limited space to stack wood... show me your most efficient methods of stacking...

[par0thead151]

i live in suburbia with yuppie neighbors. why? well mostly because i found this house at a STEAL of a deal, and the schools here are top notch.
this leaves me with storing my wood in my empty garage stall(single car size open, 3 car garage total but 2 vehicles are parked in the garage)
anyways, i am wondering if anyone has done this before, i was thinking of building some racks out of angle iron to support the sides of the wood piles so as to con troll them so they do not spill over into the garage slots for my vehicles.
if anyone has done this before and has tips or photos of their setup i would be most grateful for any information or ideas you may pass along to me.
thanks

 

[Rockey]

Yuppie neighbors, limited space.. I'm thinking Holzhausen. Last year I built a 14 foot diameter about 7 foot high and had at least 7 cord in it and it looked nice to boot.

 

[par0thead151]

Yuppie neighbors, limited space.. I'm thinking Holzhausen. Last year I built a 14 foot diameter about 7 foot high and had at least 7 cord in it and it looked nice to boot.

pictures please...
i want a shed, but have zero back yard.it buts upagainst myneighbors property.

 

[SolarAndWood]

Unless you have the angle iron, 2x4s are a lot cheaper. Run one on the ceiling and one the floor. Then use one vertically for each row of wood. Cross piling the ends against the 2x4s is also a good idea but not required. Not sure how high you plan to stack, remember that you are setting up a series of dominos that can do significant damage to people and property.

 

[Hurricane]

Without sun or wind the wood will take forever to dry. Most people season their wood before putting it indoors.
I agree with the 2 X 4 idea.

 

[DBoon]

I built three firewood cribs in the back of my 2 car garage - luckily I have small cars.

In any case, I built them out of 2x4s. They are each four feet wide and four feet deep, and eight feet high which is exactly one cord of wood. I built them with 2x4s - screwed the top plate into the ceiling joists and anchored the bottom plate with lead anchors and lag screws. To drill the holes in the concrete for the lead anchors, you will need a hammer drill - a 1/2" hammer drill makes quick work of it. The side of each crib is composed of about 6 or 7 2x4 studs, spaced so that my 16" long splits are always braced on the side with two 2x4s.

This works pretty well. Note that I am drying my wood outside for 6 months or more before moving it into the garage for the first time, and the jury is still out as to how much more it dries in the garage (experiment on this is just beginning). But after 5 months outside, my sugar maple is down to 25% moisture content, and my hunch is that 12 more months in the garage (with the door open on weekend days) will finish it off.

I don't have a digital camera to post pics, but if you need more info, PM me.

 

[Rockey]

Yuppie neighbors, limited space.. I'm thinking Holzhausen. Last year I built a 14 foot diameter about 7 foot high and had at least 7 cord in it and it looked nice to boot.

pictures please...
i want a shed, but have zero back yard.it buts upagainst myneighbors property.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/20889/

 

[flyingcow]

I piled mine about 6 1/2ft high, cross piled on ends. Got 10 rows, each row is a cord. Actually only crossed piled on one end , other is piled against wall. Dried outside, got 2 1/2 cord of the rock maple down to about 21%, the rest should dry some more, but it'll go slow. If i can figure out how to post a pic, I'll do it. It didn't take me long to do the cross piling, but it's straight. I did not cross pile and then put all of the weight of the pile against it. I tried to pile it so the wood would stand by itself, than fill in the hole.

 

[lexybird]

park one of your cars outside

 

[Danno77]

I think HHs are cool (I only say HH, not to be cool, but because I can't spell it). BUT, do they allow the wood to dry appropriately? they don't seem conducive to that.

 

[par0thead151]

i have no problem stuffing the one garage stall with wood...
i have a buddy who has a LOT of land, so i am going to see if i can store my cut wood on his land during the spring and summer, to be retrieved in late fall and stored in my garage stall for winter.
i built a 2X4 rack today.
it is 9'wide and 9' tall. i will try to take photos of it to show what i am using for this year.
i would ideally like something that is able to be taken apart so i can take it down for the summer months...

 

[JBinKC]

I know the type of neighborhood well I grew up in southeast Wisconsin suburbia. If you can make the arrangement to store it off property to season do so but make sure the place/source of the firewood isn't from a quarantined county.

