how u doing on next years pile?????

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This remodeling was done with building permit, inspection of local municipality builder inspector. Fire Chief inspection and insurance agent inspector.

Jackpine
 
Ain't doin' nuthin' right now. Pulled a hamstring and it hurts to high Heaven. How did I do it? You guessed it- while trimming. I was helping my dad clear some over- growth on his land that the wants to split up, I just finished trimming a tree and was climbing down. Was on the last step to the ground, and I was not as close to the ground as I thought, let go of the tree and went further down than I thought I would, tensed up, left foot extended which too the brunt of the landing then I went down onto my back. Good think there were'nt and cacti there..............
 
jackpine said:
This remodeling was done with building permit, inspection of local municipality builder inspector. Fire Chief inspection and insurance agent inspector.

Jackpine

No argument from me - as I said this was a topic that got somewhat hotly debated. :grrr: Elk, one of our former active members, who was one of the strongest in saying it was a hazard, is a building inspector in MA. While he said that he wouldn't pass such a setup, he also didn't seem able to point to a specific section of code that said it wasn't allowed - the only cites he gave seemed rather ambiguous at best.

I'm not going to take a position either way on what the code says, as I'm not sure, nor do I know what may have changed between these days and when you did your changes. I do think there is some logic to the idea that there is a potential hazard, and feel that it is worth mentioning when I see the subject come up as part of the Hearth's general position of promoting safe practices.

Gooserider
 
Gooserider said:
jackpine said:
This remodeling was done with building permit, inspection of local municipality builder inspector. Fire Chief inspection and insurance agent inspector.

Jackpine

No argument from me - as I said this was a topic that got somewhat hotly debated. :grrr: Elk, one of our former active members, who was one of the strongest in saying it was a hazard, is a building inspector in MA. While he said that he wouldn't pass such a setup, he also didn't seem able to point to a specific section of code that said it wasn't allowed - the only cites he gave seemed rather ambiguous at best.

I'm not going to take a position either way on what the code says, as I'm not sure, nor do I know what may have changed between these days and when you did your changes. I do think there is some logic to the idea that there is a potential hazard, and feel that it is worth mentioning when I see the subject come up as part of the Hearth's general position of promoting safe practices.

Gooserider


Safety is one thing, fear, quite another especially when inpired by a guy who's been thrown off the same forum more than once.
 
Next year's pile has been split and stacked since last spring and when the snow melts I'll start working on the following season!
 
As a new wood burner in my first full season, I'm finding this question difficult to answer. I'm not arithmetic challenged- I do know how to measure and compute wood volumes in cubic inches, how to convert to cubic feet, how to equate that to cords, etc. I processed 3-4 cords this past summer, most of it stacked. You'd think it would be easy to figure how much I've burned. But what I really have here is such copious and varied sources of wood that I'm actually burning about a dozen different wood types, predominately hardwoods. My wood comes from various stacks- about 9-10 small ones; also from various piles. I have split and immediately burned some horizontal, off ground deadwood (various Oak types, mostly). I've burned a whole lot of 'trash wood' this season, but my 'trashy' wood is simply good Red Oak that is too gnarly and/or punky to stack. I've even burned small amounts of construction scrap and pallet wood. I'm just trying everything, and I feel like a kid in a candy factory. ;-)

A rough guess would be about 1+ cord so far, to heat my ~1500 sq. ft. Rambler on the main floor only. I allow the mostly finished basement floor to cool to between 50 to 60+ degrees, running a couple of portable electric heaters in some spaces. The first floor cycles between about 60 to 70+ degrees, with the stove room (living room) running between 60 and 80. I certainly will be in the 'under 3 cords per year' category, heating this smaller house.

So, how am I doing on next year's pile? While I don't yet know for sure, I think I'm already well on my way to having next year's wood on hand and processed. Thankfully, I have access to sufficient wood on private land belonging to two of my friends. It's only a matter of making the time to go get the wood, bring it back, and split and stack here. If I do get my woodshed built this year, that will help a lot, and also make it easier to keep track of wood volumes.

