Woodshed Required?

[illini81]

Ok, so I need help. Last year was our first year with a stove, and we loved it. We burned about 4 cords, and plan on doing the same each year.

As predicted by all seasoned hearth.com members, the hardest part by far was finding seasoned wood. After lots of Craigslist searching, we were able to find five truly seasoned cords of wood sold by two homeowners. However, all of the stuff I have scrounged as well as stuff I bought from a firewood dealer were not remotely ready to burn last year.

I have tried to follow good wood drying practices – I stack on pallets which are up on cinder blocks, and I plan on top covering everything 24 months before the season it’s burned. We are also getting ahead. My goal is to have 16 cords CSS by the beginning of this season. We will burn four cords a season, and so each season we should have wood that has been CSS for three years.

Here’s the problem I am having: All of my wood, even the stuff that has been top covered for 18 months (starting immediately after it was split and stacked) has mushrooms growing on it. I haven’t checked wood with the moisture meter yet – I plan on doing that this weekend when I move the first cord into the garage. But if it has mushrooms growing on it, my guess is that it’s not at 21% moisture…

Our property gets very little sun. I know that a lot of other people on here don’t even need to top cover, and many that do cover do fine as well. However, I’m concluding that in our case, we need to ensure that the wood does not get wet at all. Even the tiniest bit. I would think that that requires either a much fancier top cover than a tarp – something that gives a significant overhang, or a wood shed.

Has anyone else concluded for their climate/property that they simply can’t get wood dry enough without a wood shed? Does anyone else stack wood on pallets, and have a better way to top cover that keeps the wood 100% dry?

 

[SeanBB]

Don't worry about it. As the wood gets drier the fungus will go away or die and go hard. I had some splits that were in a shed that had a leaking roof and they were soaking wet and covered in fungus. I put them in a well ventilated spot and within two months they were dry and all that was left was a coating of white dust. Just make sure they get plenty of ventilation.

 

[Dataman]

Don't bring fungus inside for long time. Ie Store it outside until ready to use. Fungus burns nice! I used to keep mine in bay of building. Out of Rain and snow. Stuff under tarp would get black or white fungus. Nasty

 

[Woodsplitter67]

I keep all of my wood ina shed. I had up to 14 cord at one point. I cut it back do to the wood getting insect infected. My keeping 2.5 to 3 years so the wood isnt sitting so long and getting nasty, after im bringing it into my home. If done right you will get it down to a good MC. I really feel keeping 4 years ahead is a waist, its not relly needed. I have 3 sheds now. I dry my wood in the shed.. the floor is off the ground and its well vented making seasoning the wood a breeze

 

[jeffesonm]

Spend the time to build a shed, it will make it so much better. My lot is also heavily wooded so I get little sunshine, and things are generally pretty damp especially spring time. I futzed around with various arrangements of tarps and stacks for a few years and would always be cleaning leaves and crap off the stacks, wood and tarps, refastening tarps, restacking things when they fall, etc. I'd frequently lose the bottom row to rot even stacked on pallets, because leaves and crap would build up along the bottoms. Got plenty of mushrooms growing out the ends of logs. Now all the wood is high and dry and ready to burn.

Here is the post about my shed. It's basically just a roof, no sides but a good 18" overhang on all sides. It keeps all but the worst rain and snow off and I think the wood dries better than when it was tarped.

 

[kennyp2339]

@Poindexter has a really good thread on a easy diy solar kiln that will get you on your way for this year, A shed and tree trimming is a must if you want to be serious in this game, tree trimming to get good air flow going in the yard, you would be surprised at how much stagnation the air gets because of a full canopy of tree's.

 

[firefighterjake]

I have a woodshed, but to be honest I don't season my wood in there a whole lot . . . it's mostly to keep the seasoned wood nice and dry and out of the elements since I really dislike having to deal with tarps and covers in a snow storm. Most of my wood is seasoned outside and some wood has mushrooms growing on it after a year . . . or two . . . or three. However, I often knock them off and stick them under cover in the woodshed and in a year or two they're good to go.

 

[Poindexter]

I did attempt to dry about a half cord in full shade with minimal wind one year. After what was otherwise a relatively warm summer, the stack was not down to FSP even (fiber saturation point, ~30% MC) and had fungus growing on it.

FWIW the wood was on pallets and the pallets on cinderblocks and top covered. I did have moss growing on bare dirt nearby.

