Thank you and pictures.

[dswitham]

Thanks all of you who spend time responding to those who have questions. I have been reading on these forums so much that I think my husband is beginning to question my sanity. Especially when I keep saying, "Well the people on the forum say this...." A little background, we haven't ever seemed to get a lot of wood put by for the winter and certainly never a year or two ahead. My husband was raised with his father getting the wood in maybe by fall. The horror stories of how many chimney fires they had is scary. We have the land to get the wood from, but we never seem to have time to get what we need for various reasons. So this year we had the chance to get two loads of logs cut off from my mother's land and delivered to our house. I convinced my husband that this would be great as maybe we could get all of the wood we needed for at least one season and very likey two or three. He agreed and so the fun began. The first picture is of one of the loads delivered. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the second load delivered, because my husband started cutting it up right after it was dropped off. It took him a little over a week to get all of it cut up, as well as working full time. I think he had more fun than he planned on. ;-) After he got some of it cut, our son and I started splitting it. Thankfully we have use of a splitter. After he got all of the wood cut to length, he took over splitting and I started stacking with some help from our son. The second and third pictures are what I've gotten stacked so far, about 9 cords. There are three rows of 48' by 4' by 2'. The fourth picture is of what I still have to stack as well as what I am using to haul the wood to where we are stacking it. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the wood dropped off where we are stacking it. >:-( We wouldn't have this though if we hadn't been inspired by all the information on using dry wood that is posted on this site. Also it was through the boiler forum that we found out about gassification boilers and all of the advantages to them. I haven't ever stacked wood before so it is a learning experience through all of this. So, thanks again and hope you enjoy the pictures.

Shelly

 

[Todd]

Great job! Sometimes it's hard to convince people to get that far ahead and burn good dry wood, but after they do they wonder why they didn't do it years ago. I know, I learned here too.

 

[Pagey]

That is spectacular. Congrats on all the hard work and thinking ahead!

 

[Beetle-Kill]

Outstanding! Well done ( but don't stop now, keep riding that wave- 12/13 'aint that far off ;-) )

 

[begreen]

Boy, all that hardwood. That is impressive. Great family effort. You will be so appreciating this come winter.

 

[fossil]

Now, that's really something. Something to be proud of, and something to look forward to enjoying when the time comes to put that wood to use. Nice job, and thanks for showing us the pics. Rick

 

[rdust]

Great looking stacks, something to be proud of!

 

[firefighterjake]

HehHeh . . . I grew up just like your husband . . . it was perfectly normal to us to cut, split and stack the coming winter's wood in the summer and fall. Fortunately Dad was pretty good at keeping the chimney clean . . . I don't remember any chimney fires, but I do remember him pulling a whole lot of gunk out of the chimney every month. It's funny how many folks can never put 2 and 2 together and figure out that burning unseasoned wood tends to result in more creosote which in turn results in a greater chance of a chimney fire.

Getting ahead with the wood is a fantastic feeling . . . first of all, it's like money in a bank. You keep it for a few months before burning and it will burn OK . . . keep it drying for a year or so and it earns even better "interest" as it will burn even better with faster ignition and more heat. Second, once you're ahead in the game you may find that cutting wood for future years is not really a terrible chore and may even come to enjoy the work as you can "putter" away at it rather than making one big push to get all the wood in for the year. I figure I'm at least one or two years ahead now so I tend to just putter away every once in a while when I feel like it . . . although come Fall I'll make more of a concerted push as I tend to like working in the cooler temps . . . plus -- blame it on my upbrininging -- that just seems to be the right time to cut, split and stack wood . . . the only difference is now I'm a year or two ahead of the game so the wood I'm working on will not be used for over a year.

Glad that folks' advice here helped . . . stick around though . . . you've learned the first and most important lesson . . . a woodstove is only as good as the fuel that goes into it . . . garbage in, garbage out so to speak when it comes to heat . . . there are still plenty of other useful lessons to learn . . . heck, I'm still learning myself.

 

[zzr7ky]

It look's like Y'all are gettin' the hang of it!!

You'll be nice and cozy thins winter!

 

[Skier76]

I guess I'm not the only one! When I was young, the wood was delivered in Late July or August for burning in the fall winter.

Those are some awesome stacks! Excellent job.

 

[Uper]

A thing of beauty! Nice work!

