Another Pallet Firewood Shed
Last summer, we built a pallet firewood shed in the backyard. It is 8ft x 8ft x 8ft. This holds about 4 cord of wood. I believe we have it stocked with about 3.5 cord. Given we burned close to five last year, we had to go and get wood from the Abby of Regina Laudis or beg acquaintances to deliver wood mid winter. This led to hastle and stress during the winter.
One minor example was having about a day's worth of dry wood remaining on the farm, we had to get more and the Abby was the only place that had some...remember last winter we had several weeks straight of sub-zero temperatures. So their plow truck was broke and my truck was sporting all american notreads. What a nightmare it was to get into their wood field. The most painful part was we had logs and limbs ready to burn spread all over the farm. With three feet of snow on all of it, there was no hope of finding and geting that wood cut up...we just had to buy it. This year will be different. Colt spent a great deal of time filling the old shed and the new shed. He has also centralized the uncut wood so we can get to it during the winter.
The north side of our house is a hill; about a 20 degree grade. We wanted to create a wood shed close to the house but not noticeable. Given there was nothing else we can do with this space, we decided to make a stepped pallet shed for our firewood. This shed is 16 feet long and about 6.5 ft tall. With these dimentions, we can house another 3 cord of wood which should see us through the winter. The one caveat to this is that we have a wood stove going into the greenhouse that will consume an unknown amount of wood this winter.
As we built the structure, our chickens were flocking under it. Egg laying is a constant concern with freerange hens. Every once-in-a-while, they find some nice new laying spot and we have to go searching and often cannot get to them. We had to add lattice to block the crawlspace under the back porch for instance. Here we took the scrap wood and filled every space they were able to get through.
Colt has filled this shed. A large part of the wood in here are mill and building scraps 2 inches thick. We also have about a cord of one inch slab cuts that we have cut down to the 28in length of our wood stove. I expect these will burn fairly fast, but they will burn hot. Given this is a large part of what fills this new shed, we aren't certain that it will be enough for the winter, however, we will have a very large pile of wood ready to get hacked into burnable sized logs. We also have 20 logs stacked out back for the mill. This year I will start cutting up the less desireable logs in the mill pile if we need more than the two sheds and current cut pile can provide...wish us luck!
One more observation on the topic of firewood: All the wood we purchased last year was rather small. I can only assume they are using multi-split wood splitters. With our Allnighter stove accepting 30 inch logs, the average size of the log at 12 inches does not fill the stove and burns much faster than a giant log. Also, we would have to load in about a dozen logs to fill the stove for the night. With the large logs colt split this summer, we should be able to add three and have it burn into mid-morning instead of 6am.
And just one more: Chimney cleaning. Clean your chimney monthly. Ok maybe you buy your wood from a great vendor. He has all hard wood and it seasons, covered for three years before they will even consider selling it. You also have an appropriate, new, and efficient stove. In this case, feel free to go 6 weeks to 2 months at the most. In general, the hardest part of cleaning the chimney is getting up on the roof. Many wood burners take this into account and have some sort of scaffolding/platform atop the roof to provide a safe spot to scrub from. Our ranch has a very gentle roof so I have not had issues. We keep the ladder in place on the back porch. We also have other considerations: For one, our stove is too big for our house. It is rated for a 3500 square foot house. We were originally planning to add a second story which would have hit that footage, however, we have now decided against the addition. Most days, we do not need to get the stove raging, which creates more creosote...some days alot more. If you were not aware, keeping your chimney at 300-475 degrees. We often run ours closer to 250 when the ambient temperature is above 35 degrees. A few times last year we burned wet wood (that was purchased in desperation. The vendor had warned me) and I had to clean the chimney twice a month.
How do I know it is time? Draft. When the chimney is clear, a small initial fire will begin to draft immediately. As it narrows, we get more smoke rolling out of the stove into the house. When it hits a precipace of creosote, the stove pipe joints will begin to weep smoke. There were signs prior, but "it will be fine one more day." Many chimney fires have been based on the at thought.
One time, years ago, we (as part of the fire department with two firetrucks monitoring the burn) were burning a brush pile for a member of our community. As the pile was raging. You know there is no bigger pyro than a firefighter. Well, as the pile was ragining, the neighbor from three doors down b-lined for us and began sharing his extreme distaste for how big a fire we had going. My Captain kurtly advised this man of our care for his concerns sending this concerned citizen storming off. A few weeks later, that man had to call 911 for the chimney fire that had extended into the wall. Of course we saved the house and most of that wall. That same captain was on that scene and he was sure to point out that cleaning his chimney that day three weeks ago would have been a much more valuable use of that time.
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