Next we will deal with the problem of storing firewood. Dried properly, firewood can give off nearly twice as much heat as it can in its green (fresh-cut) state. This characteristic will vary according to the species of tree, but all woods burn better and hotter when seasoned, or air-dried. Wood seasoned one year will contain anywhere from 15 to 25 percent moisture, depending on the season, weather, and geographical area.
Almost everyone has seen a neatly stacked woodpile (above image), but not all woodpiles are stacked to best advantage. For example, many people simply stack their logs on the ground. The entire bottom layer of logs will most likely rot in less than a year because the logs will absorb a great deal of moisture from the ground.
Protect against the ground: It is much better to stack wood on a bed of rocks, a rack, cross-laid pipes, or on anything else that will keep the wood off the ground and allow it to air-dry. Ideally, you should build a well-ventilated woodshed, but the price of building materials today can make that prohibitive. Actually, a pole building or lean-to would suffice, although it may not look as attractive as a regular woodshed painted the same colour as your house. One ingenious solution is to build a solar-heated woodshed out of fence posts and polyethylene film. This must have a southern exposure and be ventilated enough to prevent condensation. The inventor claims all his firewood dries out in less than six months.
Keep close to the house: No matter what your solution may be, firewood should be stored fairly close to the house simply for the sake of convenience. Few people want to walk a hundred yards first thing in the morning for an armload of logs.
Use order for types of wood: After you know where to put the wood, you should decide on some order in which to stack it. This can be by age, by species of wood, or both. Do not cover well-seasoned wood with green wood or you will have to dig around for the wood that is ready to burn.
Different species of wood: Logs of different species burn at different rates. Consequently, a stoveload of mixed woods having varied seasoning will not burn at a consistent rate. If you use all hickory, all oak, or all maple, the logs will burn steadily. Throw a log or two of pine in with some hickory, and the hickory will begin to burn too fast; later it may nearly be snuffed out by the large amount of ashes produced by the pine. Also, it is nice to smell only one kind of wood burning at a time. Stacking wood by species and dryness is not all that difficult because you will be cutting only one tree at a time.
One final bit of advice: do not stack wood right next to the house. The wood could contain termites, carpenter ants, or other varmints that might infest your home. This has been discounted by some authors, who claim that the queen would not be among any termites found in such wood (since she and her eggs or young would be underground) and there would be no danger of infestation. Any termite or ant, however, may be a scout and could easily communicate his discovery of your house. Termite inspectors always say never to have any wood lying under or around your house. They know what they are talking about and have seen many badly infested houses.
Finding, cutting, and storing wood takes work, but the rewards of cheap and abundant heat, independence, and good exercise can fully justify the effort.
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