Original oil painting by: Grandfather’s wife
Grandfather says he doesn’t mind a little frumpiness indoors, but the missus wants only clean firewood in the house.
Well, OK; Grandfather will have to abandon the woodpile and store the firewood under roof.
No spare roof onsite?
The missus says: “Well, build a woodshed.”
Well, OK:
Scaffold board laid over ladders so corrugated composition roofing can be fastened to the purlins.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is a nonagenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here. This article was originally published on 22 March 2018.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Yep RD, your wife is right. IF you’re gonna seriously burn wood for heat, you definitely need to plan for handling your wood.
I built a set of four sheds over the years similar to yours, except mine are mobile when empty so I can deploy them at various spots around our 60ac of woods, depending on where I’m thinning or clearing.
Each shed is on 6×6 wood skids with a wood floor and 3 sided like yours. They measure 6’6″ x 12′ inside, back wall about 6′, open front about 8′. They each hold about 4 cords when I stack plumb into the rafters.
Been working this week on re-filling the last one, which will be wood for the winter of 2020-21. We use 4-6 cords/yr. Each fall, we use our tractor front bucket to haul the contents of a shed into the basement and stack it there, so there will be at least 4 cords in the basement by Thanksgiving, plus any left from the previous year.
From the basement stack, wood goes on a home made dumb waiter I built, lifted to the main floor of the house where our stove is located. Out of that car right into the stove…..no mess tracking wood inside.
Ashes go out in a bucket into a 55gal drum in the garage….a winter’s worth of burning fills that drum by spring. Then the drum load goes to the compost pile, and eventually the garden. Wood ash is a good source of potash and lime.
Nice system, Andy!
(Andy also sent me some pictures, which I wish you-all could see … )
We have a 4-5 year rotation system, and usually have 22 full cords (128 cubic feet per) under cover and in sheds with good air circulation. Although I installed electric in-wall heat for backup, we never use it. One shed is a nice post and beam design with a concrete floor so the wood stays dry. Presently bleeding down one side to house a new Kubota tractor on order. The plan for next year is to convert a fixed porch railing to a gate, and then every week or so bucket up some wood with the tractor to the storage area outside the front door, about 5 feet from the wood stove. It all looks pretty tidy and goes with our west coast shingle sided house.
If we don’t get alder under cover within a few months it will spalt and go conky. Fir and hemlock stays sound for several years, but it just makes sense to get it under cover. Why waste all that work getting the wood in? Wood heat is the absolute best (isn’t it?), provided you have your own source and don’t have to buy it. Otherwise…… not worth it. Down Island, wood is now going for over $250 a cord….sometimes $300.
Luckily my wife loves our wood stoves and our systems.
You and Tennesee Andy have very impressive wood heating systems, Paul! As with your system, we also have electric baseboard heat which we don’t use
IMO, As with so many ways of life that were common in the past, wood heating will be increasingly used as our modern ways become too expensive. It may be neccesary to thwart Henny-Penny utopians who will try to ban woodstoves to “save the world”. I wonder how many woodstoves burning all winter long it would take to emit the “polutants” caused by any one of the wildfires in California?
My system continues to work well for me as I age because there are no steps at my house’s entrances. I use a wood hauling cart to wheel my wood from the shed to the stove.
Plus, RD, wood heat is classified as carbon neutral. Certainly this would not apply everywhere, but if you believe what you read? 🙂 In our case we planted a lot of trees and leave the wooded areas alone. Currently we are burning what we call logging cull. This is the long butts (short ends) of logs cut the wrong length for their grade, and log chunks that have shattered when felled. I buy a a massive chunk truck load of about 16-17 cords for $400. Most of it is old growth hemlock, cyprus, with some fir. Some of the pieces are 5’feet or more in diameter so I built a splitter about 10 years ago that lifts the rounds up onto the bed where they can be worked into into stove size. $400 delivered to my work site is cheaper than I could go cut it on our own property. When this current housing building frenzy slows down that will be the end of that and we’ll go back to selective cutting. We buy one of these loads every year or so and split it between 3 households.
Besides, it is all fun, satisfying, and great exercise….plus saves money. This winter we had many days of -10 or so Centigrade, and 4 feet of snow….when we usually are much warmer with no snow. 4′ of snow means downed power lines and frozen water lines. Many west coasters never had to worry about this kind of cold. Maybe it is the new normal with our unstable jetstream? But the wood stove means a cozy house when the power is out, with no noisy generator blasting away.
Take care. I hope to keep working like you continue to do. It is an inspiration. My 94 year old neighbour still fires up his Stihl and heats with wood. Amazing! He has a heat pump ordered but will continue to use his wood stove.
As I have written so often in “Grandfather Says”: Recognize and exploit your opportunities as they lie, so to speak. Be inventive.
Your way is admirable – thanks for sharing it.
Our wood supply is the more than abundant windfalls from our 400 acres or so of upland hardwood. Oak, hard maple, hickory, wild cherry and, right now, ash, which is in process of being wiped out by the Green Ash Borer beetle. Once again, thanks, China.
Actually, Paul, I’m physically unable to work anymore. My young neighbors cut and stack my firewood for me, in return for hunting rights. Game animals are abundant here.
Clean firewood is good. You don’t want to hear Grandmother screaming because a lizard came in on the wood. It warmed up, and is running around the house. lol
Lizards would be welcome (comparatively). Mice, spiders and termites are not …