Above FSP, your stack doesn't move. Once you hit FSP and the wood keeps drying it will start to shrink and you will notice your stack shifting around, or falling over.

I haven't bothered trying to dry wood in that side yard since.

It seems to me the three priorities are wind, sun and re-wet prevention.

One strategy would be a layer of plastic on the pallet surface before the splits go on to keep all ground water out. Doing that requires a top cover that spans the gap between the splits. If you got rain getting down from above onto the plastic layer at the base, that water will be trapped.

The budget solution would be cinderblocks, pallets, a floor layer of plastic sheet, then stack the splits, then a top cover (more plastic) with good overhang on each side, and then some heavy stuff on top of the upper layer to keep the roof on. You will be signed up to go out there after rain to drain the center area of the roofing plastic. It will look kind of ghetto. It might not work.

The above was the last strategy I tried before I built my solar kilns.

I poked around a bit on New London CT climate. The bugaboo is the average annual RH around 85%. I looked at some charts and plugged in 60dF as "average" year round temperature - on an EMC (equillibrium moisture content) table if you can get cord wood down to 18.2% MC (+60dF, 85% RH) you have done what can be done.

You might look over the passive solar kiln built by @Woodsplitter67 . His was a very economical build with excellent results.

The thing about solar gain is every 20 dF of heat you can accumulate inside the kiln drops the RH of the surrounding air by half. So if you build a thing and can get average inside temp in there up to 80dF, the average RH in there will drop to ~42 %. Plug 80dF and 42%RH into an EMC table, boom, your splits will reach equillibrium at 8% MC.

http://www.lignomatusa.com/emc/

 

[weatherguy]

Spend the time to build a shed, it will make it so much better. My lot is also heavily wooded so I get little sunshine, and things are generally pretty damp especially spring time. I futzed around with various arrangements of tarps and stacks for a few years and would always be cleaning leaves and crap off the stacks, wood and tarps, refastening tarps, restacking things when they fall, etc. I'd frequently lose the bottom row to rot even stacked on pallets, because leaves and crap would build up along the bottoms. Got plenty of mushrooms growing out the ends of logs. Now all the wood is high and dry and ready to burn.

Here is the post about my shed. It's basically just a roof, no sides but a good 18" overhang on all sides. It keeps all but the worst rain and snow off and I think the wood dries better than when it was tarped.

View attachment 229771

That is one bad azz wood shed, should outlast most of us. My design is so much simpler with hardly any cutting, I'm using Simpson connectors. I hope to document mine as well as you did, plan on doing it in the next month.

 

[illini81]

Spend the time to build a shed, it will make it so much better. My lot is also heavily wooded so I get little sunshine, and things are generally pretty damp especially spring time. I futzed around with various arrangements of tarps and stacks for a few years and would always be cleaning leaves and crap off the stacks, wood and tarps, refastening tarps, restacking things when they fall, etc. I'd frequently lose the bottom row to rot even stacked on pallets, because leaves and crap would build up along the bottoms. Got plenty of mushrooms growing out the ends of logs. Now all the wood is high and dry and ready to burn.

Here is the post about my shed. It's basically just a roof, no sides but a good 18" overhang on all sides. It keeps all but the worst rain and snow off and I think the wood dries better than when it was tarped.

View attachment 229771

I really like the idea of a massive shed like this. The problem is, I'd have to clear a spot for it.

I've attached a googlemaps view of our property. You can see that it's just about completely wooded, except for the front yard (even that gets a lot of shade). If the image was taken while leaves were on the trees, you'd see how much shade there is. The blue ovals circle spots where I have wood stashed. (side note - it's pretty cool that you can actually see the tarps on google maps!). The green circle is the spot where I'd put the shed.

So anyways, a large shed seems like it may be a project for the somewhat distant future... I like the idea of a solar kiln, but the added complexity scares me a bit.

Right now I have my wood stored in "bays" that are formed with four standard pallets (2 on bottom and 2 on the sides) which are on top of cinder blocks. Each bay is roughly 1 cord (a bit less). I think I might just find a way to build a roof over the storage bays I currently have out of polycarbonate roofing or ondura (something I saw mentioned in another hearth.com thread that I now can't find).

 

[illini81]

I poked around a bit on New London CT climate. The bugaboo is the average annual RH around 85%. I looked at some charts and plugged in 60dF as "average" year round temperature - on an EMC (equillibrium moisture content) table if you can get cord wood down to 18.2% MC (+60dF, 85% RH) you have done what can be done.

http://www.lignomatusa.com/emc/

This is very helpful, thank you!