I've learned a lot in a short time, in this forum. I still have much to learn, also a lot of work to improve my house's state of weatherization. That work I do myself at a slow (and affordable) pace. I've already learned enough that I'm able to help my neighbor and others improve their wood burning situations. Thanks, guys, for all the good info. This is certainly the 'go to' place for learning the art of wood burning.
 
Clutter,

Round all your inches to the nearest foot. It will simplify your math.

For example, 29" X 34" X 59" would be 2' X 3' X 5' = 30 cubic feet.

Yes, Hearth.com is a great resource of information and a wonderful learning place.

Enjoy your stove and burn wisely.
 
I think I burned maybe 3 or 4 cord so far this Winter. Hard to tell exactly since I keep taking from different rows but it looks like there's about 6 cord left in the shed and maybe another 2 or 3 outside under the snow.
 
2 elm trees in the driveway, 2/3rds cut and going to start splitting this weekend. Will probably end up being about 3 cords. I would love to get a full year ahead but don't have the room to stack it all.
 
Valhalla said:
Clutter,

Round all your inches to the nearest foot. It will simplify your math.

For example, 29" X 34" X 59" would be 2' X 3' X 5' = 30 cubic feet.

Yes, Hearth.com is a great resource of information and a wonderful learning place.

Enjoy your stove and burn wisely.
Yeah, I get it- close is probably good enough. So many odd sized piles here, I let my perfectionistic nature loose when I dragged my tape measure around last fall, and recorded all dimensions in inches. But it wasn't that difficult to convert to cubic feet later. You know, 3-4 cords is an impressive amount of cubic inches! :)

Little did I know, when heating season came, it ended up that about half of my fuel was coming from gnarly junk wood, fresh split deadwood, loose wood piles, etc.- not from stacked wood. Once better organized, probably near all my fuel will be coming from stacks. Then figuring wood consumption will be easy.
 
This was a few weeks ago, and the pile has since grown by a couple of face cord. I'll try to update the pics this weekend.

stack2.jpg


stack1.jpg
 
Nice job! Smaller splits, siding spaced so you get ventilation. Looks near- ideal.
 
My wood cutting/splitting operation has been put on hold until Spring due to the snow. I still have a few downed trees that I need to cut up and bring to my pile . . . right now I've got a little over 2 cord cut, split and stacked and maybe 3-4 cords bucked up in a pile. Come Spring my first task will be to split up the stacked wood. I figure 6 cords should be good for me.
 
I'm planning to get out in the snow and start cutting some wood this weekend! I already have 2 cord toward next year split in the pile (covered). I plan to cut around 10 cord total this year so I can gradually work my way ahead and get caught up on a 2-year seasoning cycle. The 2 cord I have was cut and split last summer so it will have roughly 1.5 seasons to dry out.

I was also inspired by Pagey's pic to use T-posts to help keep the rows nice and tidy. Not sure if I'll get to the woodshed this year or not and, like everyone else, hate the tarps. I suppose you could run fence wire (american, chicken, etc.) around the outside of the t-posts and then secure the tarp on top (clips). Then you could open a side of the makeshift paddock when you're ready to rotate stacks or move indoors for the winter. Ahhh inspiration!
 
Great building for your wood, Pagey. I'm tiring of battling my tarps and snow on the side of my piles. Need to get
a wood shed project going this summer.
 
I was also inspired by Pagey’s pic to use T-posts to help keep the rows nice and tidy. Not sure if I’ll get to the woodshed this year or not and, like everyone else, hate the tarps. I suppose you could run fence wire (american, chicken, etc.) around the outside of the t-posts and then secure the tarp on top (clips) /quote]


I don't have a picture unfortunately (as those stacks are almost gone) but I did what you mentioned this year, using T posts for support and using zip ties to attach plastic snow fence to support the stacks on the front and back and a thick plastic sheet on the top to keep the snow off.

