Formula for piled firewood ??????????

[Jakers]

Anyone ever come across a good way to figure out the amount of firewood in a loose tossed pile of firewood? I barely have time to split my wood for the year let alone stack it. ive always just guessed at how much i use by how many times i have to fill my crate for the house and trailer for the shop. both hold about half a cord but i would like to know how much is in my pile a little more accurately. just wondering is all.

in all actuality, if anyone has a legal number of cubic ft for tossed wood from some state, i could take it from there. or a percentage of loss would work too.

 

[homemade]

Weight would be one way to do it. But I doubt you have a scale in your property. Although you could weight if in the truck before you get home. I believe there are charts for green and dry weights of a cord of any specific wood.

That being said either stack it, guess, or cut and weigh it by the truck load.

 

[BirchReaper]

i suggest taking the time to stack it or it wont dry

 

[Chainsaw_Maniac]

Weight is accurate if you know the species. There are tables online which (for example) tell you a cord of green hard maple weighs this much, a cord of dry hard maple weighs this much, etc. This becomes very useless when you have a mix of different types of wood or you don't know how dry it is. (Disclaimer: I use this only to estimate how much weight I am towing).

Now, if you have a box of any type with parallel sides (ex. a dump truck or trailer) and where the top is level, you can calculate the number of cubic feet. The trouble is that it will NOT be 128 cubic feet as though it were stacked. I find that you need to go up to 50% more cubic feet to get a cord.

In other words, 192 cubic feet of loose wood will stack up to at least a cord.

Or if I have a 14 foot trailer that could hold 3 cord stacked, I can only dump 2 cord loose.

I'm very interested what other people think of the loose to stacked ratio.