Cutting it close...

[precaud]

I've always ended the season with about 20% left of what I cut/split for the season. This year temps have been 10-12º below normal since mid-December. I figure I've got 10-12 days worth of "taking the chill off" wood left for my upstairs stove. I sure hope these warm temps stay...

 

[BrotherBart]

Our snowiest winter in history and below average temps since November and it looks like I come out with a half cord of the allocation left over. Figured on three and may make it on two and a half or so. Supposed to be eighty degrees here by Saturday. Of course then it will snow again.

Moving out of my basement office and only running one stove this year saved me a hell of a lot of wood.

 

[precaud]

So which stove have you not been burning this season?

 

[BrotherBart]

The F100 has been cold most of the season. The small warehouse it was in collapsed under the snow load of the second three footer. The F3 is in the basement and heated the outside cat during the coldest nights. Has to be the only cat on the planet with her own wood stove. The pellet stove was purchased to see what all the shouting was about. Ain't impressed with pellets but it is stored as an option when the old bones can't whack trees anymore. Cut the base off it and put it in the fireplace.

The 30-NC did most of the work. As it has been for doing for four years. Plugging the EPA holes has made that sucker a joy to burn in. North/South, East West or All Of The Above.

 

[precaud]

The F3 is in the basement and heated the outside cat during the coldest nights. Has to be the only cat on the planet with her own wood stove.

Now if you could get her to load it, that would be a trick...

 

[BrotherBart]

The F3 is in the basement and heated the outside cat during the coldest nights. Has to be the only cat on the planet with her own wood stove.

Now if you could get her to load it, that would be a trick...

Working on that next. She was a wild stray that was sleeping in my wood stacks because we are the only ones around that don't have dogs. Took months to make friends. I joked with my wife about her someday walking in the woods with me like a puppy. Wife said "Yeah, right. She's a cat.".

For a year and a half now she has walked through the woods with me for a quarter mile every day to the mailbox and back. I lead going down, she leads going back. First pet I have had in 62 years.

 

[shawng111]

The F3 is in the basement and heated the outside cat during the coldest nights. Has to be the only cat on the planet with her own wood stove.

Now if you could get her to load it, that would be a trick...

Working on that next. She was a wild stray that was sleeping in my wood stacks because we are the only ones around that don't have dogs. Took months to make friends. I joked with my wife about her someday walking in the woods with me like a puppy. Wife said "Yeah, right. She's a cat.".

For a year and a half now she has walked through the woods with me for a quarter mile every day to the mailbox and back. I lead going down, she leads going back. First pet I have had in 62 years.

Some say cats pick out there owners, looks like she did ok.

 

[firefighterjake]

2nd year burning for me . . . first year with the woodshed. Wasn't quite sure how wood I would go through since my first year of burning I was using some seasoned and some semi-seasoned wood . . . plus we ended up burning rather late . . . even had a fire in July. This year looks to be pretty good as our winter was mild.

At this point I pretty much have all of next year's wood already in the woodshed since I used less than half of what I stacked in there . . . I figure there's 4-5 cords of wood left-over which will be two years old next Fall . . . and I'll be putting in one-year old wood in there this Fall which if things go as planned will only be used if the Winter is long . . . otherwise it will be the wood for 2011-2012.

Happiness is being ahead . . . way ahead . . . when it comes to one's wood supply . . . although the next best thing is ending the burning season with wood left over vs. having to buy more wood, tap into the semi-seasoned stack or turn on the oil.

 

[Gridlock]

Ain't impressed with pellets but it is stored as an option when the old bones can't whack trees anymore. Cut the base off it and put it in the fireplace.

Curious as to why you weren't impressed. I thought about that option briefly but ended up staying with wood.

 

[BrotherBart]

Ain't impressed with pellets but it is stored as an option when the old bones can't whack trees anymore. Cut the base off it and put it in the fireplace.

Curious as to why you weren't impressed. I thought about that option briefly but ended up staying with wood.

Heat output. Noise. Expense. The expense is probably a wash if wood is purchased, which I will have to start doing soon, but currently have a little cutting and splitting left in me.

And dang it I just like watching a nice fire in the stove while it warms me.

 

[fbelec]

Our snowiest winter in history and below average temps since November and it looks like I come out with a half cord of the allocation left over. Figured on three and may make it on two and a half or so. Supposed to be eighty degrees here by Saturday. Of course then it will snow again.

Moving out of my basement office and only running one stove this year saved me a hell of a lot of wood.

how much wood did you save?

 

[dispatcher101]

it must be "global cooling"... I will take my Nobel Prize now please

 

[BrotherBart]

Our snowiest winter in history and below average temps since November and it looks like I come out with a half cord of the allocation left over. Figured on three and may make it on two and a half or so. Supposed to be eighty degrees here by Saturday. Of course then it will snow again.

Moving out of my basement office and only running one stove this year saved me a hell of a lot of wood.

how much wood did you save?

A cord to a cord and a half over prior seasons.

 

[fbelec]

Our snowiest winter in history and below average temps since November and it looks like I come out with a half cord of the allocation left over. Figured on three and may make it on two and a half or so. Supposed to be eighty degrees here by Saturday. Of course then it will snow again.

Moving out of my basement office and only running one stove this year saved me a hell of a lot of wood.

how much wood did you save?

A cord to a cord and a half over prior seasons.

if it were me, i'd feel like i got a bonus.

 

[precaud]

Well it was a nice warm day today so I decided to go scavenge a little bit of wood just in case it turned cold again. 20 or so branches should do it, I thought. So I did something I used to do all the time years ago; go out and gather standing-dead and down-and-dead pinon using nothing but an axe. One of the nice things about having a smallish-sized stove is that it prefers 3"-4" diameter wood. I used to go out to areas where the commercial woodcutters were cutting 5-10 years ago. They saw off the branches and leave them splayed around the stump. Many of the branches are 3"-6" in diameter.

So that's what I did today. Left home at 1pm and was back at 4pm with a truckload of nicely seasoned pinon, some of it a LOT bigger than I expected to find. Like the two 12" trunks that someone had lopped the branches off and then left standing. They were rotting at the roots, so all it took was a few well-placed blows and leaning on them and over they came. It's so nice when someone does all the hard work for you and leaves you with perfectly-sized pieces for the taking. I'll likely do all of my wood gathering this year out in that area. Dozens of large blown-over dead pinons out there, way too big for just an axe. And nobody else around.

Ive found that the best place to to look for standing dead trees and branches that haven't rotted is on the tops and south and western slopes of hills. Those areas dry out the fastest. Let the sun do all the work for you.

 

[DanCorcoran]

"The expense is probably a wash if wood is purchased, which I will have to start doing soon, but currently have a little cutting and splitting left in me."

As you get older, though, you'd be able to use up a lot of your spare time splitting the wood into those little pellet-size pieces...