 

[SolarAndWood]

i would ideally like something that is able to be taken apart so i can take it down for the summer months...

Deck screws and a screw gun will take care of that.

 

[par0thead151]

I know the type of neighborhood well I grew up in southeast Wisconsin suburbia. If you can make the arrangement to store it off property to season do so but make sure the place/source of the firewood isn't from a quarantined county.

the place is a 10 minute drive from where i live...
probably one of the last "strongholds" of 100+ acres that is not subdivided yet..

 

[Wood Duck]

I think HHs are cool (I only say HH, not to be cool, but because I can't spell it). BUT, do they allow the wood to dry appropriately? they don't seem conducive to that.

If you look up old threads, you'll see one about how Holz Hausen (I think hausen is plural) miraculously dry wood in three months, and you'll see some dissenting opinions as well. I personally have all my wood in holz hausen, but have no illusions that they season faster than stacks. I bet they are a little slower, but still better than the garage, and since you can fit a lot of wood outside, you can stack farther ahead and give the wood more time to season.

 

[CowboyAndy]

i have no problem stuffing the one garage stall with wood...
i have a buddy who has a LOT of land, so i am going to see if i can store my cut wood on his land during the spring and summer, to be retrieved in late fall and stored in my garage stall for winter.
i built a 2X4 rack today.
it is 9'wide and 9' tall. i will try to take photos of it to show what i am using for this year.
i would ideally like something that is able to be taken apart so i can take it down for the summer months...

its going to be tough to stack it 9 ft tall... just be extra careful. our woodshed is 8ft. i get on a ladder and the kids hand the wood to me, but i dont advise anyone else to lean a ladder against an 8ft tall firewood stack.

 

[par0thead151]

i have no problem stuffing the one garage stall with wood...
i have a buddy who has a LOT of land, so i am going to see if i can store my cut wood on his land during the spring and summer, to be retrieved in late fall and stored in my garage stall for winter.
i built a 2X4 rack today.
it is 9'wide and 9' tall. i will try to take photos of it to show what i am using for this year.
i would ideally like something that is able to be taken apart so i can take it down for the summer months...

its going to be tough to stack it 9 ft tall... just be extra careful. our woodshed is 8ft. i get on a ladder and the kids hand the wood to me, but i dont advise anyone else to lean a ladder against an 8ft tall firewood stack.

ooh, agreed, i have already taken it down to 7' high for saftey reasons...
i had assumed that my 4 skids of wood would take up more realestate when stacked on my newly constructed wood pile holder...
if i build one more of these things i should have enough wood for winter, i assume.

an enviro venice 1700 insert and 4 rows of 9' wide by 7-8' tall...
so 36' long total by 7-8' high....

i think i will go nuts cutting down the dead trees whos bark has fallen off just to be sure that i have enough wood for the winter... i am fairly efficient at cutting and splitting as it only took me 3/4 a day to cut to length and split the wood i have now..(with 2 people working on it)

thanks everyone for the replies..

 

[billb3]

Someone posted pics a while back of a lot of his wood stacked 6 or so feet high on the perimeter of his deck.
Getting around a 'no fences allowed' ordinance of some sort.
Also got some deck privacy.

 

[Danno77]

What does Holz Hausen mean anyway? Sadly, even though my last name is Reinhardt, I only speak a very small amount of German. Is that even German, or is it dutch or something? I know that Holz is wood, and Hausen sounds a lot like some version of Haus (or house). But plural for Hause is Hauser,so I don't know what hausen could mean. Maybe some variation of house or something, like home or hut, or something.

