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When it’s sunny and hot in the height of summer, winter cold is the last thing you may be thinking of. However, if you’re homesteading out in the country, you need to start preparing now for the seasons to come. This means getting your firewood split, stacked and stored well before you need it.
Late August or early September is generally the time to get real serious about your winter needs. If you wait until the cold weather hits and the snow flies, you will definitely have bigger challenges and struggles ahead if you live in an area that is hard hit by winter weather.
You have some decisions to make about how you are going to go about getting your firewood in for the winter. We’re here to help you figure out the best ways to source, split, and store your firewood for maximum efficiency and give you some ideas on how you might go about filling this very important need for your home and family’s comfort and safety during the cold weather months.
Calculate usage
How many cords of wood will you need to get you from Fall/Winter through Spring?
Dimensions of a cord of wood: 4’x4’x8’ 4’ wide, 4’ tall, and 8’ long
On average, 6-10 cords worth of wood will be needed for your season. Your available space will determine how much you can store, but be aware that the middle of winter is not the best time to be looking for wood to buy. We recommend that you have the bulk of your wood split and stacked by the beginning of October. Of course the amount will vary depending upon how much firewood you expect to consume; whether wood is your primary heating fuel, and how cold it gets where you live.
The quality of insulation in your home is also a big factor in usage.
Using the warm weather months to seal drafty places around doors and windows will cut down on firewood usage considerably.
Obviously, if you are heating your home solely with wood-fired heat, you will expect to use more wood than someone who is only running a wood burning stove to supplement forced- air or other types of heating systems.
Consider wood needed for a fireplace, a wood burning stove and an outdoor firepit. Do you camp or hunt in the late summer and fall? You will need wood for those adventures too!
What kind of wood do I need?
The types of firewood that burn best are location dependent, but generally speaking, you want to be on the lookout for wood that has been seasoned, kept dry, and been cut into lengths or rounds.
Seasoned wood is wood that has been cut and left to dry out (season) over at least one season. 6 months to 2 years is ideal. Wood that has not been seasoned will be green and wet inside, is hard to split, and will smoke when you try to burn it. Seasoned firewood will have a moisture content of 20 percent or less.
Wet wood is difficult to ignite and will burn at a low temperature, which is counter productive if you’re trying to heat your home, and it also poses the danger of depositing creosote in your chimneys and stove pipes. This leaves you at risk for damaging chimney fires.
Many people believe that it’s soft wood that creates the creosote, but it’s not. It’s green wood that burns at a low temperature.
Dry wood splits and burns the most efficiently, so it’s important to keep your wood under cover. Even a tarp over the pile of cut wood will help to keep it dry in the summertime. However, tarping a woodpile in the winter where temps get below freezing is not a great idea. Condensation can form under the plastic and then the tarp will freeze to the wood.
Hardwoods – Hardwood such as fruit woods, Maple, Oak, Ash and Birch make the best firewood. They burn hot and clean, having little sap and pitch.
Where to source wood
Permitted cutting
If you live near National Forest or public land that is managed by BLM (Bureau of Land Management), you may obtain permits to cut wood in designated areas. Please only do this if you are capable of handling a chainsaw safely! The permits will allow you to take a specified amount of wood out for your own personal use, not to resell. Sometimes, Forestry officials will allow you to cut only trees that have been marked or tagged for removal.
Private party
Many industrious individuals will sell firewood by the cord, by the trailer, or will offer their services to cut, split and stack wood on your property. This is obviously the best option for those who don’t have the time or ability to cut and split their own firewood. You may pay a premium for this service, and the trade off is that you don’t have to do it yourself. It’s a great idea to forge relationships with people who provide wood. If your storage is limited, you can set up periodic deliveries to make sure you never run out of wood to burn.
Your land
Obtaining firewood from your own land is an entire process, and you must understand that you won’t be able to use the wood right away. The wood has to season as mentioned above, and so you will need wood for your first winter, until those felled trees are bucked, cut up, sliced into rounds and split to fit your fireplace or wood burning stove. This is also providing that you have the types of hardwood or fruit trees that you want to turn into firewood.
Felling trees requires more than knowing how to safely operate a chainsaw. You must understand how to cut the tree so that it will safely fall away from buildings and fences, and land where you want it to. It’s a tricky business that takes skill and practice, and we don’t recommend you do it without supervision from someone who knows what they’re doing.
