BS to covering a wood stack, yes it gets wet in the rain or snow or whatever but it is surface moisture and it dries fast once inside. It is not affecting the MC in the wood itself that I have found. I say let the sun,wind.rain etc have it's way with it and burn on!.

ratherbfishin said:

I say BS to covering a wood stack, yes it gets wet in the rain or snow or whatever but it is surface moisture and it dries fast once inside. It is not affecting the MC in the wood itself that I have found. I say let the sun,wind.rain etc have it's way with it and burn on!.

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Its been raining hard all last night and all day here. I am glad that if I need to go to the woodpile, the tops are covered and the splits will be dry and not be soaked. When the wood is wet, even if it is on the outside, I learned a long time ago camping as a Boyscout that wet wood sucks. I cover the upcoming winter's wood before the fall rain falls.

Backwoods Savage: The operative word there in my response is "monsoon" (albeit it may be spelled wrong, I'm not sure). Uncover when it's over. Just my personal preference, is all.

-soupy1957

I covr my woud in late fal cides and top caz i aint veri brite, pa didnt lik book learin

All my wood for this season is top covered now (as of Nov 1). All next years wood is uncovered and enjoying the sun and wind. When we get rain or snow with wind, the (tarp) sides are let down and cover about 2 feet on each side.

Do as you wish for sure but methinks you are causing yourself a lot of extra unnecessary work by doing that. I also do not like tarps for covering wood although I have used some; just don't like them.

i hate tarps with a passion. so glad i have a shed now.

I must be a masochist because I can't keep myself from reading these threads every time the subject comes up.

Look, folks, rain -- water wet -- doesn't not penetrate more than a fraction of an inch into the wood. It just doesn't. You'd have to leave a split in submerged in a pool of water for weeks to make it soggy. If the air itself is super-saturated with water for months, as in some climates, covering the top isn't going to make any difference anyway. For the rest of us, rain. does. not. matter. Each to his own, but why the heck make extra work for yourself?

I had the remnants of a pile of barkless kiln-dried wood still left outside last week when it rained heavily for two solid days. Half a day after it stopped raining, the wood was fine. Two days after I had put some of that "wet wood" in my enclosed woodshed, it was dry. About an hour after I put some of that "wet wood" in the stack near my stove, it was dry.

As for tarping to keep the snow off-- also each to his own. I'd far rather push the snow off the wood stacks than push the snow off the tarp and then wrestle the tarp off and extract wood that's gotten snow all over it anyway by that time and wrestle the tarp back on again. But that's just me.

Call me crazy, but its just too easy to just lay some old roll roofing over the stacks to keep the soaking rainwater out of it. When I have left stacks uncovered during rainy months, I have found that moisture attracts bugs and critters deep into the moist stack. Taking 5 minutes to cover once is a simple, good investment of my time.....and I sleep better at night. ;-P

wood-fan-atic said:

Call me crazy, but its just too easy to just lay some old roll roofing over the stacks to keep the soaking rainwater out of it. When I have left stacks uncovered during rainy months, I have found that moisture attracts bugs and critters deep into the moist stack. Taking 5 minutes to cover once is a simple, good investment of my time.....and I sleep better at night. ;-P

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Well, as I say, each to his/her own. I've never had that experience of bugs and critters in the woodstacks, at least no more than the small number you get no matter how dry or wet it is, and we sure don't have a rainy season here in VT. I have occasionally in rainy falls been unable to resist the urge to go cover up the stacks, but it sure takes me a lot more than 5 minutes, and I've cursed myself afterwards for being a fool. Also, I should admit that since my stove is small, my splits are small, 14 inches max, and my property is very windy, so roofing material, unless it were cut way down to size so there'd be no major overhang, is a no-go for my situation. So it's tarps or nothing, and tarps are just a collossal pain the youknowwhat.

But still, it seems to me way more of a pain to deal with than it's worth, since it dries out all by itself so rapidly. In mid-winter when it's really cold and I need every fraction of a BTU out of each piece of wood, I just plan ahead to get it under cover in time to dry out before throwing on the fire. It's been surprising to me how fast even seemingly well-soaked wood dries essentially outdoors in my enclosed woodshed. But my climate is very dry for the NE, especially in wintertime.

I have enough work to do that I can't avoid, so I'm kind of a demon about not doing anything that isn't strictly necessary.