Long term storage of firewood rounds?

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obie1kanobe

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Jul 7, 2010
10
North Carolina
I had about 30 trees cut down to open up a piece of property: oak, tulip-poplar, maple and pine. The diameters run between 6" and 24". I'm in the process of cutting them to 16" lengths. This is probably a 10 year supply of firewood for me and I already have 2 years split and stacked.

This morning, I started stacking firewood-rounds on pallets with landscape fabric underneath to keep the weeds down. It's in an area with at least 6 hours of sun a day and strong winds. I'm putting three firewood-rounds across the width of the pallet with the big stuff on the bottom and smaller on top. I'm thinking of stapling landscape fabric to just the top of the stack so that hard rain will run off--the fabric breathes so it shouldn't trap moisture.

I got to wondering whether the inside rounds will get enough air circulation to prevent rotting.

1. Any problems with this method of long term storage? Suggestions?

2. Any guesstimates at the moisture content of an un-split 16" long--18" diameter oak firewood round after 2 years?


Thanks in advance
 
1. Sounds like a plan except;
2. Green.

My cut split and stacked 2 rows to a pallet oak is burnable after two years, better after three. 18" rounds may as well be still in the tree.
 
In the past year I've had some experience with hickory and maple rounds of the size you describe. The trees were cut and bucked and the wood left uncovered in the round for about a year with no special care taken with stacking. In both cases the wood had significantly deteriorated by the time I was able to split it. I went ahead and used the hickory in spite of some punkiness, but much of the maple was soft, light, and useless. Splitting and stacking is a lot of work, but you don't want your nice wood turning into crumbly fungus food.
 
obie1kanobe said:
I had about 30 trees cut down to open up a piece of property: oak, tulip-poplar, maple and pine. The diameters run between 6" and 24". I'm in the process of cutting them to 16" lengths. This is probably a 10 year supply of firewood for me and I already have 2 years split and stacked.

This morning, I started stacking firewood-rounds on pallets with landscape fabric underneath to keep the weeds down. It's in an area with at least 6 hours of sun a day and strong winds. I'm putting three firewood-rounds across the width of the pallet with the big stuff on the bottom and smaller on top. I'm thinking of stapling landscape fabric to just the top of the stack so that hard rain will run off--the fabric breathes so it shouldn't trap moisture.

I got to wondering whether the inside rounds will get enough air circulation to prevent rotting.

1. Any problems with this method of long term storage? Suggestions?

2. Any guesstimates at the moisture content of an un-split 16" long--18" diameter oak firewood round after 2 years?


Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum obie1kanobe.

Yes, you have a problem. When you stack wood, you need to raise it up off the ground. This keeps it from contacting the ground which will cause rot but it also allows air circulation under the stacks.

We do our cutting in winter and splitting in spring. Then we stack 4' high and forget about it until just before the snow flies. Then we cover the top of the stacks using old galvanized roofing. Wood will keep like this for 10+ years.

Unsplit rounds of oak!!!! To give you a hint, the wood barely seasons if it is not split. Once split, we do not try to burn it for 3 years. Oak gives up its moisture very reluctantly.
 
Here is a couple pictures to show how we stack the wood. You'll notice the poles under the wood. We just cut some saplings for this. One could also use landscape timbers or something similar. Lots of folks use pallets but I don't like them. The big thing is to get the wood so it is off the ground.

Wood-2009c.jpg



Wood-2010f.jpg
 
It's going to be a race just to get all the wood out of the forest within the next year. (It's not flat ground and I have to winch most of it uphill.) I'll go after the oak first. Tulip poplar laying on the ground here barely makes it a year so I may lose most of it.

How much will it help to prevent rot if I just split the 18-24" pieces into fourths? I can split it down smaller a year or two before I need to use it. That would help me get more out of the forest and off the ground.


Thanks
 
Splitting like that would be fine. The big point is to get it up off the ground. Just that fabric on the ground will not help much. Get it up from 3" - 5" minimum.

The tulip popple is definitely not as good of wood and I do suspect it will rot fast if not cut up and stacked. But it is good wood when you don't need lots of heat for long periods of time. The reason oak is so good is because it coals so great and therefore gives heat for a long time. I've not cut a tulip popple because we don't have them here, but it is still popple which is not really great fire wood. They do make some good lumber from it though.
 
I was putting the wood on pallets, the landscape fabric was just to suppress weeds and vines from growing around and into the stack.

Sounds like the best trade off is to make big splits for now.


Thanks
 
That should work fine. Good luck to you.
 
I think I would first try to move it all out of the woods and get it off the ground. Instead of cutting 16 inch pieces, why not cut four footers of the small diameters and cross stack the bottom couple of layers to minimize the amount of wood near the ground. Once you have the pieces moved out of the woods, you can cut to 16 inch length and split at a more leisurely pace.

I think it is important to split soon, but I'd first worry about getting the wood off the ground and out of the woods. I would save oak first, but Tulip Poplar is nice firewood and I wouldn't want to see it rot. Same goes for all of the wood, except maybe willow if you have any of that.
 
With the oak, it is not so much that you have to split it to prevent rot, it just doesn't season well in large rounds.
 
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