suburban woodpile handling

[Poindexter]

A question I see often in the wood stove section of this site is more or less, "I just got a new stove installed, I bought a cord of wood, burnt it all, now what?" sort of sentiment.

I am writing to the folks who are trying to save a few bucks on their oil bill, but are feeling kind of overwhelmed by feeding their new wood stove.

I have about 16 cords of wood right now on my 1/4 acre suburban lot. It takes a significant amount of planning and anticipating to juggle it all, but it can be done.

I hope some more of you other experienced wood burners will post some pictures too, I am always on the lookout for easier ways to do this.

Briefly, to the new stove owner, the cheapest firewood you can buy is standing timber, but you need a good sized truck, a chainsaw, knowledge to operate the chainsaw safely, and a bunch of free time to go get it. And a strong back.

I can buy standing timber from the state forest, stumpage they call it, for $10 per cord. It's 22 miles one way to the cutting area for me, my real cost per cord like that is $80 out of pocket, mostly in gas for my truck, and it takes me about a week of free time to end up with one cord of rounds at my house ready to be split. In fairness I do have a full time job, I take call two nights a week and I don't cut wood on Sundays; but burning 7-10 cords a year would be a huge chunk of time if I felled it all myself. Months.

Next would be having logs delivered to your house. I did that this year, I paid about $162 per cord. I had to chop all the logs to stove length, took about nine calendar days, but working from the delivered log pile I was averaging close to a cord per day cut to stove length, at my house and ready to split.

For delivered logs I still used my chainsaw and the safety knowledge and I am real glad I already own a Peavey, - similar to a cant hook- I paid twice as much for the wood, but I got the seven cords of rounds piled up on my landing in 1/7th of the time.

After logs, the next slightly more expensive option is having green rounds delivered. Those will still need to be split and seasoned, but no chainsaw required.

For a little more money, I can have green splits delivered that just need to be stacked and seasoned.

The most expensive firewood I can buy is already cut to length, split and "seasoned".

For me locally in the land of high energy prices, one cord of seasoned wood replaces $511. worth of #2 fuel oil on a BTU per BTU basis. Having those green logs delivered at $162/ cord looks like a good deal. The going rate for green rounds is $250/ cord. A cord of green splits costs me about $300 delivered...

Your local prices are going to be (hopefully) lower than mine, but you got to know these numbers so you aren't paying too much for your wood. If I had to pay $511 for a cord of wood I might as well snuggle with my wife on the couch and let the oil burner run.

So you gotta pick your poison. If you are serious about saving money on your energy bills, you pretty much have to season your own wood. You can pay someone else to split it for you, and "rent" some yard space from them all summer while your wood seasons on their land, and then pay them some more to load that same wood into a truck, again, and then buy them some gas to bring it over - if you do your local math and it is economical for you to buy seasoned wood I want to know where you live so I can buy a hosue there.

So how do I burn 7-10 cords a year on a quarter acre lot? Here come the pics...

 

[Poindexter]

First up, my front yard. Everybody had to park on the street for a few days once that truck was unloaded.

One thing you don't see in the right foreground is a metal trash can, a big one, that all my wood ashes go into. I'll probably empty it once in January, then in April when we transplant the tomatoes I'll give them some wood ash in the bottom of each hole before I empty the can again.

Left foreground, now that most of the kids are out I got a parking space back in the driveway. The whole stack is four pallets long and two pallets wide, about the size of a station wagon. Right now I have a full cord of three year seasoned birch on the near side, and 1600# of biologs under the tarp on the other side. I would like to get cinderblocks under those pallets, but I don't get a lot of water vapor up through the asphalt driveway so it isn't a huge priority. I am going to try to season a cord of green splits this summer on the far side of this area where the bio-logs are now.



Same logs a few days later, now on the west side of my house. The tan building on the left is my neighbor's house and shed. From the side of my house to our common fence is 11' of side yard for me, house is 30' deep on the lot. Lined up on the west edge of my lot is all the wood off that truck now bucked from logs into rounds, a pile 32' long, 7' wide and 4-6' high. Then my two vehicles, the rear bumper of my truck is about three feet in from the curb, but it fits.


concerned about how many pics I can put in one post, BRB...

