Cover your stacks - plywood

[Ashful]

So, we all know we need to cover our stacks, at least here in the Atlantic states. We also know tarps tend to tear or sag and collect water, often despite our best efforts to make them shed.

Plywood is a cheap, easily obtainable, and almost infinitely reusable solution. It might look a little less offensive in the back yard, versus roofing scraps , too.

Attachment method: nails vs screws. Screws can be more easily removed when there's not snow and ice covering them , but nails probably when there is.

 

[BrotherBart]

For the stuff outside of the wood shed anymore I just cover it with black sheet plastic. The hammer tacker makes short work of holding it down and staples don't take up much space in the ash bed.

But that rubber roofing is hard to beat if you don't have a shed.

 

[Ashful]

I was buying those 24" wide rolls of heavy black plastic made for planting beds, and attached with the hammer tacker, too. Trouble is, my stacks are 40" wide x 100 feet long. Two swaths of 24" always leaked where I overlapped them.

I'd like to find a 48" wide roll of the same, but have never seen it.

 

[BrotherBart]

Anymore I just cut it in one stack wide strips. Since the stuff is going into the shed in April and the solar gable fan will be blowing into the shed all Summer and Fall.

Rolls of twenty foot wide is available at Home Depot. A box cutter goes through it like hot butter.

 

[Beer Belly]

I quickly framed out wood shed using scraps from when the previous owner built the deck on the house.....found in the woods out back 6) 4x4x8's.....a couple of 2x10's, then my buddies sister was building a new deck.....grabbed what scraps I could, and then a Tractor Trailer must of lost his heavy duty tarp....found it on the side of the road, man that thing is huge.....cut it to cover the shed, and some stacks....so far I've spent less that $10 on the shed....I know, pictures

 

[Todd 2]

4 x 8 sheets of plywood have worked great for myself, I use the pontoon decking we tear off at work when we redeck one. It helps getting it for free but it works so well that I would buy it now if I had to. I use 2 ropes at each end over the top and tie to something jammed into the stack down lower, no screws or nails to mess with under the snow that way. No water lays on top and no hidden frozen splits in the middle of your stack from leaks or seams when you stack wide.
I think a carport will do well also ( I keep looking at them ) one of the heavier made ones that will not collapse under snow weight like Brother Bart told a story about

 

[Charlie2]

Covering your stacks seem like a no brainer, but it's a bit more complicated in practice. (Sort of like in theory everything is great but in practice it ain't, or something like that)
I can see if you have enough over hang to keep a driving rain from reaching the stack, it would be good, but most rains/fronts are proceeded and accompanied by winds. Around here, it's common to see the rain falling at a 45 degree angle, more sometimes , less sometimes, but 75% of the time it's 45 degrees or more. We are taught here to stack our stacks so that the winds and sun can work best for drying, ie- sideways to the prevailing winds. So,-----if you as Bart is showing, put a narrow strip of plastic on top of a stack, how in the world is that going to keep the stack dryer? The only pieces of wood that won't receive a good drenching would be the pieces directly beneath the plastic and after the rain those few dry pieces will trapped under plastic like a cigar in a humidor.
Bart, please take no offense, I'll not live long enough to know a fraction of what you know. I'm just trying to figure this stuff and I ain't spitting in a dry creek bed.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

I don't think the rain hitting the sides is a big issue as most of it will run right off, and what does get wet will easily dry off when it stops raining. What I see as a problem is the wood in the middle of the background stack. If it's wet when it gets covered it will never dry, and likely rot under there, and if it is dry when it got covered it will probably start sucking up moisture from the ground.
Because the foreground stack is only two rows wide it should dry quicker and be less prone to sucking up moisture from the ground.

 

[Charlie2]

Jack, I was really only addressing the single stack issue. If a 45 degree blown rain hits a single stack, it'll pretty much wet the stack, which you say will dry right out, wouldn't it dry right out without the top covering just as quickly?

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Jack, I was really only addressing the single stack issue. If a 45 degree blown rain hits a single stack, it'll pretty much wet the stack, which you say will dry right out, wouldn't it dry right out without the top covering just as quickly?

If you don't have a top cover may only get most of the one side wet from the 45 deg rain (I'm assuming it's coming 45 deg from the side and not the end of the stack), but it will also hit the top as well, so you will get more water on the wood. And yes a lot of people don't bother to cover at all and it seems to work out for them because the stacks dry right out, providing they single, or at the very most double row stack. A lot depends on the type of weather you get in your area. However, snow was the bigger issue for me before I had a woodshed, not rain. When it would snow it would sit right on top of the wood and slowly melt and run down into the stacks. then often freeze again leaving the wood in a big messy block of snow and ice. A simple top cover takes care of that problem.
The issue I was pointing out with BB's wood was the one huge cover he is using. If I did that around here the wood in the middle would never dry, and if it would get very humid in the middle area under that tarp, likely causing the wood in the middle to absorb moisture again. Perhaps he also has a moisture membrane under that wood pile preventing the moisture from coming up out of the ground, I don't know?

