At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

I love how detailed you are. I chuckle to my self reading your posts. Are you sure your not a police detective or some secret agent and your other job is a cover story?

Shhhhhhhh! It's supposed to be a secret. Thanks for the encouraing note. Obed

 

[clemsonfor]

We put pressure treated wood spacers between the 2x4s and the concrete. Please re-read the post and you'll see where I mentioned it. There is also a picture that shows the spacer behind the 2x4.We have a high-efficiency fireplace. It's a Quadrafire 7100. Please read up on it. It heats our entire house - 2100 SF all on one floor. The great room/living room where the fireplace is located stays between 72 F and 75 F, even in the mornings before the fireplace has been reloaded. Since I've started stoking the FP at night with hickory, the bedrooms, which are the coldest rooms in the house, are 68 F, even in the early mornings. We don't run the heat pump or gas furnace when the FP is burning. The only times we've turned on the heat pump or furnace this winter has been when the outdoor temps were too warm to burn a fire in the house.

Yes, a heat stove can put out more heat in the room. However, I can't imaging wanting more heat in our our living room. We struggle some times to keep the great room cool enough. I figure 72F in the great room and 68F in the bedrooms to be an almost ideal heat distribution without using a furnace.

Obed

Sorry i did miss some things as sometimes on long posts i kind of breeze thorugh them and skip a few sentences. I am sorry. You put a fan in your halls or in the cool rooms and push that cold air into the living room so the heat leaves that room, also dont run the blower as high it will help a lot.

Sorry i missed your other things.

 

[Obed]

Depending on how long those logs are you could save your back even further if you chained a log and pulled it out of the pile to about the tipping point and then cut off sections to length, (say 18-24") and let them fall to the ground, and then split the sections, instead of wrestling 6-8' log lengths and then having to transport them and then cut to fireplace size, and then split.

I've considered doing what you've suggested. If I cut the logs to FP lengths at the log pile, I would want to split them right there and stack them in a pallet. I started to do that one day but found that I didn't have enough room beside the log pile to pull logs, maneuver the tractor, cut, split, and stack the firewood. We have a large pile of wood chips close to the log pile that is in the way. Thus, I've been transporting 6' to 9' logs to my splitting and stacking area close to the house. I don't cut the logs to FP length, i.e. 18", at the log pile because then I would then have to pick up each heavy FP length log multiple times. Normally I can easily roll the 6' to 9' logs downhill onto the tractor forks. Unfortunately, the other day I misjudged the weight of the hickory tree and had to work harder than normal to roll its logs onto the tractor forks.
Obed

 

[Coyote machine]

Have you thought about MOVING the chips pile
What are you thinking is the general condition of that wood pile regarding moisture content?
If the moisture content is as high as I think it is I would split lots of that wood and stack it somewhere to DRY for next season, preferably under cover of some sort.

 

[Obed]

Have you thought about MOVING the chips pile
What are you thinking is the general condition of that wood pile regarding moisture content?
If the moisture content is as high as I think it is I would split lots of that wood and stack it somewhere to DRY for next season, preferably under cover of some sort.

The logs at the back of the pile were cut 2 years ago. The bark on some of them is wet if we have had rain but the inside of the wood is dry. After splitting them and stacking them under plastic, they are dry in a couple weeks. Most of the wet bark falls off during splitting so just the outside surface of the log is damp when I stack it. The uncut logs in the pile have seasoned reasonably well in the 2 years they've been stacked. I cut up an oak off of the front of the pile that was felled this summer. That log is still green. That log will wait until next season before it gets burned.

Yes I know I know that not all my wood is ideal for burning this season. I'm doing the best I can with what I have. Next year I should be in very good shape.

And I'm very familiar with creosote and the related issues.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Search For the Holy Grail of Firewood Stacking

The box pallets worked extremely well. I can't imagine a better way to stack and transport firewood at our place. However, we haven't found anymore box pallets. I counted the logs in our log pile. We have over 80 logs, each which is 20+ feet long. That equates to about 120 pallets. It is obvious that the box pallet option will not meet this volume of firewood.