 

[Poindexter]

So here is the savings account vault. All those empty pallets are for the rounds beside the house now that I want to start burning in Fall of 2015, about ten months from now.

I am going to stack that $975 of logs I bought on there, and pull about $3000-$3500 off next winter's oil bill.


At the far left on the racks, I already have one cord of splits on there. Those I split spring of 2014 and tried to season on the east end of my house. Not enough air flow and sunshine over there. After an entire summer that cord got to about 30% average, near the fiber saturation point but not nearly dry enough to burn.

I added two pallets this fall when I moved my seasoned wood into my shed. Last year I had 60 feet of pallet. I left an air space in the middle with two rows of 16" wood. At 4' tall that was five cords, I went about six feet tall. I am going 6' vertical again this year, and I added two pallets of length. The two pallets on the short leg of the L are oak, I am going to cut those up and burn them when it gets a bit colder, and I already have cinder blocks in place to make the short leg of the L three pallets long. I can split quite a bit of wood before finding three replacement pallets gets to be urgent.

The limit on the short leg of the L is getting my truck around the corner of the house, into and out of the back yard. I placed that truck limited cinder block first, and built the short leg of the L from it.

The rounds beside the house have to be split and stacked before spring melt. For one thing I want/need every minute of warm weather seasoning I can get, I have never met a piece of firewood that was "too dry". For another my boats and my boat trailer are in the back yard, if I don't get those rounds moved I'll have to drop a tree in the front yard to bring my boat out the other side. Also, if we get a caribou next August it will be easiest to hang it from my deck - see top left above- to cut it up. A moose I can cut up in the garage cause those pretty much have to be quartered in the field, 'bou usually come out whole. Finally, the pile of rounds is blocking the raspberry bushes. If my wife can't pick raspberries because of darn wood, I'll be hearing about it.

Summer time savings account, and my fishing boat.


Getting away with two pics per post...

 

[Poindexter]

Here be the "east yard". I scrounged about four cords of birch last summer after all my racks in the south/back yard were full. I sold three of them at the going rate as green rounds, that was nice, split and stacked the other. The yard on the east side of my house is pretty much in full shade once the trees leaf out. About the only thing that grows back there is moss. I shoulda known better, but I didn't have a buyer for the last cord.



I am guessing this pic would have been in mid August when caribou season overlaps salmon season. Most of the time one or the other of my boats would be laying on those four tires. As I alluded earlier the cord of wood in this picture was stacked on May 14th as green/frozen and only dried to ~30%MC by late August. Out on my main rack green sap-up fresh splits should dry to the fiber saturation point, ~30% MC in about two weeks. So I am not stacking any more wood back there and can fit both of my boats easily.

So far I have showed you ten cords on my 1/4 acre lot, 1 cord of three year old birch and 1600# of bio-logs in the driveway, 7 cords of green rounds on the east side of my house that I need to have split and stacked by April first or so, and one cord that spent last summer on the east side of my house that is out on the main seasoning racks now. 1+1+7+1=10, yes?

Here is the wood I am burning now that was out on the main racks all summer, I finished burning my second cord this winter just this morning and am starting on my third cord of the season, about three cords left here under the deck.

 

[Poindexter]

I really hope y'all experienced in running multiple cords on small lots will chime in some pictures of your own systems both for me and the noobs. I didn't think this up my first season, there is a bit of trial and error involved. I don't know if I can season a cord on the north side of my house or not, but I haven't tried yet and if it does work I'll keep doing it.

 

[SawdustSA]

I appreciate your hard work since I am in a similar situation regarding lot size and wood storage, also in town. I have around 13 cords of wood in my backyard at the moment. All of it CSS this year. Forunately we are heading for summer now and I should be ok for next winter.

Now the only difference is:
I only burn 1.5 cords a year, so as you can see mine is just a hobby/fetish which got out of hand this year.
We dont get truck load deliveries around here
We don't have the white stuff like over there
Our trees are not straight logs but gnarly and twisted
I have to scrounge and collect myself. 3 trips to make 1 cord.
I don't have car access to my backyard, so everything is moved with a wheelbarrow. I dread the day I might have to move.
I have resorted to holzhausens now since it takes up less space and I have enough time to get the wood seasoned.

