Questions for those burning 10+ cords a year....

[Jon_E]

For those of you who may be burning over 10 cords a year (large houses, barns and garages, pool heating etc.) I would like to ask you what you would consider to be the ideal equipment for processing your firewood. In other words, whether or not you actually own the equipment, what would you consider to be the best equipment to cut, split, stack and dry your wood?

The reason I am asking is because I am in that 10-15 cord range, and I have fallen so far behind in wood processing that I am looking for better efficiency. First of all, I get most of my wood from 30 acres of upland hardwood forest, most of it is smaller trees or culls that have to be taken down one at a time and processed. I cut it in the woods, carry the rounds in a tractor bucket back to the house and dump them in a pile, then go get more. I use two saws, and don't see the need at the moment for anything larger or smaller (see my sig below). When I get a reasonable pile, I have my splitter sitting just inside the woodshed and I stack on pallets right off the splitter. All of my wood gets stacked on pallets, whether inside a shed or out in the open. I can store about 20 cords of wood under a roof - after that it's out in the woods until it can be moved inside. I don't buy logs but occasionally I will scrounge, sometimes a quarter-cord, sometimes several cords. Tree services around here like to keep what they cut.

I haven't really found a "system" that works well for me yet. Everything involves a lot of handling. I have considered forestry winches, dragging the whole tree back to the house, but that introduces dirt and mud into the bark and I want to avoid that. I have considered grapples, carrying 8' logs back to the house and processing them later, but that doesn't work with narrow woods trails. My father drags his splitter into the woods behind his Jeep, cuts, splits and stacks on the spot, and comes back in six months to collect it. I just don't like the idea of having little woodpiles all over my property. Little OCD there, I guess, having it all in one place.

Guess I'm just looking for ideas that maybe I haven't tried yet, from those of you who work up the same general volume of fire wood I do.

 

[Whitepine2]

I use 8 to 10 cord (real cords) and sold wood for years. What I have now is a Farme wench should
have had it many years ago.It's so easy to cut any hang-ups just pull them down,for trimming pull
them out in open much easier to limb,and as far as dirt use some care when drawing them out
short pulls on leaves keeps them somewhat clean and when you lift up only the ends get dirty and
several can be pulled at a time. I like it. I also made a processor which can take 30' and up to
about 30" round,this saves time and better still less energy I've also made a big single splitter that
is handy for the smaller stuff. Hope this helps.

 

[Poindexter]

I'll pitch in. I am burning 7-8 cords a year, but wish I was processing 10+ annually so I could someday be further ahead.

Palletizing your splits is brilliant, it sounds like your fresh splits get moved around a bit on the pallets, but don't get taken off the pallet as splits until they are going into the firebox?

I think your biggest time saver is going to be getting rounds out of the woods bringing more wood per trip, fewer trips. Would a four wheeled ag trailer work with your tractor on your woodlot? SW Vermont was pretty hilly last time I drove through Bennington 25 years ago. Maybe big trailer at the edge of the woods, load the trailer with the bucket on the tractor, once the trailer is full hitch it up and drag it back to the house?

I had logs delivered this year instead of bringing rounds home from the woods 22 miles away in my truck, I saved boo-coo time doing that, well worth my local price.

Once you have the rounds piled up beside your shed I envy your system. For mine (upgraded) I want some kind of feed rack that will hold half a cord of rounds emptying onto a reasonable sized table around a gas 22/25T splitter. Tractor is probably not in my future, but pallets and a tractor would let me build a permanent feed rack and put a roof over the splitter.

 

[Longstreet]

I cut it in the woods, carry the rounds in a tractor bucket back to the house and dump them in a pile, then go get more. I use two saws, and don't see the need at the moment for anything larger or smaller (see my sig below).

I DO NOT burn anywhere close to 10 cords a year. But I think your problem is that tractor buckets are not very large. You need a trailer to make each trip into and out of the woods meaningful. Tractors can also be slow. An atv might be faster to get in an out (again, with a trailer.) We use my fathers John Deere to move firewood in the bucket and you don't carry much.

Edit: Poindexter beat me by a minute.

 

[Roundgunner]

I use 24" lengths, I'm 55 years old and like to be physical but I try to do things as easy as possible. I try to cut to 4' lengths in the woods and bring them out with the Kubota.



Depending on the size I fill the front end loader then use the back hoe and get them out.
If I can I will keep them long but most of the time it wont work like this.



If I need to put them on the trailer I will lay them in sideways so they will roll out and buck every other one into 24" so I have them 6' across.

I build my racks with 2x4 pt with an 18 inch brace between and if possible fit them between trees.



I set my splitter next to the rack and drop the logs up hill from them so as I finish bucking I can just roll them to the splitter. Then throw them on the rack and wait.