This morning I tried something new. When I told my wife about my idea, she was doubtful. Undaunted, I created a pallet basket using chicken wire that I had lying around. I stapled the wire around the edges of the pallet. I had some loose pieces of chicken wire that were not long enough to reach all the way around the pallet so I spliced some pieces together. When looking at the wire attached to the pallet, I did not like the way the wire looked; it looked as if the top of the chicken wire would just flail outwardly and not support the firewood. So when splicing the pieces together, I made the circumference of the top of the chicken wire a little smaller than the circumference at the bottom of the chicken wire.

At night when I stoke the fireplace before going to bed, I put the 18" pieces in the FP positioned in parallel with the glass FP doors. Then I like to put a short fat log beside the stack of 18" pieces and perpendicular to them. The short fat pieces are about 12" long. However, 12" long pieces of firewood are difficult to stack. It's hard to stack them very high without the stack's falling over.

I had some hickory logs to split so I used them to test my new pallet basket. I stacked the wood in the pallet, without being precise in my stacking. I had purposely cut the logs into two different lengths, 18" and 12". I filled the pallet with all the wood my tractor will reasonably carry. When I picked up the pallet and moved it, the wood in the pallet stayed wonderfully in place. There was no hint of instability in the pallet of wood, even when the tractor was on uneven terrain.

I think I've found a winning solution! This technique will work for any normally sized pallet. The pallets don't all have to be made exactly the same. The materials are extremely cheap. It's reproducible. The pallet baskets are reusable. The wood doesn't need to be carefully stacked. The firewood pieces don't have to be a uniform length. Short pieces of firewood stack just as well as longer pieces.

I can't wait until I get to fill up my next pallet basket!

 

[Brushhill dave]

Hard lesson learned this week! Last winter we replaced our fireplace insert with a Regency stove insert! Best decision we ever made. The problem comes in the flue, it's a stainless corrugated 5" pipe. Borrowing my FIL chimney brush I( not knowing any better) stuffed the brush down in the pipe ohhh about 16", and there it stayed! This type of flue liner is not meant to be brushed clean but have a chemical type log burned to get rid of the creosote. Just a heads up!

 

[955Lincoln]

Search For the Holy Grail of Firewood Stacking

I think I've found a winning solution! This technique will work for any normally sized pallet. The pallets don't all have to be made exactly the same. The materials are extremely cheap. It's reproducible. The pallet baskets are reusable. The wood doesn't need to be carefully stacked. The firewood pieces don't have to be a uniform length. Short pieces of firewood stack just as well as longer pieces.

I can't wait until I get to fill up my next pallet basket!

I think you may be onto something and I'm looking foward to more feedback as you use them. If you can process 2 years worth of wood that should be fine and you won't need 120 pallets.

 

[Obed]

I backed my trailer into my garage doorframe today.

Ouch! There is just barely enough room to turn my truck and 28 ft (22' bed + 6 ft toungue) trailer around on our parking pad but it is tight. This morning when backing the trailer, I forgot that the ramps in the up position stick out a foot behind the trailer. While backing the trailer I felt it hit something (my garage). Fortunately I didn't do any structural damage. I chipped of a corner of a piece of brick and dented the overhead garage door frame.

I feel very fortunate that the damage was not worse. If the trailer had of been a couple inches to the left, I would have hit the overhead garage door and likely destroyed it. When I hit the brick, I felt the jolt with my trailer which prompted me to stop. I would have felt nothing if I hit the overhead garage door and might have stopped as quickly.

My wife was very gracious about the uh-oh.

 

[Obed]

Trailer Suggestions Please
Hitting the garage with my big trailer made up my mind that I am going to buy a small trailer that is easy to hitch up and maneuver. Today, I carried our riding lawnmower to the repair shop on our big trailer rated to carry 12,000 lbs. Besides being overkill, hauling small stuff with the big trailer is quite a hassle. When hitched up to my crew cab duelly, the truck and trailer rig is about 50 ft long and can be quite difficult to maneuver in a lot of places. The only thing for which I really need the big trailer is to transport my tractor.

Here are the things I would want to do with a smaller trailer:

• - Transport my riding lawn mower
• - Carry boards and other home maintenance supplies from the store
• - Pull firewood around our property using my tractor
• - Possibly haul off limbs and other tree and brush debris

Do you guys have any suggestions on what I should look for in a trailer? I would love the trailer to be light weight.