How Tall Wood Shelter

[Ravenvalor]

Greetings Fellow Hearthlings,

Is 8' to tall for a wood shelter?

The back of the wood shelter is 9' but it has a wall. The open part of the wood shed is 8' tall. Will this height allow too much rain in?

Thank you to all on my favorite forum.

Jim

 

[bogydave]

Mine is roughly 8' in the front & 6-1/2' back & working fine.
Air can circulate well with open sides
If it blows rain can hit the front row but it dries pretty quick
Some say better to be open on all 4 sides, others say sides & enclosed. Any is better than none IMO

 

[Ravenvalor]

Thanks Bogydave,

This website is awesome.
I've got a Black Tupelo tree I've got to cut down. Do you know anything about carving wood?

Jim

 

[fossil]

My wood shed is built such that it has a roof of two different pitches, and overhanging eaves all around. Rain/snow are not a problem. The open side of my shed faces East, which is away from our prevailing winds. The shed ventilates very well, because of spacing between the siding boards, and the fact that it's built off the ground and the decking boards are generously spaced, as well. I can easily stack to about 7' high in the shed, which is about as high as I can reach, and about as high as I care to stack. If I got crazy and wanted to stack higher using a stepladder or something, I could cram in more wood, as the peak of the roof is ~10' above the deck, but I haven't yet done that. With 144 ft² of floor space, stacked to 7', I could theoretically pack in very nearly 8 cords of wood, but I've never yet tried to stuff it that full. Other members here stack higher in their sheds. I also left a corner undecked so I can work there under roof splitting, or whatever, regardless of the weather. And I wired it. I actually had it all set up just the way I wanted it, but then the wife came and told me I had to fill it all up with wood. Lots of great shed ideas here on the forums. Build what works best for you. Rick

 

[Ravenvalor]

It did look like you had a nice club house there but personally I like the wood shelter better.

 

[firefighterjake]

Greetings Fellow Hearthlings,

Is 8' to tall for a wood shelter?

The back of the wood shelter is 9' but it has a wall. The open part of the wood shed is 8' tall. Will this height allow too much rain in?

Thank you to all on my favorite forum.

Jim

I would think you would be fine. I'm 5 foot something . . . and figure I have at least another 2 foot reach . . . when I stack I try to stack right to the rafters in my shed . . . although I do use a small step stool for the final few placements.

My woodshed is a board and batting type of affair without the batting to allow ventilation of the wood and no water or snow penetrates the structure . . . the front is totally open and the highest point . . . but I have a 2-3 foot overhang which keeps the wood from getting wet from rain . . . and again . . . snow is not an issue.

 

[bogydave]

I found that for me, 7'4" is about max reach with out using a ladder to go higher.
Back rows I can go higher with starting a new row to stand on.
Front row I had to use a ladder to stuff it full at the top.
Just be sure it is stable (for safety ) when that high, I run a small 3' stick & tie it into the adjoining row about 5' up, maybe 2.

Fossil: Nice shed, Nice wood, Nice chair, foot stool & cooler (for beer???)

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Greetings Fellow Hearthlings,

Is 8' to tall for a wood shelter?

The back of the wood shelter is 9' but it has a wall. The open part of the wood shed is 8' tall. Will this height allow too much rain in?

Thank you to all on my favorite forum.

Jim

Jim, the height doe not matter in the least. If you are concerned that rain and snow will hit the sides of the stacks, worry no more. I've said it many times and will repeat: wood is not a sponge and will not soak up the rain. Rain hitting the sides of the stacks will not soak in but will run right off and an hour or two of wind will completely dry it.

Imagine some of these guys who never cover their wood and they don't even put the wood in a shed. For example; quads. Here is a man who has cut many, many years and has never covered his wood piles and he gets along just fine. We don't cover our wood during the first spring, summer and fall but then cover the tops only. We have no problem with wet wood.

The big key to keeping wood and having dry wood is to cut the wood a long time before it is needed to burn (I like to recommend 2 years minimum) and then stack it so it does not come into contact with the ground. However, there are times when we do stack directly on the ground and get away with it very nicely but we are high on sandy ground too. The problem is if we don't stack on poles or 4 x 4's or something similar is that the wood will sink into the ground. Then we have to wait until the frost comes out to get them unfrozen. We then throw them on the top of another row of wood and they will be fine the next fall; ready to burn.

