"wood area"

[Jon E]

Hi all,

Just looking for comments or maybe ideas. I am trying to clean up my yard somewhat. I have my wood boiler about 50' off the back of my house and right next to it is a decent-looking 8 x 16 wood shed. Right now I've got piles, not even neat stacks, of firewood all over the property (3 acres of generally woods) and it's getting to look like a real mess.

I thought that putting my firewood cutting area and wood stacks for next year, right next to and behind the wood boiler would be OK, but then I wind up with a big mess right near the house. So now I get the idea that I should find a place on the property that's maybe out of immediate sight of the house, set up a clearing and a wood cutting and stacking area, and set up next year's and following years wood away from the house and wood boiler. Then, in the summer, I can load my wood shed from the "away" stacks and keep the mess out of sight of the house. I do tend to have some moisture problems, being in the woods, as well as issues with carpenter ants and chipmunks. I think that not consolidating the woodcutting operations will solve a lot of the critter problems. I can store 6 cords in my woodshed, which gets me from Thanksgiving all the way through to early May. Until November, I can easily haul "temporary" stacks with my tractor, and after May, it's time to reload the shed.

Any thoughts? I've got the space to do it, I just thought that having it all in one place would be convenient, but then again, it may not be. My dad always cuts and stacks wherever he happens to be in the woods (he's got 27 acres of woods) and then goes around in the fall with his Jeep and trailer and collects his little piles and fills his woodshed next to his house. I always thought that was inefficient, but maybe he has the right idea.

 

[Steve NW WI]

I like cutting wood and burning wood, but I don't like hauling wood. I keep my stacks in the yard, with one just 10' outside the back door for those cold days when I don't want to have to start anything to haul wood.

My advice is to keep it as neat as you can, and as close to the stove as possible. I have cut a lot of oak with carpenter ants in it, once it's drying, they go away. I can't help with chipmunks. My cat would love to help you, but she says it's too far to walk...

 

[Snowchief]

Maybe stack next year's pile in a line behind the woodshed? Would it be out of sight there from the house?

Since we're brainstorming here, maybe you have or could fab up some kind of heavy-duty dray that you could use to skid full bolts out of the woods and right behind your shed, then dice it up and process it all right there. Seems like it'd be easier to roll bolts onto a dray than to pick up split piles all over the place in the mud and snow of May.

If you consolidate the pile behind the shed you could build some kind of semi-permanent racks back there, also. Seems more streamlined from what I'm picturing, just an idea.

 

[Straightgrain]

A "man-cave" away from the house seems interesting....A lean-to, lots of recycled windows, outdoor stove, old recliner, solar lighting, alternate tool box and a variable intercom to the house.

My "Man-cave" is a tree house about 2 hundred yards from the house, no intercom but good cell service.

I find myself too often cramped up on the acre around the house, I try to spread out but most of my property is on an eastern slope. Every level spot has a deck of next year's wood. Every fall, there is wood all around the house anywhere there is cover.

The closer you get to the house, the neater the piles should be.

My neighbor (whom I learned to watch) says "always throw/stack firewood in the direction of the stove".

 

[Butch(OH)]

I am using the two woodshed system myself. One at the farm where we do 90% of our cutting and one built around the OWB. We move wood from one to the other in the summer on pleasent days and early fall if need be. Works well for us. As for ugly piles cluttering up the property I would like to suggest that you stack all of your wood, processed or not and "pile" none of it. Stacks are neat appearing and my experiance (with bad back) is that is the small amount of extra effort need to stack wood as opposed to thowing it in a pile is more than offset in ease in retreval. I can reload a large pick up load from a stack at the farm with very little effort as copmpared to picking it all up off the ground at ankle level as one must do form a "pile". Even if I owned a dump trailer I would leave a board at the tailgate for the wood to hit instead of falling out and simply pick the wood off the end of the bed and stack it instead of dumping it in a pile. You might be able to tell here that I hate wood "piles" LOL

The farm shed for wet wood
<IMG SRC=http://i36.tinypic.com/2qwieyx.jpg>

The OWB shed for dry
<IMG SRC=http://i9.tinypic.com/4zcmsxx.jpg>