 

[LLigetfa]

HehHeh . . . I grew up just like your husband . . . it was perfectly normal to us to cut, split and stack the coming winter's wood in the summer and fall. Fortunately Dad was pretty good at keeping the chimney clean . . .

Ja, growing up on the farm, we didn't start in on the wood until after all the hay was in. We never stacked wood out in single rows to dry and were never a year ahead. The bucked wood was tossed in a giant heap that after splitting just got tossed into one big heap in the barn.

My father didn't know the value of dry wood. My mother used to complain about the wood all the time since she had to struggle with it in the cook stove. She often had wood in the oven drying.

My father only ever cleaned the chimney for the cook stove and only on my mother's insistence. Unfortunately he didn't clean the other chimneys and a chimney fire burned the house to the ground. Some people never learn. Consider yourself lucky.

 

[Flatbedford]

Good job. I am further ahead than I have ever been. It is a great feeling to stack wood knowing that it will be two two years until it is burned.

 

[Battenkiller]

These guys here have even got me getting my wood processed ahead of time. A major factor in that was finally clearing up enough room outside to stack it properly. Problem is that it took all spring and part of the summer to do the outside work (heck, I'm still working on it), so I'm not really into the wood yet. Soon. Next year will be better. New saw, big windy place to stack, new sources of cheap logs... these things all help. But the biggest push is from the guys and gals here on Hearth.com. Lots of great stuff here, a great resource for burners of every persuasion. ;-)

Oh, BTW.... excellent work!

 

[Delta-T]

color me impressed! thats some stackin' right there. looks like you're building Hadrien's Wall out of splits. excellent, super excellent even. thanks for the pics

 

[Dix]

Looking good, Shelly

Nice job by everyone

 

[billb3]

every square foot of firewood can be a square foot of lawn not to cut

unless you keep a lot in the woods like me.

 

[dswitham]

every square foot of firewood can be a square foot of lawn not to cut

unless you keep a lot in the woods like me.

LOL That was actually something we talked about. Neither one of us enjoys mowing the back field and so that would save some time by only having to mow between the rows. After we finish stacking the rest there will be even less to mow. :lol:

 

[Jags]

Out - freakin' - standing. Looking GREAT.

Dry wood is THEE most underestimated part of a new wood burners life. Glad you picked up on that.

 

[andybaker]

A wife that helps stack wood? Hmm....interesting.

 

[Jags]

A wife that helps stack wood? Hmm....interesting.

He fooled you. They are listed with unicorns and the tooth fairly.

 

[fossil]

A wife that helps stack wood? Hmm....interesting.

My wife's a better wood stacker than I am. She actually enjoys doing it, and she's very careful about getting it just right. I've seen her flip a split every which way trying to get it to sit just the way she wants it, then finally just toss it aside and get another one that's "better behaved". I mostly just slam them in there to git 'er done. Some of our stacks you can actually tell in the stack where she was stacking and where I was. I really love her. Rick

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Beautiful wood stacks, nice job! Looks like that should take you out 2-3 years if your house insulation is good.

 

[dswitham]

Beautiful wood stacks, nice job! Looks like that should take you out 2-3 years if your house insulation is good.

I wish our house insulation was better. We are working on it as that has always been important to us. We bought a farmhouse that has been in the family since it was built. No one had put any insulation into it at all. The first winter we didn't do anything with the insulation or windows, except to try to put plastic over the windows. That was kinda funny, now I can look back at it. The wind blew threw the windows so hard it would pop the plastic off. You could hear the window panes rattle when the wind blew. Let's just say the next summer those got replaced. We also added insulation to the attic, a lot. That helped tremendously as well as trying to seal up all the cracks where cold air is coming into the house. But that wood won't really last as long as it will for some because we are heating a greenhouse with it as well, all 3000 sq feet of it. Although, we did something a little unusual for the area and insulated the whole North side of the greenhouse as well as the end walls. Some of the people around here think we are a little odd for insulating our greenhouse, but I would rather insulate then burn more wood to heat the place. So between the house and the greenhouse we have to heat about almost 5000 sq feet of not as well insulated space as we would like. In the greenhouse we also added a 24 foot pool that helps to heat the greenhouse during the winter. It is heated by solar panels and some wood. By winter we hope to have it completely heated by solar.

We have no idea how many cords we use as it as never been stacked, but I know that we do have more than we have ever had. Hopefully this winter, now that we are stacking and measuring the wood we will find out how much we actually use in the winter. Plus it will be the first full winter with our new boiler.