How does everyone store there wood???

[Rusty]

How does everyone keep there wood dry during the winter? Tarp? I need some ideas....Maybe im doing this wrong

 

[Harley]

There's many ways to keep it dry - tarps work, a wood shed works.... how are you doing it now, and what do you think the problem might be? Is your wood wet now? If you can give a general description of the layout you have for storing wood, and its a problem.... there should be a fairly easy solution.

 

[reaperman]

Wood shed, definately. I hate fighting snow to get wood each day. Kind of a chore to fill each fall, but hey, it keeps me young!

 

[restorer]

Squished into little round rolls, wrapped in plastic averaging 40lbs. stacked on pallets 50 each, two high, two wide. Hmmmm, this may be a flaming war, Where's the Nomex????

 

[bigNATE®]

I keep 4 cords in my garage, I find that it dries faster

 

[Xena]

Squished into little round rolls,
wrapped in plastic averaging 40lbs. stacked on pallets 50 each, two high, two wide...

Mine are stored the same way! ha!
And inside my three season porch at that.
;-P

 

[mikeathens]

I happen to have a nice old timberframe bank barn about 20X20, wood siding, wood floor. If I hadn't been so fortunate, I would have built a lean-to with 4X4 posts, 2X4s, and sheet metal roofing. For a couple of years, I used tarps and sheet metal, and it was never any fun fighting ice and snow. If you are to build a wood shed, I would recommend leaving a big enough overhang at the entrance to allow you to swing your maul under roof on those nasty days...if you continue with a tarp, make sure that you are not storing on the north side of a building, and make sure that your tarp doesn't hang down the sides of the stack. This is a no brainer, but the wood should be up off of the ground...In the past, I have used 2X4s, PVC piping, and pallets for this purpose.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

When it is first cut (this winter-7 cords) we do not cover it; just thrown into a pile. Come Spring we start splitting it (that began yesterday). Then after it is stacked it is covered with old steel roofing. A couple years later it is stacked inside the carport (usually a weekly job). Then it is carried to the stove and converted to heat to keep our backsides nice and toasty until we go back out and beging the process over once again. Works like a charm.

 

[begreen]

I move about 75% into the woodshed during September. Outdoor wood is stacked so that the prevailing winds can blow through it, then covered on the top only. If I have lots of bark, I'll make the top row all bark stacked like clay roof tiles. That worked really well this year.

 

[slowzuki]

This winter it was all stored outside, a pile of nasty wood it was that may have had carpenter ants in it. I have pallets with sheet metal roofing setup too that will be multiplying soon. I can move them around with the tractor.

Stored a bunch of my wood in the slab wood pile, cut up a few tractor bucket loads each weekend.

 

[WarmGuy]

This shed lets the sun heat the wood, and allows the wind to blow through it. It hold about 3.5 cords.

 

[WarmGuy]

Here's another angle, with my growing holz hausen next to it.

 

[PA. Woodsman]

I keep 4 cords in my garage, I find that it dries faster

I do the same thing; it keeps dry in the Winter, and in the Summer it's like a kiln and sucks the moisture right out of the wood.

 

[Andre B.]

A 16' by 16' tarp covered quonset hut. Made the arches out of 1/2" steel rebar welled into a girder pattern. Cost about $150 for the materials.

It's 7 years old and ready for a new tarp, thinking about putting pole shed steel on instead.

 

[Gunner]

Stacked uncovered in full sun, then into the attached garage in sept.

 

[webbie]

Wood Haven firewood racks. I use them throughout my wood yard for the past 10 years without one problem. I have about 40 of them for the u-haul customers. This is in Seattle area so they are proven.
Thomas

 

[Rusty]

Thanks guys.Ive burnt wood all my life, and always used tarps. I just moved into a new neiborhood where I think the neibors are looking down on my wood piles covered in bright blue tarps, even though we have 2.5 acers. So im just trying to get other ideas on how store my wood.
Thanks again,

 

[Gunner]

Same thing here, altho I have alot less than 2 acres. They do make green and brown tarps which are a bit less conspicuous.

 

[jpl1nh]

You can buy a roll of 6 mil clear poly thats 10' wide and a 100 yds long for about $40 at Lowe's, Home Depot, etc. The rolls are folded so that the 10' width is about 2 1/2 foot wide which means you can easily cut 10' long pieces any width you want. I cut mostly dead so I pile it in the sun till its pretty dry, then stack it on pallets by approximate cords. I cut pieces about 5-6' wide by 10' long which gives me just enough overhang on sides and ends that water runoff misses the wood ends most of the time. I hold it in place with 2x4's. Looks much nicer than tarps and is completely waterproof. The 6 mil poly is tough enough to stand up to a couple of seasons unless you're moving it around a lot. If you are covering long 1 split rows of green to dry, you can cut 20 to 24" pieces to cover the tops, and hold in place with spare splits. For me, the poly works much better than tarps.

 

[Gark]

We are lucky to have a big unheated space ("workshop") beneath the garage and store it there after it's seasoned/dried a year or two. A neighbor here surrounded his woodpiles with poplars (they grow really fast) as a fence. Another neighbor stacked his (covered) against the concrete walls around his walk-out. It looks fine. And this other family has more wood than you can imagine - he goes around to surrounding neighbors every summer and tells them that if power goes out anytime, he has some wood to keep their houses warm. And that he'll help them haul his excess wood to their homes because it'll keep them from freezing. No one's EVER complained about or said anything to that guy. Or had to take him up on it either.

 

[Gooserider]

I built a woodshed similar to the one WarmGuy posted pictures of earlier, approx 8'x16' footprint, 6' high on the back side, and 7' high on the front. The top I covered with the clear corrugated plastic "PAL" roofing - it was the cheapest "better than a tarp" alternative that I could find. The base was a frame of pressure treated 2X4's spaced to match my cut length, with 2 x 4 uprights on each corner and the centers of the 16' spans. There is are three 2x4's supporting the roof. The end walls are 6'x8' stockade fence sections. The side walls I leave open most of the time, but in the winter, I hang SILVER tarps from Harbor Freight from the top joists to keep the wood from getting covered with blowing snow or rain.

Harbor Freight makes tarps in three grades, blue, green, and silver. Blue is cheapest, silver is best, and is MUCH better quality - costs about 2x the HF blue, but is supposedly 4x the thickness, and made with ripstop threads, etc. I haven't done any scientific testing, but they silvers are visibly better than the blues I've gotten elsewhere, and the HF silvers are about the same price as the same size blues from the local hardware store.... I've also "munched" on one or two with the snowblower, and they showed amazingly little damage. Lastly, they aren't camo, but they don't show up the way the blues do so the neighbors may not complain about them as much.

This style of shed construction is a bit cheesy, but it looks OK, and is very low budget - I used almost no scrounged materials, but still only spent about $500 or so on building it.

Gooserider