I have been wondering for a while what the relationship is between relative humidity, temperature, and wood moisture content. I didn't realize that someone had actually tabulated it.

So here's a question. I have a 7' x 7' x 10' space in my basement that has brick on the walls and stone on the floor (see pic). We are not using the space for anything. I had the idea in my head that storing wood in the basement was a bad idea, because the humidity hovers around 50-60%, and so this might make it hard for the wood to dry. But after taking a look at the chart you provided, that's significantly lower than the average humidity outside. Wind/sun would theoretically make storing wood outside better than storing it in my basement, but since I certainly don't get much/any sun, and I don't think we get a ton of wind either, wouldn't the basement be a decent location?

Depending on how I stacked it, I could probably fit around 3 cords in that space. I know there are debates on here about whether it's a good idea or not to stack wood in your basement. I think I would be fine stacking wood in my basement as long as it was wood that had never been on the ground, etc.

So would this be a bad idea? Hypothetically, I wonder if I took some freshly split oak or maple, and put it straight down in the basement, how long it would take to season. Has anyone ever tried this?

 

[kennyp2339]

Humidity is going to be the issue, mainly inside humidity, I don't recommend bring in large volumes of wood, the indoor relative humidity will spike upwards, the wood will naturally have mold spores that will grow and compromise your indoor air quality, plus the mess.

 

[Dataman]

Humidity is going to be the issue, mainly inside humidity, I don't recommend bring in large volumes of wood, the indoor relative humidity will spike upwards, the wood will naturally have mold spores that will grow and compromise your indoor air quality, plus the mess.

Exactly. Don't do it. Keep what you need to burn. Put it under tarp come fall.

 

[illini81]

Humidity is going to be the issue, mainly inside humidity, I don't recommend bring in large volumes of wood, the indoor relative humidity will spike upwards, the wood will naturally have mold spores that will grow and compromise your indoor air quality, plus the mess.

Thanks. I do have a dehumidifier running in the basement. Do you think it would not be able to keep up with the added humidity?

 

[kennyp2339]

Thanks. I do have a dehumidifier running in the basement. Do you think it would not be able to keep up with the added humidity?

Keep the unseasoned stuff outside, if you wish to have a bunch of dry splits in doors that's up to you, I normally only keep about 3 days worth of dry wood in the basement by the stove, I do have a wood rack that can hold about 10 days worth of wood in the garage that I try to keep full all the time, I've never had an issue with bugs / spiders, but wet wood isn't a good idea imo.

 

[illini81]

Keep the unseasoned stuff outside, if you wish to have a bunch of dry splits in doors that's up to you, I normally only keep about 3 days worth of dry wood in the basement by the stove, I do have a wood rack that can hold about 10 days worth of wood in the garage that I try to keep full all the time, I've never had an issue with bugs / spiders, but wet wood isn't a good idea imo.

Thanks, will do. Just trying to consider all my options here.

 

[Dataman]

Thanks. I do have a dehumidifier running in the basement. Do you think it would not be able to keep up with the added humidity?

Your going to get Black Mole in your house. Don't go there and be happy with it outside under tarp. Imagine the Nightmare and Costs or don't.

 

[weatherguy]

Your going to get Black Mole in your house. Don't go there and be happy with it outside under tarp. Imagine the Nightmare and Costs or don't.

I hate those black moles

 

[AlbergSteve]

If you tarp, you still must provide good air circulation. Might not be a problem in CT where it freezes, but here in the PNW if you tarp a pile of wood, you will end up with a GIANT pile of green and black mould in very short order - don't ask me how I know!

 

[Dataman]

Don't cover green wood. Only after it's dry for at least an Year.

 

[Poindexter]

If you bring it onto the basement you will need to get air turnovers somehow. Once the wood gives up a bunch of moisture, the humidity in the room will go up.

I too am opposed to bringing green wood in for seasoning. You got to do what is right for you. For dry wood, I bring in about a face cord at a time and keep it in the garage.

 

[billb3]

OMG don't bring that mushroom infested wood in the house.
They'll drop off those splits in the middle of the night, crawl into your bed and eat your toes.


LOL, the mushrooms aren't going to do anything.
Mushrooms growing on bark and in the cracks of the sapwood is fairly common. They die when the weather gets cold and often fall off. Usually by Oct 30 or so. Some of them do grow really well in the cool wet weather we're having right now.