Moving Firewood

[crossfire190]

Thank you everyone for your great ideas and suggestions.

Please keep sharing!!

 

[3RRL]

There have been some great suggestions so far.
So how do you guys get your wood UP to the level where the stove is?
For example, where there are stairs or steps to a deck or porch?
Mine is like 8' up to the first floor. Any suggestions?

 

[SkunkWerX]

With a larger tractor you could palletize the wood and then use q/a pallet forks. That might still work on the BX but you would need to use clamp on pallet forks Untitled Document .

Another option might be some sort of trailer but you would still need to hand load and unload it.

Norm

Palletizing is similar to what I would suggest, and have done.

I palletize the split wood. On my old tractor I used the Rear-mounted Carry-all and could palce the pallet by the back porch.


later on, I built a little vinyl sided "pallet carport" , so i could slide the pallet into it, and kept the wood dry and still near the door. After woodburning season, the "pallet carport" got forklifted away from the house, back behind the shed.

i don't know if the BX has the lift power out there beyond the bucket to lift a full pallet of firewood? Well, at least not the stacks I made. I tried to make the pallet-full equal to one weeks worth of wood.
Best thing I ever did was get a very efficient stove, Jotul. Cut my total wood burned by 25% to 33% less = less cuting, splitting, hauling.

 

[leslie428]

Here is how I do it! I use a home made trailer with a generic ATV 250CC ST model that I bought from China at the same time I purchased the Jinma 284LE, this was in 2005. I installed a permanent plywood insert so the trailer would not be dented and the paint chipped. I can throw any log or block into it and not worry. Yes I hand load and unload, but it is a good pass time for me. I also use it to get wood on my 110 acre farm. (no animals, other then my children, this is really just a country home.)

 

[SPYDERLK]

Bucket extension like this ??

I have one small area in my driveway where the snow can drift to 4 or 5 feet if the wind is just right (even with a small snowfall). A snow plow just wouldn't work in that area.

So I made an 18" extension for my loader bucket. Really increases the capacity.

Works well for firewood (if you stack it)

Works VERY good for mulch!

Four bolts and it's off.

Nice extension. This is what I was thinking.
Crossfire, if the bucket is big enuf just treat the wood like dirt so you never have to stack. I think extending the bottom lip only and having the wood dumped on a hard surface could eliminate hand work. If you can come up with a hard well drained surface, like a grating set on sand, it would let you scoop effectively at the bottom of the pile. A few more trips than hand loading - but more like entertainment than work.

larry​

 

[Rara Avis]

There have been some great suggestions so far.
So how do you guys get your wood UP to the level where the stove is?
For example, where there are stairs or steps to a deck or porch?
Mine is like 8' up to the first floor. Any suggestions?

Timberwolf Wood Processing Equipment

 

[Rara Avis]

Scott VT - That is correct. I have a Bilco Door and with my small bucket a load will drop in nicely.

Any thoughts on how well the grapple would do to pick up the wood from a pile? At this point, I have my wood delivered and it is dumped into a pile. Previously, I would stack the wood and then move it as needed. But if I can skip the stacking step, that would save a lot of time.

If your steps are metal, be careful about dropping wood on them routinely...

 

[SpringHollow]

For a few years, I used pallet stacks of wood. One pallet on the bottom and one pallet vertically on each side. Cross bracing was on the back side and top to keep the side pallets in place. Go into the woods with the rack on the 3 pt pallet forks. Cut wood and stack on pallet then take to where I want to dry it. Later on, I take them and stack them tight near the boiler. Sometimes, I would bind the stack of wood with a small strap when transporting the pallet from one place to another. The pallets would last about 4 years.

I have some plastic pallets now and they would work nice with this setup. However, I stiopped using this arrangement when I started to heat exclusively with wood. I would have needed to build too many of them. Besides, I actually enjoy doing firewood (sick, I know). Right now, I stack in the woods on plastic pallets then grab with the trailer and restack next to the boiler.

As far as wood boilers go, if you have one with good forced combustion that burns cleanly (secondary combustion chambers, etc.), it is nice to be able to clean up the property by burning some wood that you would never think of burning inside. Burning at over 2000 degrees prevents smoke and creosote issues. If your boiler belches out black smoke like some I have seen, it is either designed poorly or being operated poorly.

Ken

 

[dmccarty]

I palletized my firewood for two seasons. We have a perfect spot on the back porch that has a 6-8 foot roof overhang. We would have to throw a tarp over the wood if it was blowing rain but it worked pretty well....

The problem?

M I C E!

My wood piles have loads of mice in them. I have found three mice nest so far this year. And we have not burned much wood since its been so warm. We stopped bringing the pallets to the back porch because of the mess and the mice. We had 4-5 mice in the house a year or so ago and they got in because of the palletized wood. What a ^&*() mess they made. No more palletized wood.

The wood piles are on the pallets covered by tarps. I just fill up our big wheel barrow every 3-4 days. It keeps the mess down and no mice. Thankfully the wood is stored uphill from the house. A few years ago it was downhill from the house and I would push the wheelbarrow UPHILL if I did not want to start the tractor. Its good excercise!

I like the idea of the shrink wrapped palletized wood and I think it would be somewhat easy to workout a system to slide it into the basement. But what to do about the danged mice?

Later,
Dan

 

[jimmer2880]

I keep my wood inside of a brick & window foyer (it's more of a rear porch, but whatever...). Anyway, because I can only store about 1 cord of wood there, and it's hand-stacked each time, I haven't had a mouse problem from the wood.

I can't imagine using a wheelbaro to transport it. We would go through at least 1 load a day.

I used to have a small 4x4 trailer, that I put 4' sides and a tilt-up roof on. I would load it up with wood and drive it right up to the back porch steps. It worked very well. If I ever loose my foyer storage, I'll have to build something like that again. Easy to stack, easy to transport & stayed nice & dry.