Firewood Storage

[wroughtn_harv]

<font color=blue>Also, any idea how much one of your bins weigh when full?</font color=blue>

I was once told to figure five thousand pounds a cord for hardwood.

That little piece of knowledge has more than once made me wince big time. I see a one ton flatbed truck idling in from Oklahoma with three cords on it and the first thought across my mind is to not be in front of it. You know right up front he's seven to eight thousand over his GVW. Even worse is the sixteen foot angle iron trailer behind a suburban with two cords on it and you know the trailer doesn't have brakes.

 

[AndyR]

You could build a shed roof type (slant top or peaked in the middle) but you just have to make sure it is either heavy enough not to blow off or had clips/chains to fasten it to the pallet. Keep you eaves very short and you should still be able to fork it.

My goal (and this may be some time down the road) is to construct a heating plant behind the workshop and have it be able to hold 5 cords of wood along with a wood fired boiler and supplemental solar on the roof (so I don't have to burn wood 'till it gets real cold).

 

[AndyR]

That one would be Rapunzel - Pun for short. She is the shy one. The other two like to "assist" me with tractor work "just in case I flush a few mice or chipmunks".

I've been doing a lot of timber framing projects this summer and have to get caught up with work on the house. I looked at the tractor the other day and realized that I only have gotten about 15 hours of seat time this year - but I had 150 last year! Just don't have as much time on-line as I used to either.

 

[knucklehead]

Andy- you have a nice place there.

You are doing pretty much the same as what I'd like to do with the pallets. We stack our wood on them and cover with tarps. We have different types, and some have quite heavy main skid pieces (about 4" square), which makes me think about simply boring them and dropping short pieces of pipe into the holes. I like your 2x4 frame for stacking, though.

When Service Merchandise closed in town, I went in and bought a couple rolling stock racks, the kind with the two larger wheels in the center, and two swivels on each end. They are made out of angle stock with hardwood inserts, and have hooped, removeable tubular ends. They measure about 15" wide by 60" long with 50" ends. We could load it with a quarter cord if we heaped it. We used to bring up 5 cord behind the house every year with a garden cart - good for us and for the kids - bad for the grass and messy, also requiring additional shoveling to keep clear. Now we're going to use a similar setup as yours, with the rolling racks for the inside of the cellar (daylight basement). We'll bring the pallet up and load the racks.

How high do you dare to go with the pallets? I would think 3 high would be fine, 4 maybe if the firewood helped support the weight.

Here's Tucker - 18 lbs. We watched him stalk a deer once - the deer spotted him and there was a little standoff while they checked each other out. He purrs like a lion - you can hear it across the room. He's 15 and still brings home mice and calls to us to show them. He stood up to a 110 lb German Shepherd last month, and now they have an understanding when Big Boy comes to visit.

 

[knucklehead]

Paul - those things just seem to leap out, for some reason. Plus Andy has the kind of barn I'd think is cool - a bank barn, I think, so I studied it for a while.

By the way, I've always noticed the type of L&G tractor you have seemed pretty rugged. I'm going to surf over to your site and see if I can get more info, but what kind of engine is in those - also trannies, etc.? They seem to go for less around here than the "mainstream" stuff. I'm interested in Simplicity, Bolens, and Case for a rugged tractor that could haul, mow, till, and do things were we don't quite need the regular tractor.

 

[knucklehead]

Andy - I just re-read your reply about the rack roof and discovered I had missed the part about the heating plant! I have a Tarm (MB 55 @ 140,000 Btu/hr) in the cellar, and I'd love to get it out. It heats up and smolders for as long as it runs. This unit really needs a reservoir to heat efficiently. I have talked with the Tarm folks in Lyme, NH more than once, and they say the only way to use the unit efficiently is with heat storage. They sell <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.woodboilers.com/storage.html>this</A> as a kit for a few grand. It's designed like a swimming pool, to be transported and set up anywhere, and is basically a sheetmetal skin with insulation and a liner, into which is put 3/4" copper coils - all stuff one could make for way less than 3 grand. I was thinking about using a septic tank, pouring my own concrete tank, or finding a clean used steel tank.

Problem is, who wants that in their cellar, taking up space? So I naturally think about moving the whole thing out. If I am building a barn, and want power out there anyway, then it's only a matter of working out the pipeline - plus if I'm doing a pipeline, then I should also add a domestic water line to the barn, shouldn't I? And if it is installed in a corner of Future Barn, it can also be used to heat the shop part of same. And maybe even a little domestic H2O for Lordy knows what out there - like a shower and a little pre-degrease before entering the house. You can see that this train of thought is a real cool ride!

I don't know how far away this project is, if it ever happens. I know I won't continue to burn a stinky fire with a stack temp below 200F just to heat the house. I'll sell it and install a black iron radiant unit, and make up a domestic hot water preheater to set beside it and keep the oil boiler happy. But I'd like to do something with the Tarm.

