New Wood Stove

[MossRoad]

We are lucky in that we have an outside cellar stairway right next to the stove location. It is 4' wide and we can store a couple weeks worth of wood inside there. I stocked my wood supply just outside the double metal doors, so on nice days, I open them up and top it off.

 

[bhostasa]

I currently keep all of my wood in the barn. I have a decent sized wagon (about a pick-up truck load) that I fill up about once a week and park in front of our walk out basement doors. My wood burner is downstairs so I bring it in as needed from the trailer.

I'm about to start finishing our basement. My plan in to build a wood storage room, like a coal bin, next to the wood burner. I'd have access to the room from the outside and be able to take it from the room directly to the wood burner...hopefully reducing the mess. Should be able to store about a cord at a time in there.

 

[Highbeam]

I have the solution for you. Well for me anyway.

I stack and split my wood pretty in pretty large splits with the intention of splitting it down smaller as I use it if needed.

Every week or so I fill up a harbor freight wood cart with the split down wood and use the cart to haul in the week's wood. The cart holds a lot. You could just park the cart and feed from it if your wife will let you. Mine won't so I then unload the cart into...

I went to Home depot and bought two of the steel hoop wood carriers for about 20$ each. The double rings are about 4 feet across and hold about a week's worth of wood each. One is full of splits and the other is filled once or twice a year with red cedar kindling. The steel rings are black and look sort of wrought so they are decent.

The shorter term indoor storage of a week or two means that I move the wood just before bringing it into the house. The bugs get shaken off during the move and then there are none in the hosue.

 

[GBeck]

here's another rookie wood stove question...the stove I have can fit I think 20 inch long logs, but what is the best size for an all night burn...
I have been trying different things and so far it seems the bigger you put in sure it will last longer, but gives you more ashes and the 2 inch round ones seem to burn the cleanest but also the quickest.

 

[thunderworks]

GBeck: I doubt you really get more ash. Any volume of wood, converted to heat and gas, reduces to a given amount of unburnable residue. Put more wood in the combustion chamber, get more ash. Put in less wood, get less ash. The ash buildup is a function of total wood volume you put in the stove, not the size of a particular piece.

 

[Egon]

The ash buildup is a function of total wood volume you put in the stove, not the size of a particular piece.

It will also depend on the amount of combustion air that was available at the time of the burn and if the firebox was at optimum burn temperatures.

 

[groundcover]

I think I have the final answer to the ongoing wood issue,now I just need to convince the misses that a small garage door where her chair is and a pallet of firewood in the family room would be a positive fashion statement ! The pallet racks have worked great but trying to get rid of the extra move of unloading it into the house.

As far as burn time the unsplt rounds will usually burn longer. When loading make sure to get the fire burning good and hot before turning it down . If you load it up and damp it down too soon you can get a dirty burn and creosote build up that can feed a chimney fire . A good indication of a clean burn is lack of smoke out of the chimney. It will smoke on start up and when the damper is first turned down but after that mostly just heat waves.

 

[scott_vt]

Good Afternoon GBeck,
I do the same thing as Steve in Michigan. I have been bringing in large amounts of wood into the basement since I built this home. It has not fallen into a big pile of dust in the basement yet ! I find that any bugs generally stay with the wood pile. I do have some spiders in the basement, but everything comes with a cost. When its snowin and sub zero, all I do is go over to the pile and feed the stove ! I can get about 4 cords of wood along the back corner of the basement through my bilco doors. Its a pain dumping it down there and restacking it, but its also nice in the middle of the winter as Steve points out !

 

[TDVT]

We do the same as Scott & Steve. We have tried storing it various places but as we are in the snow belt of Vermont, it works best to have it all in the basement before the snow really gets going. Not much of a problem with critters or bugs.

I made a platform to fit in the loader & increase the capacity & we dump it down the bulkhead & re-stack. We only use 3-4 cords a year, so it isn't too bad.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Ted

 

[groundcover]

I keep a couple of cords in the bacement too. Last year after it was all in I got a bug bomb,shut down the boiler,let it rip and left the house for the day. Never saw a bug or spider all winter.