 

[savageactor7]

Greetings Jon E

The easiest way I found is to drag the limbed logs back near the house. After a couple to 5 trees I cut rounds and split 'em. I split small so I can throw the splits up into a pile as I work.

The piles can get 10'-12' high, the piles can get long...30-40ft. I don't stack and I don't care about muddy logs. I'm only interested in production...and I work at a glaciers pace.

Been burning 35+yrs tried different ways and that's what I settled on. You're lucky you can cut on your own land...all you need is a small compact utility tractor.

Oh and I use a 3ph, which can be hairy if your not schooled by another log dragging old timer.

 

[billb3]

You have QA forks and you're hauling out rounds in the bucket ?

I'm gonna guess narrow trails and front heavy.
I have a pretty steep hill and am uncomfortable with too much weight even strapped to the bucket (no forks yet)
I'm considering a ATV log trailer or something bigger than a typical yard tractor trailer because a landscaping trailer is just too wide.
Nothing fancy with a grapple but that sure would be nice.

 

[Flamestead]

I'm doing 8 for myself and 4 for my father. We started with a tractor and woods trailer, cutting to length in the woods and hauling it to the splitting/stacking area. That was too much work. Now we use the Farmi winch on the tractor - drop the tree and limb it, cut it in half and skid 5 logs to the stacking area at a time. I don't mess around with the limb wood, and I don't bother to stack the brush - it breaks down pretty quickly on its own. We skid on the snow to keep the wood clean - there is a narrow window some years between the time of enough snow and too much snow, and this is one of the tightest bottlenecks for me (glad the ground has finally frozen the past couple of days, now I need a little more snow).

As the snow starts to recede I start cutting the logs to stove length. A longer firebox means fewer cuts, but also means the female helpers here are not as happy due to heavier splits. I cut and split in the early spring, with the goal to be done before black fly season starts. I'm able to get in an hour or two of splitting after work on nice days - spreads out the load, makes a nice way to expend some energy after sitting at a desk all day. I stack the wood right where it is tossed off the splitter, and it is there for a year and a summer - this means the tree-length logs are skidded to another part of the woodyard the following winter. I'd like to get to a three-year rotation, and will need another yarding area to do it. In the fall I use an old trailer and the tractor, and move half a cord at a time to the woodshed. This step is not onerous, but I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to speed it up. My wood yard is a quarter mile from the woodshed, and I don't want to move it all in the tractor bucket (5-6 bucket loads per cord). Then stacked in the woodshed and finally carried into the house to burn. A lot of handling, but spread out over time.

The winch made a large difference for me - the trees get harvested and to the splitting area in a few weekends. This gets the wood out into the sun and wind easily (and is a lot of fun).

I dream of a small woodprocessor because it would combine the cut and split step, and splitting is the least fun for me (Spring is springing, and there are a million other things that need to be done). I dream of a forwarder trailer to allow moving trees out of the woods in the warmer weather. I dream of a palletized stacking/drying method that would then survive the journey to the woodshed and also allow enough airflow to dry well in the 18 months. None of these dreams pass muster with my wife and the checkbook. Sigh.

My father isn't getting younger, and my college-age daughters have less time for me these days and soon none (unless they settle nearby and need firewood!), so I'll need to be improving in the system. The next investment will be attic insulation to R60.

 

[mustash29]

I don't burn nearly the amount you guys are talking about, 3-4 cord per year is my max.

This video has been posted on here before, but if you have not seen it.....well it is very vell thoughtout.

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I personally don't care for the skid steer poking / push rod deal. I think I would use a winch type setup, a motor turning a long (wide) axel shaft with a cable drum on each end, one cable for each side of the "pallet". You would just have to winch each stack forward instead of pushing them all at once.

 

[maple1]

I cut it in the woods, carry the rounds in a tractor bucket back to the house and dump them in a pile, then go get more.

I find I save a great deal of handling & time by cutting the tree into 8-12' lengths, loading those onto a smallish trailer I haul behind my ATV, then cutting to length right on the trailer after I haul it to my splitting/piling area. The trailer gets used as a sawbuck. Depending how big the trees are & therefore how long a length I can get on the trailer, I can load/haul 1/4 cord at a time - and cut that 1/4 cord to length in 5-10 minutes. Closer to 5 earlier in the day, closer to 10 if close to the end of the day. Ya, I slow down as the day goes on. If the trees are in the what I would have called 'just big enough they should be split' range, I unzip them (run the saw down them lengthwise) before loading on the trailer - and don't bother splitting them. They will dry in a couple years, and I save a lot of splitting - I can do that more & more now that I'm a couple years ahead.

