Is a wood shed sized to hold 1 season's worth?

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7acres

Minister of Fire
Dec 5, 2013
653
South East USA
Hi all,
I try to keep 5 seasons of wood CSS. I know the general wisdom is to burn wood CSS for 3 years. But when designing a wood shed do people generally size it to hold next Winter's worth of wood only or all 3+ years of wood?
 
Me personally i have 3 sheds. I am sitting on 9 cords css. I was sitting on more but cut it down due to me feeling like the wood was sitting around to long. The longer it sits the more bugs get to the wood.. i like my wood cleaner.. i dry my wood in my sheds so for me a smaller shed is ideal.. holding only 3 rows to dry the wood..i think shed size and configuration will depend on how its being used

John
 
E8F2568A-1EA8-4577-B097-D4EE74DB0A60.jpeg It all depends on your space, time constraints and shed design, I chose to make a long "L" shape shed that holds approx. 8 cords, each bin holds 2 cords and I burn a full bin at a time, since I only burn about 4 cords a year I can easily alternate back and forth in between seasons, its also peace of mind knowing that the shed is full, no tarps are needed and the wood is staying dry when we get a good summer t-storm.
I also keep a 4 cord stack on pallets (that's how I get my "3rd" year) and in the early spring i'll load that wood into the shed then start collecting again for the outdoor pallet stack.
 
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Depends on the person, budget, space, desires and ambition . . . in my own personal case, I went bigger since I was using some cement footings from an old swingset and I had a bunch of wood from a camp that I tore down to build the sides . . . plus I like the ability to store several year's worth of wood in the shed in case of those long winters.
 
The answer is, it depends. Your shed, your property, your wood, build what you want.

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I built large enough for 2 seasons worth of wood - 6 cords. In reality though we are using it for softwood on one side and hardwood on the other. Our softwood of choice is doug fir. With our dry summers split doug fir dries out well in about 8 months. So the softwood side gets emptied annually while the hardwood side is depleted as needed. We also have an out of the shed stack for this wood.
 
Begreen, that's a good way of thinking about the design. In my case I rarely have species of wood that seasons in a short time frame. But I like that design.