 

[Ashful]

Well, I have a new twist on my old solution. I pulled out the old roll of black plastic, and found it's actually 3 feet wide. Since I stack double-wide on pallets, I just turned a few splits on top of each row to run lengthwise with the stacks, and they're setting near the center of my double-wide rows, to act as a ridge. Two swaths of 3' plastic overlapping in the middle on these ridge splits and stapled over each edge of the stack, should run off nicely. It also enables me to remove one row in the double wide, while leaving the other row covered. Good enough for me.

 

[Charlie2]

Ah yes Jack, I keep forgetting some people have to contend with snow. It's a state holiday if we get snow.

 

[Butcher]

Kinda hard out here to keep anything on a wood pile so I don't bother.

 

[Woody Stover]

Kinda hard out here to keep anything on a wood pile

Including water. Probably dry 15 minutes after it stops raining, with that wind.

 

[Ashful]

Including water. Probably dry 15 minutes after it stops raining, with that wind.

Yeah... but it's hard running a woodstove on cornstalks! Where's the trees?

 

[Butcher]

Yeah... but it's hard running a woodstove on cornstalks! Where's the trees?

Plenty of trees but with farm ground going for the price it does around here (over 12K per acre) you wont find many trees on crop land.

 

[Fred Wright]

Tried the plywood cover route some years ago when we tore down an old shed. It's a great wood stack cover but seemed to be more of a hassle than plastic sheeting. As the stacks were used the plywood kept falling off.

I prefer the plastic sheeting. We got a roll of it back when for a moisture barrier under the house. There's still a lot left over. I cut a length off the roll wide enough to cover 6 feet and unfold it to 20' length. Yup, it holds rainwater and that's an annoyance. But it's flexible and stays put as the stacks go down.

 

[BCC_Burner]

If you don't have a top cover may only get most of the one side wet from the 45 deg rain (I'm assuming it's coming 45 deg from the side and not the end of the stack), but it will also hit the top as well, so you will get more water on the wood. And yes a lot of people don't bother to cover at all and it seems to work out for them because the stacks dry right out, providing they single, or at the very most double row stack. A lot depends on the type of weather you get in your area. However, snow was the bigger issue for me before I had a woodshed, not rain. When it would snow it would sit right on top of the wood and slowly melt and run down into the stacks. then often freeze again leaving the wood in a big messy block of snow and ice. A simple top cover takes care of that problem.
The issue I was pointing out with BB's wood was the one huge cover he is using. If I did that around here the wood in the middle would never dry, and if it would get very humid in the middle area under that tarp, likely causing the wood in the middle to absorb moisture again. Perhaps he also has a moisture membrane under that wood pile preventing the moisture from coming up out of the ground, I don't know?

Based on a few people on the other forum using the cube method for their wood storage, it seems that the middle row dries out just fine if you have 2-3 years to let it sit.

My wood racks have frames, so I attach clear sections of plastic roofing to them for the summer months, then pull those and cover with 12 mil tarps for the winter. I size those so that they extend down 2-3 feet. This keeps a lot of the wind-driven snow and rain out, but still allows for some airflow.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Based on a few people on the other forum using the cube method for their wood storage, it seems that the middle row dries out just fine if you have 2-3 years to let it sit.
.

I wouldn't count on that if you have the cube completely covered with a big sheet of plastic. Not only will it be hard for the moisture already in the wood to escape, but the moisture from the ground will be drawn up and trapped under the plastic and re-saturate the wood. You'd be better off not covering it at all, at least then the moisture could escape out the top when it's not raining.

 

[S Roche]

We have a couple of siding companies in the area so I can get the pieces of house wrap (Tyvek) which isn't the most durable but is better than blue tarps or black plastic. Not the best but the price is right.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

We have a couple of siding companies in the area so I can get the pieces of house wrap (Tyvek) which isn't the most durable but is better than blue tarps or black plastic. Not the best but the price is right.

What is even better is Lumber Wrap material. It can often be obtained free from lumber yards where they generally throw it in the garbage after they sell the lifts of lumber that it was used to cover. This material is strong, UV treated, free, and specifically designed to protect wood from the elements for long periods of time. What's not to like?
http://www.interwrap.com/protective-packaging/weatherpro-lumber-wrap.html

 

[Enzo's Dad]

I am going to put another 2 cords on pallets.....this will be perfect to cover it....about double the cost of plywood but will last forever.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_12747-1115-...RL=?Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&facetInfo=

 

[Ashful]

If that stuff could be purchased with the corrugations running the short length, it would be ideal for those of us stacking in long rows. As it is, it will just dump all rain off the ends into the middle of my long row stacks.

 

[Enzo's Dad]

I was thinking of a salt box roof water would all run to one side.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Call me crazy! but if I'm gona spend money on roofing material to cover my firewood, I'd want to put it on a roof of a woodshed.
But that's just me.