If I'm cutting bigger stuff that is too big to load in long lengths, I B-train my spitter up to my wood trailer, and split it right where the tree fell. I throw into the trailer right off the splitter (trailer also has removeable side boards), then when the trailer gets full I haul to my pallets & pile right to them off the trailer. Next time I handle is putting it in the fire. Takes about 5 trailer loads for a full cord doing it that way. Tractors & big stuff are nice & all, but I find with my ATV setup I can actually reduce the handling/piling, and not wear myself out. And get closer to where the tree falls - like, right next to it. And, as also said above, the ATV goes faster than a tractor.

I'm burning below 10 cords a year, but have been putting up more than that the last couple years in trying to get a couple years ahead.

 

[teacherman]

For those of you who may be burning over 10 cords a year (large houses, barns and garages, pool heating etc.) I would like to ask you what you would consider to be the ideal equipment for processing your firewood. In other words, whether or not you actually own the equipment, what would you consider to be the best equipment to cut, split, stack and dry your wood?

The reason I am asking is because I am in that 10-15 cord range, and I have fallen so far behind in wood processing that I am looking for better efficiency. First of all, I get most of my wood from 30 acres of upland hardwood forest, most of it is smaller trees or culls that have to be taken down one at a time and processed. I cut it in the woods, carry the rounds in a tractor bucket back to the house and dump them in a pile, then go get more. I use two saws, and don't see the need at the moment for anything larger or smaller (see my sig below). When I get a reasonable pile, I have my splitter sitting just inside the woodshed and I stack on pallets right off the splitter. All of my wood gets stacked on pallets, whether inside a shed or out in the open. I can store about 20 cords of wood under a roof - after that it's out in the woods until it can be moved inside. I don't buy logs but occasionally I will scrounge, sometimes a quarter-cord, sometimes several cords. Tree services around here like to keep what they cut.

I haven't really found a "system" that works well for me yet. Everything involves a lot of handling. I have considered forestry winches, dragging the whole tree back to the house, but that introduces dirt and mud into the bark and I want to avoid that. I have considered grapples, carrying 8' logs back to the house and processing them later, but that doesn't work with narrow woods trails. My father drags his splitter into the woods behind his Jeep, cuts, splits and stacks on the spot, and comes back in six months to collect it. I just don't like the idea of having little woodpiles all over my property. Little OCD there, I guess, having it all in one place.

Guess I'm just looking for ideas that maybe I haven't tried yet, from those of you who work up the same general volume of fire wood I do.

I've been processing my own firewood single-handedly for well over 20 years now and just can't seem to get any faster than 7-8 hours per cord. Now that's the WHOLE PROCESS - which includes dropping the tree, cutting into rounds, hauling the rounds out to the woodpile, splitting the rounds and stacking up off the ground on rails. I have around the same acreage as you (35 acres) and getting the rounds out of the woods and to the splitter takes time. I'm using a SUPER-SPLIT fly-wheel type log splitter which has decreased my splitting time greatly compared to the 3-pt hitch unit I used to use. If you watch my video, you'll notice it's still on the tractor with a huge oak round counterweight.

To see my youtube video "One Man Cordwood Operation - The Whole Process" see:

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Your comments would be welcome....

Steve

PS - I've done up to 30 cords in one season, but the hours still had to be invested

 

[Bigg_Redd]

I do 8-12 cord per year and I have no special tools - I split it all by hand. Honestly, it feels like a part time job for part of the year. Fortunately for me I work swing shift and have most morning for sawing and splitting but the only advice I have is just get after it and try things and sooner or later you'll have a system.

 

[hoho]

the best way to increase production is find a wood hound how will work for firewood.Two persons can more the double firewood production.No saw need just more hands.

 

[ewlsey]

What are you guys doing with 10+ cords/year? That's a lot of wood. Even heating a large shop, I can't see using that much wood. We heated a house and a shop with old smoke dragon stoves and only used 7-8 cords a year. And that wasn't very good or very dry wood. Good stuff would have reduced that by a lot.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

What are you guys doing with 10+ cords/year? That's a lot of wood

I burn about 4. My parents burn about 8.

 

[JP11]

I'm over 10 a year.

I have a few tips I'd share. You need to minimize handing as much as you can. As others have said.. dragging logs is faster than handling rounds. I did a bit of that.. then even gave up on that. I decided to hire out the felling and skidding. I COULD have traded wood for these services, but at 50 bucks a cord I decided just to pay him. It's not worth the extra risk of me getting hurt felling, or busting glass on my cab tractor. His skidder can bang around in the woods, and go places i'd be stuck in the mud for months!

He left me tree length along the edge of my drive. I cut to 8' lengths and piled everything up for processing. I had him cut 3 or 4 years ahead.

It's not clear from your original post.. but are you stacking on pallets then MOVING on those same pallets. I handle my wood just three times. 1. Onto splitter, and from there to a "U" made of 3 pallets. Last time I touch it by hand is into the boiler!

I've toyed with the idea of a processor, and then selling a bit to justify it. But haven't gotten that ambitious. I'd go thirds with a couple friends maybe and move it around to all our homes. It would have to be a deal where all three of you work the machine at each others house. If the logs were stacked.. you could do the 10 cords in a day.