Looking at Pagey's pictures though, I can tell I need to work on my stacking. I thought they were just supposed to stand up. I didn't realize they were supposed to be a work of art! :)
 
I guess I'm not smart enough to use the quote feature correctly. Sorry to be off topic but wondering why my response got included in the quote.
 
The wood you see in that pic is actually stored in a barn on my paternal grandmother's 80-acre cattle farm. It just happened to be a helluva fine place to split and stack wood for the next heating season. Dad was kind enough to put the home made splitter in the barn for me to use, not to mention letting me use the barn in the first place. The posts came from an old fence row that we took up last winter/spring. Dad's been working hard to get the place cleaned up over the last few years.

Barn:
barn.jpg


Starting in October, I'll start migrating that wood to my shed at home, seen below:
shed_pile2.jpg
 
wendell said:
I guess I'm not smart enough to use the quote feature correctly. Sorry to be off topic but wondering why my response got included in the quote.

The trick with the quote feature (and most of the other features) is to watch the "tags" - the little blocks of text in square brackets. For quoting, they will say "quote" at the beginning, and "/quote" at the end (the first quote generated by the software when you use the Quote reply button will also have some other stuff in it) Anything within a pair of blocks will be quoted, anything not in them won't be - what gets tricky is when you have a couple layers of quoting, or if you are breaking things up to mix your replies in with the quoted bits - what I will often do is hit the "Preview Post" button first to see if everything is right, then adjust the tags as needed - either moving them, or fixing an extra or missing slash... It's hard to do an example since the software will insist on processing those tags... :long:

As to using T-posts (or pipes, etc) for the ends of stacks, one thing I've found useful that I didn't see Pagey doing is to tie a rope between them about 3-4 feet up. Use a decent weather proof rope that won't stretch much (I tend to use ~1/4" poly rope, fairly strong and cheap) and tie it fairly snug across the top of the stack when you have it built up to the 3-4' level, (make the top as flat as you can) then keep on stacking on top of the rope, which will help to anchor it in place - this will help keep the T-posts from spreading under the load of the wood, and keeps you from needing to drive them in as deep. You don't have to get the rope real tight, as the splits above will push it into the gaps in the row below, tightening it up and anchoring it even further.

Gooserider
 
I have next years wood all cut, split and stacked as of last spring. Mostly Black Locust and some Elm and Boxelder. For the following season I have 2 cords of Oak so far. Once it warms up some I'll work on more. Also have plans for a wood shed attached to my garage, so I'll have to move alot of firewood around this spring to make room for the shed.
 
...one thing I've found useful that I didn't see Pagey doing is to tie a rope between them about 3-4 feet up. Use a decent weather proof rope that won't stretch much (I tend to use ~1/4" poly rope, fairly strong and cheap) and tie it fairly snug across the top of the stack when you have it built up to the 3-4' level, (make the top as flat as you can) then keep on stacking on top of the rope, which will help to anchor it in place - this will help keep the T-posts from spreading under the load of the wood, and keeps you from needing to drive them in as deep.

Just thought I'd practice quoting you. Thanks for the suggestion. I will definitely do that this year.

Looks like it worked this time. Not sure what I did different.
 
Gooserider said:
wendell said:
I guess I'm not smart enough to use the quote feature correctly. Sorry to be off topic but wondering why my response got included in the quote.
It's hard to do an example since the software will insist on processing those tags... :long:
Hard but not impossible.

Example:
[quote author="Gooserider" date="1233298287"]It's hard to do an example since the software will insist on processing those tags... :long:[/quote]
 
LLigetfa said:
Gooserider said:
wendell said:
I guess I'm not smart enough to use the quote feature correctly. Sorry to be off topic but wondering why my response got included in the quote.
It's hard to do an example since the software will insist on processing those tags... :long:
Hard but not impossible.

Example:
[quote author="Gooserider" date="1233298287"]It's hard to do an example since the software will insist on processing those tags... :long:[/quote]

Cute trick, will have to remember that...

Gooserider
 
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