Over the last few months I have been given all kind of nicknames by friends: The Axeman, Hillbilly, Woodcutter.. those are just the ones I know off.
So I have stopped talking about wood since I might end up being sent for treatment.
Last night I drove past a large branch which fell down in our main street. The council had already cut it up into managable size, so when I got home from work I hooked the trailer and filled it up again. I'm not sure why manual labour is so frowned upon around my area, I just love it.

 

[D8Chumley]

Looks good, and that's some fine work you have done. I don't have space issues here, but it's good to see a post that could help members that are spatially (?) challenged

 

[Poindexter]

Thanks for the input folks.

Like SawdustSA, I can, and do, eat almost anything I want. 6 candy bars between breakfast and lunch? Sure, I'll burn that off before bedtime. Cookies? Oh yes. Gym membership? No thanks, I'll spend that money on dark flavorful oat sodas instead, and enjoy them.

Couple other points. A cord of wood at 20M BTUs is worth $511 to me - because I used to pay $3.46/ gallon for #2 heating oil. My last fill on the oil tank was $3.76/ gallon. I haven't done the math on that yet. But if you live in the lower 48 you are probably paying less than me, and likely a lot less than me, for energy. Google is your friend when trying to figure out what a cord of wood is worth to you, but probably not $511/ cord.

The other is I use #2 oil for both heat and domestic hot water. Both of my daughters and my wife have long hair and own many products. Before wood with all three females home I was burning 2,000 gallons of oil annually and setting the thermostat at 62dF over the winter.

Burning wood I am keeping the house at 80-85dF _and_ using less oil. I am not sure what my actual savings would be if I tried to heat the house to 82.5dF with oil all winter, but it would be a really big number.

 

[kennyp2339]

Looks awesome, nice and clean. How long does it take to split that log truck load? Also there's a fire chief from the mid west that has a small lot with that does a very similar thing, slightly different layout but can also fit a ton of wood like you.

 

[mass_burner]

16 cords on 1/4 acre lot? I have a little under 3 cords and am maxed out on .52 lot. Sure, I could put plenty of wood in other places, but when does your home/castle start looking like a wood processing plant?

 

[bodhran]

I live on a 50' x 100' lot including my house and shed. As far as finding wood, I cut off building lots for the wood. Storage is another issue. I have a 'fence' made of a rack of splits between and my neighbour. Original fence fell down in a hurricane a few years ago and the neighbour liked the free option of replacing it with my wood stack.

The rest of my back yard is almost always blocked with wood. The grass surrendered years ago. One look back there and it becomes obvious that I am single lol. I got in trouble with my city council last year because I went completely overboard and had three cords on my little front lawn and another five cords between the houses. The pic will give you an idea what I deal with. Being addicted to acquiring firewood doesn't help either.

 

[kennyp2339]

Bodhran that's a little overwhelming for someone that doesn't understand the wood burning life, what u can do if build a nice woodshed and go vertical, stack upto 7 ft, nice even splits, if you don't have the skills for building a shed I would hire someone that does, if you make it nice the city prob won't bust on you... And for those that say screw the city, as my 86 yr old neighbor would say "you can't fight city hall"

 

[Woody Stover]

I got in trouble with my city council last year because I went completely overboard

Was it because of the wood, or did you start playing the bodhran outside at night? Seriously, good work and planning to utilize your space to the max.

 

[GibsonJ45]

I see many city/suburban homeowners around here who line their lot borders with a wood pile fence. I'll have to get some pics to post, but city folk can burn wood too!

 

[Rossco]

Wow 7-10 cord is allot of wood.

I have a 5 cord wood shed on my 60-120' lot that's a lean too off of my shop. That's about the max I will burn regardless of winter severity.

 

[bodhran]

Bodhran that's a little overwhelming for someone that doesn't understand the wood burning life, what u can do if build a nice woodshed and go vertical, stack upto 7 ft, nice even splits, if you don't have the skills for building a shed I would hire someone that does, if you make it nice the city prob won't bust on you... And for those that say screw the city, as my 86 yr old neighbor would say "you can't fight city hall"

Oh I have a shed for the wood. I'm an over achiever when it comes to acquiring firewood.

 

[markam]

I max out at 3 cords in my little suburban lot, hence the "alternate" storage for a last half cord
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/im-officially-out-of-places-to-stuff-wood.144354/