Need Advice on Stacking

[SolarAndWood]

All the time, visualizing how this'll be in the winter, pushing the snow off the 6' wide stack, how to draw from the pile in the snow, what to cover it up with, etc, etc, etc. I came to the conclusion I need a wood shed. Location will be a problem, but I'll probably be so disgusted by next spring that I'll find a way.

I came to that same conclusion after digging wet wood out of a glacier year 1. A little visualization help...

 

[DaveH9]

Dennis mentioned screwing his metal sheets down, and that reminded me of one last little tip I’d mention that can be useful if you use tarps, it's a simple effective way to hold the tarps secure on the top of your stacks, but you'll need an battery powered electric drill or screw driver.
Make yourself a bunch of small squares of scrap plywood 2 or 3 inches in size is plenty. They can be used as cleats and you screw them in every couple feet along the side of your wood stack to hold the folded over tarp down. No need to lay anything on top of the tarp and you just need to unscrew one of the cleats once in a while as you use up your stack and throw the spare cleats in a bucket or box to reuse next year.
This keeps the tarp nice and tight and secure so they don’t flap around in the wind much, which is what causes the tarps to fray and wear prematurely.

Edit: I guess you don’t need an electric drill or screwdriver, you could just use a hand screw driver, but that seems like a lot of work to me. Guess I’m just spoiled by all the newfangled electronic gadgets we have at our disposal now a days. %-P

I like this idea, and will try it! My tarps are flapping in the wind.

 

[velvetfoot]

Definitely something to remember, esp if the grommets fail.

As I was drawing from the pile, it seems the easiest way for me to remove wood would be similar to the way in was installed-more or less row by row.
I'd just roll up the wheelbarrow from the side, and pick them off going down the 21' stack.
Thing is, you'd have the tarp that you've lifted that whole length to secure, and it'd have to be temporary, since you'd be lifting it the next time, and you'd have to shorten it when you go to the next row (I'll have 5). I figure if I remove 3 rows, a tarp with some overhang would be on the ground (vulnerable to snowblower suck up).
A humongous window shade roller? Grommets for some kind of reefing like a sail(they'd leak)?
I can't visualize using these squares in this scenario, unless they were used each time you got wood from the pile, which could be okay if you did get a lot of wood to dump on the garage floor (in my case).

These are the things I think about while I'm moving the wood. It's not like I haven't used tarps in the winter, not just lately, plus I don't have any good memories.

 

[SolarAndWood]

(vulnerable to snowblower suck up)

lol, you better keep a bunch of shear pins on hand if you are a burner and you use a snowblower.

 

[velvetfoot]

And right after I paved the driveway! Gotta love the no shear pin winter.

Here's my setup. I think I'm going to put a 3 row deep wood shed where that pile is on the right. I think it'll have to be off the asphalt. Maybe put some pavers along the front (ie, no shear pins from the now-lowered snowblower). I have absolutely no building experience though, no tragedy if it collapses I guess. Do people build shallow sheds? I have a lot of research to do.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Here's my setup. I think I'm going to put a 3 row deep wood shed where that pile is on the right. Do people build shallow sheds?

Some do. My woodshed is only 2 rows deep.
It take the same amount of roof area to cover the wood in a shallow woodshed as it does to cover in a deep woodshed.
All the wood is easier to access in a shallow woodshed, less chance to bury dry wood behind greener wood.

my shed

 

[velvetfoot]

Looks good! Can I ask you how high it is?

Every shed is probably site-specific in some way. Plus, now that it's nice out, it's hard to visualize snow and cold. With a high shed along the driveway, I'd have to make too many corrections to blow the snow. Although, the winter before last, that pile was along the driveway, and I had to do some aiming, but the pile was low, so that helped. Now I might move the pile again to build a shed....great. Of course I still have to find a place to store the 6-7 cords from the grapple load I still have to cut up.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I have two sheds, one is 2 rows deep and the other 5. I much prefer the 2.

 

[velvetfoot]

Two rows are nice too because you can do them both at the same time, but not as sturdy as three, for high stacking. With a shed it doesn't matter as much, I guess, since it's leaning on the shed.

 

[SolarAndWood]

My snow shot above is the 2 row shed. It is stacked just under 10' high.

 

[velvetfoot]

10'! Cool!

I have to say, doing this stack I'm doing now at 4.5' high and outside is a lot less time consuming than the 7' high stack in the garage, not necessarily because of the height, but because I removed the bark (where possible) and examined and brushed off each piece (efficacy doubtful).

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Looks good! Can I ask you how high it is?

My shed is only about 6 ft high in the front, I would like to have gone a little higher, but the back wall of the shed doubles as the fence between my neighbor's property and mine, and to the top (at the back) it already stands about 7 ft which is higher than you really are suppose to go with a fence. Fortunetly I get along with that neighbor well, and he was happy to have a new fence without having to pay a dime for it.
I'm very limited on space in my yard and so I took advantage of the small strip of unused sq. footage between my driveway and the fence line. I don't really get enough snow around here to need a snow blower, so I don't have to worry about that, we just use a snow shovel and push the snow to the other side of the driveway and make piles on the dirt and gravel areas.
Good to think ahead like that though, it looks like you have more land area than me to play with, so you should be able to figure something out.

The backside of my shed

 

[velvetfoot]

It's all site-specific. I've a 3-car garage and the driveway gets wide in front of the garage, so much so that the turnaround area takes more time than the 450' driveway.
The land isn't flat, so there's not as much land to play with as you'd think.
It's nice that your rack can do double-duty. It does give me an idea though. We have a neighbor who is nice but pretty close. There is no fence now, and I would not put one in unless I had to (it's for sale), but, a stackfence could be the ticket in the future. It's pretty far from the house, though it'd be downhill from the stack to the garage on a snow-blown driveway.