JP

 

[Flamestead]

I've been processing my own firewood single-handedly for well over 20 years now and just can't seem to get any faster than 7-8 hours per cord. Now that's the WHOLE PROCESS - which includes dropping the tree, cutting into rounds, hauling the rounds out to the woodpile, splitting the rounds and stacking up off the ground on rails. I have around the same acreage as you (35 acres) and getting the rounds out of the woods and to the splitter takes time. I'm using a SUPER-SPLIT fly-wheel type log splitter which has decreased my splitting time greatly compared to the 3-pt hitch unit I used to use. If you watch my video, you'll notice it's still on the tractor with a huge oak round counterweight.

To see my youtube video "One Man Cordwood Operation - The Whole Process"

Your comments would be welcome....

Nice video. You've got me wondering what my per-cord time is. I have not tried the saw-mounted method of measuring/marking split length yet - I'm using a stick and crayon, and I think it would be as fast on these larger logs, but slower on limb wood if I did the measure and complete cut at the same time.

I like the large splits lifted to splitter height and the use of the bucket to store a half-split piece while working on the other half. You would find a nice bump in productivity with a 4-way wedge, and a taller single wedge would cut your time.

I have a 5-minute drive from tree stump to stacking area, so would spend too much time on the tractor seat as compared to skidding (I can bring half a cord or more in one trip and it would take 3+ trips to bring half a cord in my bucket). Quite a bit more time plus wear and tear on my tractor. I think cutting the limbs to split-length can be faster where the tree drops, but I don't have to worry about the ground when cutting most of my logs on the pile. Probably not much advantage either way there. I like your splitter to stack step. I split and then stack. I use a single stack, so I would have to re-position twice as often. I have considered putting the splits into the tractor bucket and then stack out of the bucket - I do split my father's wood into the tractor bucket and then dump it into a dump truck to haul to his house.

I always carry the cell phone for safety purposes, and someone always knows when I got out to the woods to work. I have been bitten a couple of times over the years in the woods and on the farm, and now view safety practices as my friend. I cringed a bit at the lack of PPE, wished you'd left a hinge when felling, and skipped over the section of splitting with a hand over the end of the split.

{edit: I shouldn't end on a critical note. I enjoyed seeing your methods and appreciated you taking the time to share it.}

 

[Flamestead]

I don't burn nearly the amount you guys are talking about, 3-4 cord per year is my max.

This video has been posted on here before, but if you have not seen it.....well it is very vell thoughtout.

I personally don't care for the skid steer poking / push rod deal. I think I would use a winch type setup, a motor turning a long (wide) axel shaft with a cable drum on each end, one cable for each side of the "pallet". You would just have to winch each stack forward instead of pushing them all at once.

Thanks for re-posting this, I hadn't seen it before. I like the rails. I'd need a quarter-mile railroad, but I have thought of stacking on skids and then skidding a cord or more at once on snow. Single-row stacks up on rails that could be pushed together once fully dry (I bet the wood going into the boiler on the video is pretty wet) and then skidded as a lot up to the house and pushed into the woodshed. Plywood and chain binders to help it all stay together on the journey.

 

[Flamestead]

What are you guys doing with 10+ cords/year? That's a lot of wood. Even heating a large shop, I can't see using that much wood. We heated a house and a shop with old smoke dragon stoves and only used 7-8 cords a year. And that wasn't very good or very dry wood. Good stuff would have reduced that by a lot.

My 8 cord are going into a 3500+ sq ft 1790's leaky farmhouse. I've found that with our work schedules and one stove that 8 cord is about our upper limit. We intend on adding a second stove and expect to be able to burn each more efficiently than the one. This week, with -10 F and wind on the way, we will be dipping into the oil for the first time this winter.

 

[ixlr8]

I only go thru 1-2 cord a year. My neighbor however goes thru 18-20 cord a year, keeps his house in the lower 80's during the Maine winter. He gets his wood delivered as 16' logs, $125/cord, and has it piled at the edge of his 10acre property. He uses a stick mounted on his saw to gauge cut lengths. He used a homemade splitter for at least 30 years, only replaced the motor once. He now has a new Timberline splitter (I think that is the brand) that includes log lift and table. He cuts part of the pile and a few weeks later splits what he has cut. He stacks the split wood as high as he can with his tractor loader bucket. What he spit this past fall will be his next winters wood. He repeats thru the summer until most all the wood is split, then using the loader bucket he moves as much wood as he can into his over-sized 2 car garage that he built just for wood storage. What doesn't fit in is storage garage this season will stay in the pile, uncovered, until next fall. His 'storage garage' is attached to is regular garage where is wood boiler is. He is retired and will be 82 this year, I hope I have that much energy when I am his age.