So, build as high as you want but not so high that you can't reach the top of the wood pile and don't worry about the sides.

 

[Tony H]

The only worry I have when stacking over 6' is getting conked on the head when it falls on me.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I go 9 and a half feet and tight against the ceiling. It works but I wouldn't go as high if I had a better option. It is open on one side and under an eave with no gutter. The bottom foot or so gets a little wet during a heavy rain on the outside but is no big deal. Other than what comes off the roof, the rain is a non-issue.

 

[Wood Duck]

I agree that a shelter can't be too tall. Yeah, occasional rainstorms are going to blow in the sides of a tall shelter, but those are not really all that common, and won't really put all that much water in the stacks. Just make sure the shelter is well ventilated and you'll be fine. i'd be more concerned with how high you can reach. My stacks end up being about six and a half feet tall because I want to reach the wood easily when I need to burn it.

 

[Battenkiller]

I've said it many times and will repeat: wood is not a sponge and will not soak up the rain. Rain hitting the sides of the stacks will not soak in but will run right off and an hour or two of wind will completely dry it.

Amazing how everyone seems to accept the doctrine of long drying times being necessary, but that many still adhere to the notion that getting the wood wet again undoes all the seasoning. Wood will act like a sponge, but the rate of water re-entry is so slow that it is negligible when it comes to firewood. Now if you submerged the wood for months at a time it would be a different story, but rain water runs right off due to our friend gravity, so there's little time for it to soak back in.

Wood dries much faster on the ends than it does along the split faces, about 10-15X faster. That's why the ends crack, because they shrink so much relative to the middle that the grain gets torn apart. But it also soaks in 10-15X faster on the ends. If you doubt this, get some water-based stain and douse a split with it, then rip it down its length. The stain will penetrate deeply (perhaps as much as 1/8") on the ends and not much at all on the split faces. So I have to ask why the cracked ends don't swell back up and "heal" themselves when the wood gets rained on? The reason is, as long as the wood is stacked on its side, the rain water runs off as fast as it falls down. Only the thin film of water left on the surface remains. That disappears in a few short hours of sun and breeze and the seasoning continues.

As far as the height goes, I don't believe it makes a difference. IMO, no wood should go into the shed until it is 100% dry, and that takes at least 2 years in sun and wind, stacked loosely, hopefully in well spaced stacks facing the prevailing wind direction in your area. Any kind of enclosed space will inhibit the air movement necessary to dry the wood effectively. Even large air spaces between boards won't help. Go out to your shed on a windy day, then step back out into the wind and tell me how much air movement is going on inside. Heck, even the mosquito netting on Lady BK's gazebo has a remarkable breeze dampening effect... enough to blow the damn thing right over and cost me $60 in Chinese replacement parts. That's why you'll never see me store wood in a shed. It stays outside uncovered until I can get it into the desert like conditions by my basement stove in the winter, with fans blowing on it like in a kiln. AFAIC, a shed is a man cave to store and work on your wood processing equipment, not to store the wood itself, but whatever works for other folks is what they'll do, even if it's wrong. ;-P


Fossil, I thought I built a pretty nice shed until I saw yours. Best I've seen by far on this forum. I just found out I can buy a small 100' x 100' plot by my beloved Battenkill River for $6K. The guy says he's pretty sure I can build up to a 100 sq.ft. lean-to type building without a permit. If I go ahead with it, I'm gonna be looking at your design very carefully. Make it a little higher and I can put a sleeping loft in it and hang out for days, watching the fish rise and sipping some bourbon while puffing away on a fat Honduran stogy. I'm going to take a peek at the property today.

 

[ansehnlich1]

No shed here. Cover the tops of my stacks, that's it. No problems with wet wood. No problems with punky/rotting wood. I stack on pallets. I cover the tops. That's it. I can't imagine moving it all into a shed when after it's all stacked pretty outside. I move it from log to round, round to split, split to stack, stack to porch, porch to stove.

 

[Battenkiller]

I move it from log to round, round to split, split to stack, stack to porch, porch to stove.

C'mon, put it in a shed. One extra step in the process ain't hardly gonna kill ya'. ;-)