NordicSplitter said:
Is there such a thing as to much wood? This coming winter will be my first year burning and I have roughly 12 face cords of wood. Come late Aug I will be picking up 8 more. I probably will be burning about 5-7 face cords per year. My concern is the wood getting "punky" from either un-seen bugs or just plain age. Are my concerns warranted or should I just keep stocking up? Thanks
Yes.
You're not there yet. You're not even close.
The four cords you have on hand are going to cover you for this winter, with a cushion.
The almost -three you're going to get in August will be good for 2012-13. If you can also put up that much this summer for 13-14, you're in good shape. Then try to keep that lead by putting up at least a winter's worth each winter.
I'm aiming for a five-year supply of birch, and at least a few years ahead in poplar/spruce (those are what we have around here for wood).
This means that this coming winter I'll be burning birch that was cut in March; some was split then, some since. I'm splitting small and exposing to sun and wind to try to season it asap. It's not going to be ideal, but it will work.
The rest that I'm putting up will be seasoning for the next winter, and the one after that. The other two-winter's supply will be my cushion. The three-years' supply guarentees that I'll have seasoned wood, and the two years' stash is my safety net, which is why I want to be working five years ahead. So I'm anticipating putting up about 15 cords of birch this summer and 2-5 cords of poplar or spruce. My hope is to have, to use that back-east term, about 60 face cords of wood on hand.
This will not be too much, either.
Your local Cooperative Extension Service can advise about regional wood-crunching insects, and much more. The general rule of thumb is that critters like damp wood. Get your wood split and up on pallets or racks, stacked so the wind and the sun can hit it, and it will dry out so that it becomes unattractive to bugs.
Be prepared for surprises. I went overnight from supplementing my oil burner with wood heat to heating with wood full time in January, in Fairbanks, when my boiler blew. It was a tough winter, and I learned a lot. One of the things I learned is that I want to have a lot of firewood on hand. And that it takes a lot of wood before you get to the point where you have too much wood.