How far into thinking about this are you?

 

[s1120]

Mark,
No info on my web site yet about the tractors. Here is a link to a post awile ago where I talked about them..

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=lawn&Number=169221&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1#Post169221>http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=lawn&Number=169221&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1#Post169221</A>

They are a real tough little tractor. I love them.

 

[AndyR]

Well I have a mighty big stack of jobs to get done before then but the heating plant idea has been growing in my mind for at least a year now. We currently have (from east to west in the whole connected structure) oil fired hot air, oil fired steam, soapstone wood stove and propane HVAC, AND an unfinished workshop. My hope is to convert the steam system to hot water, add air exchanger coils to the 2 forced air systems and figure out what I'm going to do in the shop. The barn is indeed a bank barn (42x83) and what you can't see in that picture is the small barn (workshop), connecting barn (office), cape and East house. I hope to locate the "plant" behind the east end of the big barn/west end of the small barn. I would cut into the bank so the base level would be about 4 foot above ground - an easy height for the loader and pallets and tall enough to keep the boiler and storage up-hill of most of the heat exchangers (except for the workshop). I had been entertaining the idea of a well insulated heat storage tank. Solar panels would be along the roof of the structure and would not be readily visible from the rest of the property if all goes well. I want to have enought capacity to run some loops under the lower level of the barn (heated tractor bay!) and maybe even under the driveway if I decide I have way too much time on my hands. I've been collecting info but haven't gotten down to final system design yet.

The big project is to get the bathroom and kitchen done, get the workshop done, and finish the office, then take down the big barn, fix it right and put it back up (that last one is a 3-4 year project). Oh yeah - and earn a living while I'm at it.

 

[knucklehead]

Firewood Storage/Barn Design

Man, Andy, do I hear that. I am just getting near what I think is the end of major projects on a 28x36 house built in 1965. I have nowhere near the size of buldings and heat sources you do, but we did add two BR's and a bath via a 32' shed dormer upstairs, built a two flue chimney up through the middle of everything, (kept the old one for a cellar woodstove), relocated a new oil boiler (and installed the Tarm), and this Summer, just finished rebuilding 16' of the 28' daylight basement wall that had rotted - that was fun, with two stories on top of it to support. I currently have a 24' square garage that contains things arranged so tightly that it may be generating it's own gravitational field, and of course the Blue Barn, which I have earlier mentioned. My next "project" is outbuildings....I hope.

Maybe you can help me with this project. I have been designing and redesigning, and altering the location of future outbuildings in my head since we got here 17 years ago. If I left all the stakes and strings I have set up while dreaming, we wouldn't be able to navigate the back yard. I don't think our forefathers took so much time to dope out what they wanted to do, they just knew they didn't want to walk forever, and took wind and weather into account. I want to build something that looks like it's been here longer than the house. I think I am settling on a long pitched roof shed (16x24 or so) with the ridge running N-S, and an open shed/barn running W-E, such as the above file pic of one I snapped at <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.kingslanding.nb.ca/Birds.jpg>King's Landing</A> in New Brunswick - BTW, you would really like it there, and I highly recommend the drive for any of my TBN or CBN brothers & sisters. <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.kingslanding.nb.ca/home.html>Here's</A> their web site. We've been twice, and we're ready to go again.

Back to the present, I think I'm settling on the NS "tool shed" and WE open "equipment shed". The tool shed would approach the E end of the open shed from the S, forming an L that is the mirror of the typed capital L, only the long leg (open shed) runs WE and the short leg NS. I would have open space between them with a wood storage area under a roof off the open shed. That would allow wind to pass between and not swirl, and also make pushing snow a lot easier. Hope this ain't mind boggling - I think you can visualize it. Any observations or suggestions would be much appreciated. I am planning on stick building the tool shed, but am contemplating balloon framing on a 10' wall to get height upstairs. Timber framing would also nicely suit my needs in this design. I also am thinking about using pole framing for the open shed. My desire is to timber frame everything, but I am assuming timber framing is more $$. Another place where you could comment.

I noticed their shed has beams running across the openings, which you can see. I am interested in using PT 6x6's this way, and regular framing on top of them, or some combination of pole framing anchored to the base. I have wondered about doing this for a long time after seeing old timber framed barns - a hybrid pole/timber/stick built design, combining the strength and simplicity of pole/timber framed methods with modern materials. I think about using the timber frame method of building a "bent" but using poles and strong full dimension bolted girts instead of traditional materials and joininery, and then standard framing methods for the rest of the rafter/wall work. We could avoid the hassles of hole drilling in rocky areas, and retain the strength and openness of timber framing, I think.

Good talking to you

 

[bellweather]

Here's my setup. as you can see I'm still learning the art of stacking wood.