 

[CowboyAndy]

i have no problem stuffing the one garage stall with wood...
i have a buddy who has a LOT of land, so i am going to see if i can store my cut wood on his land during the spring and summer, to be retrieved in late fall and stored in my garage stall for winter.
i built a 2X4 rack today.
it is 9'wide and 9' tall. i will try to take photos of it to show what i am using for this year.
i would ideally like something that is able to be taken apart so i can take it down for the summer months...

its going to be tough to stack it 9 ft tall... just be extra careful. our woodshed is 8ft. i get on a ladder and the kids hand the wood to me, but i dont advise anyone else to lean a ladder against an 8ft tall firewood stack.

ooh, agreed, i have already taken it down to 7' high for saftey reasons...
i had assumed that my 4 skids of wood would take up more realestate when stacked on my newly constructed wood pile holder...
if i build one more of these things i should have enough wood for winter, i assume.

an enviro venice 1700 insert and 4 rows of 9' wide by 7-8' tall...
so 36' long total by 7-8' high....

i think i will go nuts cutting down the dead trees whos bark has fallen off just to be sure that i have enough wood for the winter... i am fairly efficient at cutting and splitting as it only took me 3/4 a day to cut to length and split the wood i have now..(with 2 people working on it)

thanks everyone for the replies..

if they are an average of 7 1/2 ft, 16", then you have about 2 3/4 cords there.

 

[Danno77]

To answer my own question I went beyond the internet and asked Gpa. He says he doesn't know why someone would call it a holzhausen, that means (i might not be giving a direct quote here) "Timber Living" "or living in the woods" He said there are a bunch of towns in Germany with the name of Holzhausen, or sometimes it's in part of the name, and that town often got that name because they were on the edge of the woods. I said that maybe it's plural for Holzhaus, and he said well, I guess it could be, that would make sense. I said I thought it was hauser for plural, and he said it's not always, etc. I don't know German, neither does he, but of the two of us he knows more, so we'll go with that.

he also threw in there that Germans don't live in wood houses, so it wouldn't be too confusing to call them wood houses and everyone would know that you were talking about a pile of firewood. apparently you only live in a wood house if you are a German hillbilly, lol. Glad I live in a brick house.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

i live in suburbia with yuppie neighbors. why? well mostly because i found this house at a STEAL of a deal, and the schools here are top notch.
this leaves me with storing my wood in my empty garage stall(single car size open, 3 car garage total but 2 vehicles are parked in the garage)
anyways, i am wondering if anyone has done this before, i was thinking of building some racks out of angle iron to support the sides of the wood piles so as to con troll them so they do not spill over into the garage slots for my vehicles.
if anyone has done this before and has tips or photos of their setup i would be most grateful for any information or ideas you may pass along to me.
thanks

Storing it indoors I fail to see why you would need a rack, even with you stacking it high. Making a wood stack straight and solid is quite easy; just make sure everything is even as you build up.

Indoors you would not have to be concerned with raising the wood off the floor and there would be no problem with frost heave. As the wood dries the piles will shrink some but that won't be any problem.

If worried that the wood might tip sideways, then a simple frame could be built with 2 x 4's on the outside of the stack. The ends will stay in place so that would be no problem at all.

 

[par0thead151]

i live in suburbia with yuppie neighbors. why? well mostly because i found this house at a STEAL of a deal, and the schools here are top notch.
this leaves me with storing my wood in my empty garage stall(single car size open, 3 car garage total but 2 vehicles are parked in the garage)
anyways, i am wondering if anyone has done this before, i was thinking of building some racks out of angle iron to support the sides of the wood piles so as to con troll them so they do not spill over into the garage slots for my vehicles.
if anyone has done this before and has tips or photos of their setup i would be most grateful for any information or ideas you may pass along to me.
thanks

Storing it indoors I fail to see why you would need a rack, even with you stacking it high. Making a wood stack straight and solid is quite easy; just make sure everything is even as you build up.

Indoors you would not have to be concerned with raising the wood off the floor and there would be no problem with frost heave. As the wood dries the piles will shrink some but that won't be any problem.

If worried that the wood might tip sideways, then a simple frame could be built with 2 x 4's on the outside of the stack. The ends will stay in place so that would be no problem at all.

my only concern with indoors is if the wood falls, it falls into a car or the house, so i have made the 2X4 supports on the side, and rope connecting each side together...
a cheap form of insurance against smashing my central vac, car, or drywall/wall.
i will take photos of my setup tonight

 

[velvetfoot]

It's a wood car! https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/10907/
I'm hoping since I'm careful, and it's not exposed to the elements, it won't tip over.

 

[par0thead151]

It's a wood car! https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/10907/
I'm hoping since I'm careful, and it's not exposed to the elements, it won't tip over.

how many cords is that?