Hello! I'm new to the forum and very inexperienced with woodburning but SO excited to start. My husband and I are buying a Woodstock Keystone and converting to 100% wood heat from oil heat. We are unhooking our furnace so we can vent through the same chimney so we're committed.
We're currently building our hearth pad and will have the stove in about a month.
There is so much to learn and I'm having a hard time following all the terminology. Please help a newbie. We want to eventually cut all our wood. I'm thinking we'll need to buy seasoned wood for this coming year but want to start our wood pile for coming years. What is the cheapest/easiest way to do this?
I thought we could buy a truckload of logs and move from there. Maybe it's better to buy smaller logs and just split them, though. I don't know...what would you recommend? How many cords should we try to cut this year to get ahead?
This is my understanding of the process; please correct me if needed:
1). cut tree length log into 16" logs (with what? a chainsaw?). Is this called "bucking"?!
2). split logs into firewood pieces (with a splitter that we rent?)
3). stack firewood on pallets and cover with a roof to protect from rain
Is that the gist? What equipment is needed and what makes sense to buy vs rent?
I'll probably keep asking questions, but this is where I'm starting. Thanks in advance!
A few observations:
Chances are good that you cannot use the same chimney as you used for your furnace. A "wood appliance" requires a high temperature chimney in a specific size. Most furnace chimneys are not able to handle the high temperatures of a wood stove and are too small diameter. My gas furnace runs on a 4 inch chimney and is considered a large chimney for a gas burner around here.
Read the materials that come with your new stove. It will tell you the best length splits for running your stove. My own tells me the best size is 12 inches but I can fit a 16 inch split if I turn it sideways. It just won't give me the best fire that way.
1. Yes it is called bucking and you do it most often using a chain saw.
2. It is possible to use a splitter to split rounds into splits but few people will rent a splitter for all of their wood. The more popular ways to do it is either to split by hand using a good splitting maul or invest in a 22 ton splitter. I can hand split almost as fast as a splitter except for the few rounds that contain significant knots. Those can be split by using a sledge and wedges or they can be tossed aside until the build up of them is enough to warrant renting a splitter. Renting a splitter will pay for a new one in just a couple of years of rental fees which is why it is not a popular long term way to split all of your wood.
3. Yes stacking your firewood splits to let them dry properly is a necessity. Wood will be in your stacks for at least a year for soft woods and 2 years for hard woods.
As far as buying a log load, that will work if you do it far enough ahead of time. If you have a log load delivered tomorrow morning and get it cut/split and stacked this weekend you will have wood for the fall of 2017, not 2016. As far as how much wood you will need, it would be hard to guess but if you remove your conventional furnace I would not go into my first winter with less than 5 full cords of dry hardwoods. A full cord is a stack 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long, or an equivalent 128 cubic foot volume.
Your concept of buying seasoned wood would be great if such a thing was even possible. Wood sellers will often call wood "seasoned" if it has had a whole month or two to start drying after being cut to length. That stuff is not going into my stove and to me is not worth one penny more than "green" wood. If you burn that kind of wood you will have troubles and will be on the roof cleaning your chimney every couple of weeks to avoid a chimney fire.
Bucking means buying a chain saw, a few "felling wedges" and whatever tools you need to roll over logs so that you don't get your chain into the dirt. Most often that is a peavey or a cant hook but for small logs you can roll them by hand. If you are going to run a chain saw you will also want at least chaps for your legs and eye and ear protection. A chain saw can go right through a leg in just a few seconds so get the chain saw chaps and use them. Chain saws are basically as loud as a jet engine so hearing protection is a must and a chain saw throws tons of wood chips towards you so protect your eyes. If you are careful enough you could get through your first year of using a chain saw without buying sharpening tools but at least for a beginner I would recommend at least a tool like the Granberg file-n-joint filing guide and files to match your chain
or a sharpening tool like this one.
Splitting means buying a splitting maul, a couple of splitting wedges(very different from felling wedges) and a small sledge hammer.
