Firewood storage

[hutchman]

Now you guys are scaring me! I'm in the planning stages of our new house and my plan was to have a boiler room in the basement where the wood gasification furnace and water tanks for thermal storage would go. Was planning on having a double door to the outside where I could use the tractor to drop pallets of wood just inside the door. The gasification furnace requires wood to be at a certain moisture content so all the youtube videos I've seen have folks keeping a few cords of seasoned wood (that dried somewhere else) in the boiler room for a few weeks to hit the final moisture content level and then rotate the properly dried stuff through the furnace.

I didn't think about bugs or critters. So I'm inviting chaos if I store wood indoors?

There would be an inside door to the boiler room in the basement too so when you need to fire up you don't have to walk outside to get to it. I originally thought of one of those outdoor wood boilers but the family isn't too keen on that if I'm not around. They aren't going to go out in the cold night in rain or snow to throw a log on.

 

[TnAndy]

Been using the basement as pictured for 30 years and never had a problem. Can't guarantee you won't, but I think the potential problems are overrated. Will you get a few beetles and spiders ? Sure. Part of life. You want sterile, move into a space craft.

 

[hutchman]

Just did some reading up on the hearth.com site. Sounds like lots of folks do what I was planning. Appears the key is having the wood properly seasoned before bringing it indoors.

The room I'm planning on doing this in will be specifically built for this purpose (wood boiler room) so hopefully if there are bugs they won't actually be getting into the house.

 

[mbohuntr]

I built these to move wood from the sheds to a my greenhouse and shop. I figure they hold a 1/3 of a cord, heaped up a little, and 1000-1200lbs full. You could cut this down to 32" tall (keeping modular cuts on the expanded metal to avoid waste) instead of 48, and get in the 600-700lb range.

That's a little closer to what I need, I need the bucket on the tractor for snow removal, so I'm going to put some clamp on forks on it near the ends for strength. Thanks!

 

[TnAndy]

Hutchman,

One thing you might consider instead of a pair of swinging doors is a regular roll up garage door, then put an opener on it. That's the way mine is setup....(in fact, I have a multi button opener that does the main house garage, the basement door, the shop door, and the main entrance gate).... and it's nice to be able to drive up to the door, hit the opener from the tractor seat, and roll on in, or at least set your pallet in the door, then back away.

You may not appreciate the effort save now (OK, call it laziness if you will...ahahahaa...but there is PLENTY of work to do without creating the dang stuff !) but trust me, when you hit your 60's-70's, and you keep putting off that "parts replacement surgery", every time you have to get up and down off the seat, you WILL appreciate it !

 

[TnAndy]

That's a little closer to what I need, I need the bucket on the tractor for snow removal, so I'm going to put some clamp on forks on it near the ends for strength. Thanks!

Put yourself a quick attach deal on your loader so you can flip two levers, and switch between forks and bucket in 30 seconds. BEST move you'll ever make, doubles the use of your front loader. Forks are more handy than a bucket. And bucket mounted forks lose a lot of lifting capacity by moving the load out the distance of the bucket.

There is a whole thread going on using forks here on TBN......go check it out.

 

[Parkanzky]

We made a new rack this past weekend:

Untitled by parkanzky

Untitled by parkanzky, on Flickr

Way overbuilt, but it's out of steel he had laying around.

 

[hutchman]

Hutchman,

One thing you might consider instead of a pair of swinging doors is a regular roll up garage door, then put an opener on it. That's the way mine is setup....(in fact, I have a multi button opener that does the main house garage, the basement door, the shop door, and the main entrance gate).... and it's nice to be able to drive up to the door, hit the opener from the tractor seat, and roll on in, or at least set your pallet in the door, then back away.

You may not appreciate the effort save now (OK, call it laziness if you will...ahahahaa...but there is PLENTY of work to do without creating the dang stuff !) but trust me, when you hit your 60's-70's, and you keep putting off that "parts replacement surgery", every time you have to get up and down off the seat, you WILL appreciate it !

Yea, thats the kind of stuff I'm thinking about. Spent the last 20yrs in a 2 story house with bedrooms all upstairs. New place is going to be all one level and Lord willing be my last house so I'm trying to do things smarter than harder. Don't want to handle the wood more than necessary.

Our shipping department at work uses those big saran wrap type rolls to secure lots of stacked small boxes on a pallet. I was actually thinking of using that to secure firewood to pallets. Kind of like a low tech version of that video in the 'tractors and wood' thread where a net is wrapped around a barrel full of wood as it lifts off.

 

[Looking4new]

A couple of house geckos will solve the spider and bug problem and also give the cats exercise.

 

[dmccarty]

Now you guys are scaring me! I'm in the planning stages of our new house and my plan was to have a boiler room in the basement where the wood gasification furnace and water tanks for thermal storage would go. Was planning on having a double door to the outside where I could use the tractor to drop pallets of wood just inside the door. The gasification furnace requires wood to be at a certain moisture content so all the youtube videos I've seen have folks keeping a few cords of seasoned wood (that dried somewhere else) in the boiler room for a few weeks to hit the final moisture content level and then rotate the properly dried stuff through the furnace.

I didn't think about bugs or critters. So I'm inviting chaos if I store wood indoors?
...

EVERY wood pile I have had, and I do mean EVERY, has had at least one mouse nest. Insects don't bother me that much and we will get some bugs that will climb out of the buckets I used to bring firewood into the house. The bugs will warm up in the house and start moving around. Not really a problem. Heck, we get spiders that get into the house without using the firewood as a transport. We even get Geckos as well. Not really sure how the survive the cold but they show up in the house a couple times a year, usually in winter.

If you could build the boiler room to be made completely out of concrete, brick or block, and with no place for mice to hide other than the wood pile, maybe you would be ok. Putting out mouse poison would be a good idea that is for sure.

Your wifey will NOT be happy if the mice get in the house, climb into the linen closet and piss and sh....it over every clean towel and sheet. I sure was not happy and it took days to wash everything again.

Later,
Dan