wet wood = cold wife

Yesterday I was splitting some wood and had to make room in my stacks for it. I am out of pallets to start a new row and need to clear a few small trees. I decided to take some pine that was split in the fall and move it up to the house to burn and make room for a higher btu wood. This pine was cut down 3 years ago and stacked in rounds.

I am about 4 years ahead in my wood supply, so I normally have dry wood. I put in a load of the pine this morning and it would not burn! I ended up having to throw some more kindling under it and have the stove air all the way open to get it to burn. WOW. It's been a long time since I have burned wet wood, probably the first time i have tried in the PE. I started at my house with a smoke dragon and we burned wet wood for the first year as that's all I had.

My wife was sitting about one foot away from the smoldering stove freezing. The temp in the house was dropping as well. As soon as I could get that load burned down, I filled it up with dry stuff and we are nice and warm again.

Guess I need to haul that pine back down to the stacks to wait for next year. I brought up around 1/4 cord. Time to get some more pallets to stack it on.

Yep, wood doesn't season good in the round

Cut, split & stacked, Off the ground, pine should be burnable in a year.
I don't split spruce rounds 6" of less & they're dry in a year.
Stacked 3 years & still wet, ???
Lots of rain on the stacks?
Pictures?

"This pine was cut down 3 years ago and stacked in rounds"

Yup. And the rounds were scattered on my very wet ground. The bottom ones were soaked! I am surprised they did not rot more.

Stacks dont get much sun in the summer...but extra time for the wood to dry.

Oops! As my father used to say: "If Momma ain't happy, no one else is gonna be happy either!" You best get some dry wood fast!

I don't worry about no sun as it will dry very well with just wind. But hopefully you won't stack in the rounds any longer. Makes a tremendous difference.

Also how about doing away with the pallets? Just cut some saplings 8', 10', or whatever length. I think it works better than pallets.

Why do you think it works better than pallets?

I have tried lots of different ways to stack the wood. It's very soft back there and I used to use saplings or lay pieces on the ground. In the summer when it thaws out 1/3 of my stacks would fall over and the others would be leaning all over the place. Pallets are a great stable platform. Plus they are free!

Saplings would be free too. But the key is to keep it off the ground.

They don't break when you stand on them for one thing. They are easier to handle and not the eyesore that pallets can be. I can also cut them to whatever length I want. They can be used over and over and over.

As for the stacks falling down, that can not be blamed on the saplings. Or perhaps you have more frost heave than we do? In all the years I've stacked, I've had exactly one row that failed.