woodmiser said:
Can you all show and/or tell what you use to hold your staged wood next to your stoves? I am going to have to get something to put the wood into that looks decent and doesn't spill dirt all over the floor every time I touch the wood.
I took a set of Stack-it Brackets and 2x4's last year and made a temporary rack that fit in the corner of my sunroom, about 6' from my stove. Come spring, I dissembled it. This fall I took the lumber outside, and rattle-canned it a mottled brown, just enough to knock the raw off the wood, and then I assembled the unit again, but this time screwed it together. It looks surprisingly good for as inexpensive as it is, and the paint job looks good with the irregular glazing on the Mexican tile floor. I keep it next to a window, where's it's visually obscured a bit by a small couch (actually patio furniture that Lowes marked down on deep discount one year that we didn't have a summer).
I bring my wood in via cargo sled, which holds about three or four armloads, and doesn't appear to scratch the tile. Each week I bring in a sled load of birch splits, and stack this between the rack and the wall at one end. I add birch to the fire when I need long burns, and my consumption of this will increase as winter gets colder. I then bring in my other wood and fill the rack. Small pieces/kindling goes under the couch in cardboard flats I get from Sams Club (the big flats used for fruit and vegatables). They are colorful and kind of cheering, and I rotate them out with new ones occassionally when I haul food home from the store. This is where I also tuck the hearth tools I use: a rubbermaid dustpan and a big, stiff wallpaper paste brush that I use to clean ashes with, and a spatula and fork from a barbeque set. (Dixie told me I had to take these out of my sig line because it was dropping the tone of the place around here--insert appropriate Jeff Foxworthy one-liner.)
During this weather, I make it from weekend to weekend with inside wood, and that suits me. When it gets really cold, we'll have to refill midweek, and that's still fine by me. When I refill, I take care to do it about a day before I need the wood, and move the last of the dry wood to one of the fruit flats that sits behind the stove (beyond clearances, of course). That way the wood can be as much as 100 degrees warmer before it gets burned, and any surface moisture on it has a chance to evaporate. Bugs aren't a problem to speak of with the wood I'm burning, so I don't mind the inside storage.
A closed container such as a tub wouldn't work well for me because I need the wood exposed to air and room temps. I get some bark spillage and dirt after the transport, and under the rack. I pull out the rack and sweep before reloading the rack, and after I'm done with the sled loads (it takes about three sledloads to fill the rack, four to overfill). The sled gets loaded from the under-deck stash outside the door at the other end of my sunroom, and I am ridiculously pleased with the setup.
Last year we were hauling wood from stacks out in the woods left behind by PO, and would stash a few weeks at a time in each run. This winter I have (at last) two cords of spruce under the deck, and another cord-and-a-half of birch under the garage eaves, and this weekend I hope to get the rest of the wood I have around here worked up and under cover (front porch has plenty of room for what's left). I'm rambling a bit here, but I'm so happy to have enough wood for the winter, and under cover, and a working system in place I just went downstairs to build up the fire this morning, and had all the dry, warm wood I could need inside. It took time last year to come up with this system, and thinking things through, and poking around asking questions on the forum to get to that point. I'm glad I did, though, because when the unexpected emergency came and I had to switch over to burning 24/7, it was no step for a stepper. It would have been a much more painful transition without all the little pieces of the puzzle in place. This year, with the wood under cover and plenty of it, I'm in high clover.
I think my rack looks kind of cutesy--Teenthing2 complimented me on the job I did and the way it looks, and he's a tough sell. It was $20 for the bracket and a few bucks worth of lumber, and I can `repurpose' the rack in the summer to hold plants. It doesn't meet your qualification of not spilling dirt all over the floor, but it effectively hides the mess until I'm ready to do something about it. The tradeoff for me in the air circulation around the wood is worth it. Not a big problem, as the wood I've got now is very dry, and will shed some bark, but that's about it. I just do the best I can to keep things clean around that area, and accept the fact that there's going to be a bit more clutter during burning season.
Inserting a picture of what things looked like last winter (camera is down so I can't give you a fresh picture). It was during a prolonged cold snap, and I was doing some wood drying inside, so `pardon the mess'. It's a lot better this year--dryer wood, fewer boxes, no wood leaning up against the trim to dry. My point is that sometimes you do the best you can, and refine your system as you go along. As your wood gets better, you have less mess.