first year vs. third year of stacking wood

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Haven

Member
Dec 1, 2012
65
Western Massachusetts
First year: Everything nice and neat in VERY straight line.

Fouth year: Just toss willy nilly and hope it doesn't topple over.

I guess my standards have gone down considerably........





 

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HA! That's awesome. My stacks were always more like your 3rd yr. I found that even when you stack nice and picture perfect, they still shift and look like crap after a year anyway. Might as well start out that way. I've had too many fall over to care much. I used to think it was the deer. After all, garden gnomes are too small. Nope, it was wood shifting as it dries.

BTW, love the color difference too and especially the spectral highlights the sun creates as it shines off the top of your first year stack. Reminds me of the KFC 'advert vs what I got' that was posted 2 days ago.
KFC.jpg
 
My first year piles actually looked worse than your third year pile and it's gotten better since then. :)

I pile it up sort of haphazardly, then walk up and down the stack with a hammer and whack on things to straighten out a lean or even out the face of the woodpile.

As long as it stays vertical and there's nothing sticking out to trip me up or catch the mower, that's good enough for me. My stacks are full of crotches, shorts, and uglies. So it will never be picture perfect.
 
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I agree with your assessment, you are slacking but I doubt the stove minds.
 
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My stacks are not what you would call pretty . . . but I'm not stacking to win any beauty contests . . . I'm stacking 'em to make fuel to burn.
 
Kind of the opposite for me actually. My first few years of cutting, splitting and stacking looked like a war zone compared to how I've got things organized and under cover now. Just kind of how I am though. I constantly think of how I can improve and organize things. Can't help it, I'm just that way...
 
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I definitely think pallets are the answer to a lot of toppling issues. I stack my oak single row between T-posts driven in the ground and they always end up leaning. Rodents, meadow voles, chipmunks and wood chucks. No matter how perfect things look at first.
Youre stacking for 3 yrs on those piles.
The stuff on pallets kindof stays put, sort of.
 
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Decided the way to rectify this, is to just build a huge wood shed. :)
 
That creates overhead and possible property tax reassessment. Thank God theres a definitive line between permanent structure and temporary.[/quote

Out building don't typically add much to our taxes here....Thankfully.
 
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