Bucking the trees means to trim all the snags and branches away from the trunk of the tree. Sometimes these can be cut into small pieces and used for kindling, but they’re usually put into “slash” piles and allowed to dry out, then burned during Autumn when danger of wildfires is low.
Once the trees are bucked and trimmed up, the tree trunk itself can be cut into lengths that can be hauled to where you plan to cut and split them. Your cutting and splitting work area should be adjacent to the wood storage area for ease of stacking. The lengths can be cut into rounds that will be left to season. They are much easier to split when they are nice and dry. Once split, they can be stacked and put into your firewood storage until you are ready to burn them.
If you have a lot of trees on your land, you can stagger the process so that you always have wood cut and in the process of seasoning while you’re burning the wood you have stored.
As with everything having to do with homesteading, smart planning can make all the difference between failure and success.
Rounds vs. splits
Can you burn rounds or is it better to split them? The short answer is yes. Many people do use logs and rounds in both fireplaces, firepits and wood burning stoves. The argument in favor of using split wood is that with split wood, there are more surfaces to keep the air moving, and fires using split wood will be easier to light and will burn more efficiently.
Kindling
It’s a good idea to split some of your pieces down to smaller sized splits to use as kindling. These smaller pieces will catch fire more quickly and ignite the larger pieces you’ve laid in the stove or fireplace.
Firestarters
Other types of fire starters include newspaper, cardboard and other types of paper. These also need to be stored where they will stay dry.
Should you split your own?
Electric or gas wood splitters work equally well and are back and time savers for getting the job done when put up against the traditional axe and maul. Cutting firewood definitely warms you twice, and if you can get a wood splitter on site (they are available to rent from small equipment rental shops), you can save your physical strength and get the job done in record time. A wood splitter is a great investment for any homesteader who will need to cut and split wood each year.
The size of your splits will depend on the use. If you are going to be using a wood burning fireplace, obviously you will want the pieces to be able to easily fit through the door in the stove, but also keep in mind that larger pieces burn longer. It’s a good idea to have some of those “overnight” logs standing by for the coldest nights of winter to keep your stove from going out while you sleep.
Once you have all your firewood split, you’re ready to stack it!
Location of wood storage
Where you decide to place your firewood storage can make all the difference in the dead of winter. Your wood storage area should be close enough to the house to get wood in during bad weather by wagon or sled. It should be far enough from the structure of the house that if there were a fire, the house would not be threatened. This is a consideration for those who live in heavily forested areas at risk for wildfires.You might also consider a second location for a small amount of firewood on a porch or deck or at the side of the house, but that is also a potential fire hazard.
In areas with heavy rain and snowfall, your storage area should be covered to keep wood dry on at least 3 sides and the roof (sheet metal is best) should be angled for snow load and runoff.
If you live in a more temperate climate, you may want to leave your wood open to the air using brackets or supports to brace up your stack.
The foundation of the firewood storage should have good drainage. Put your base up on pallets or skids so that your firewood is not sitting on the ground, and any runoff from rain or snowmelt will pass underneath your wood storage so your wood will remain dry.
Determine which way the prevailing winds blow so that you can properly orient your wood storage area with sides and a roof. You don’t want rain and snow blowing into the shed or storage area. For the shelter itself, it can be as primitive or as fancy as you like just as long as it serves the purpose of keeping your firewood accessible and dry.
Stacking examples
The most efficient use of space is to stack your firewood in rows horizontally from the back of the storage area to the front and by size. Take the time now to save you time later on.
Some people get mighty creative and you’re only limited by space and your imagination.
Some people get mighty creative!
You might choose to pile your firewood instead of stacking it, which is certainly your prerogative. If you choose this option, at least sort your pieces by size for ease of use.
No matter how you choose to store it, the main thing is that you keep it dry.
Be aware that wood piles and stacks are a haven for critters including rats and snakes so always wear gloves (to also guard against splinters) when reaching into the stack or pile.
The good news is that firewood is readily available no matter where in the US you live. A quick Google or Craigslist search will attest to this. Whatever options you choose for sourcing and storage; as long as you make a generous estimation of how much firewood you’re going to need for the Winter, you should be cozy and warm well into Springtime.
Photos courtesy of Pexels.com
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