Help me create an enjoyable wood chopping/stacking situation.

July 8, 2022 7:08 AM

We are getting a masonry stove installed (this one) and it has a small firebox (10x12). I'm guessing I can ask the local suppliers of firewood for small cuts, but I'm also interested in doing some of this work myself. If you heat your home with wood, what's your setup? What do you recommend?

Axe? Hatchet? Chainsaw? Saw(?) saw? What's your strategy for stacking? Favorite brands? Tools? Tips? Advice? Where to store? We'll want battery-powered if we have any power tools involved.

Please recommend!

posted by 10ch to Home & Garden (13 answers total)

Wood will likely be delivered with logs that are around 12" long and quartered. Wood is generally sold by the cord, which is a volume of wood that when neatly stacked is equal to 128 cubic feet (4' x 4' x 8').

For splitting wood get a splitting maul from your local hardware store.

For stacking wood, I would use the End Pillar Wood Stack strategy. Store the wood somewhere that will stay mostly dry.
posted by axismundi at 7:41 AM on July 8, 2022

Best answer: We don't technically heat with wood but we have a fireplace insert in our living room that we use most nights in the winter. Your wood strategy will partially depend on the layout of your house and where you can stack the wood.

First off, if you'll be doing any of the splitting I highly recommend getting a Fiskar's splitting axe. I always assumed the axe was a tool that was perfected 400 years ago but I was mistaken. This tool is a game changer. Learn how to sharpen it properly. It is designed to split wood, not chop wood.

That axe is great for splitting straight-grained logs. For more difficult grain, and to split full rounds, you'll want a couple of spikes and a sledge hammer.

I bought a chainsaw years ago, mainly for the occasional storm cleanup, but I have never actually used it. Those things terrify me. If you do use a chainsaw, get proper safety gear for it, including chaps. Have a safe way of cutting logs so that they don't bind or move. YouTube can help with this.

I built a 3-sided wood shed for my main stack, it holds about two cords. We get a delivery once a year and it takes me a couple hours to move it from where they dump it, across the lawn, and stack it into the shed. I make sure I rotate the wood so the previous-season's stuff is towards the front of the stack. As I said, it depends on your layout. Ideally you want them to drop off the wood as close to your stack as possible so you don't have to cart it across your lawn the way I have to.

About once a week in the winter I move a weeks supply of wood into my porch, which is adjacent to the living room. From that stack, I bring a day or two worth of wood and put it into the rack we have in the living room.

So, it goes big stack, medium stack, small stack. I do this because of where things are, you may not need to do it this way. My brother-in-law has his main stack on the porch and he just brings in wood from there as he needs it.

The most important thing with wood storage is to keep it off the ground. From there, everyone seems to have their own opinions and people have been known to get into fisticuffs defending their strategy. For years I stacked mine on top of a couple pressure treated 2x4s and covered it with a tarp. It burned fine. Now I have an open air shed and it burns about the same, as far as I can tell. Someone right now is reading this and screaming at their screen because they saw the word "tarp." Whatever.

Wood delivery is hit and miss. A "cord" of wood is sort of this nebulous thing that can differ widely depending on where you get it. This is one of those services where word-of-mouth really helps. Don't just go look up "wood" in the Yellow Pages. Do they still have Yellow Pages? Also, "seasoned wood" is not always properly seasoned. Ask around, ask around, ask around. I cannot stress this enough.

I use newspaper and fatwood to start my fires. I get a season's supply of fat wood at Home Depot. If you're not experienced starting fires it'll take you a bit before you learn to do it quickly. I'm also a woodworker so I have a large supply of kindling on hand. Find yourself a source, if you can.

Speaking of newspaper, here is the #1 thing I can tell you: KEEP YOUR GLASS CLEAN. I will repeat that and put it in bold: KEEP YOUR GLASS CLEAN. Clean it every single time you light a fire. All I do is crumple up some newspaper, dampen it with some water, dip it in the (cold) ashes, and wipe the glass with it. This gets off any soot. I then wipe it off with a wet paper towel and dry it. I do this before I light that night's fire and the glass has stayed clean for over 15 years. Once you start to let it go it gets really difficult to clean. They sell some fireplace glass cleaner and it's good to have a bottle on hand for when it's extra sooty. I have also had to occasionally scrape stuff off with a razor blade.

There is probably some sort of insulation around the perimeter of the inside of the door. This occasionally wears or falls off but any fireplace store will sell you replacements. Measure the width or bring the old stuff with you. They'll sell you some glue for it as well. I just take the door off, glue the new stuff in and put a board on top of it with some weight on it to clamp it down for an hour or so.

It's a chore, having a wood fireplace. I can see that there will be a time when I won't be able to do a lot of this work myself. It is worth it though as there is no warmth quite like a wood stove.
posted by bondcliff at 7:42 AM on July 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

I supplement our purchased firewood with deadfall: chainsaw it down to length wherever it falls, wheelbarrow that to the side of the house, stack it outdoors for at least a couple years, then split with a maul, then stack indoors to dry over the summer before it can be used that fall.

It's a tremendous amount of work. For the effort involved it would make far far more sense for me to pay someone to haul off the dead trees and just buy my firewood in cordage.

(Note that while axismundi gave you the correct definition of a cord of wood, most places actually sell it by the much smaller "face cord" without saying that out loud.)
posted by ook at 7:48 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

And seconding bondcliff on shopping around: cheap pine burns a lot more quickly and a lot less cleanly than fruit tree or hardwood, it makes a tremendous difference. Suppliers who are able to cut to custom lengths are more likely to have quality wood (becuase they're not just reselling precuts from some other yard.)
posted by ook at 7:52 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Nth-ing the praise for modern splitting axes like the Fiskar model linked above.

I split a LOT of wood in my youth (like, starting at age 10), and yeah while I'm a lot bigger and stronger than that now, I'm also north of 50 and not the muscular dude I was at 19. I can attest to the WOW factor of a really good splitting axe.

A splitting wedge - a pair of them, actually - is also worth getting.

Digression: When people know you're looking for wood, they'll call because a large limb fell of their tree or something. They think they're doing you a favor while also saving either their own effort or their money by not calling a tree service. If that's a source you want to deal with, know that there are all kinds of ways it goes wrong and it can get hairy-scary in a microsecond, especially when chainsaws are involved. Removing limbs from a fallen tree is dangerous - seemingly manageable limbs turn out to be shockingly heavy and will behave in ways you don't expect. I spent some bitter winter mornings in isolated corners of farms with Dad, uncles, and Grandpa being told to stand way back while they chainsawed huge trees into chunks we could get into the truck.

Anyways, to reiterate the main advice above - sunny location, off the ground, not leaning right up against a wall, not tightly stacked because air needs to circulate. One of ours had the ground cleared of vegetation underneath, then a layer of landscaping cloth to keep down weeds, then gravel for drainage. Two 8' lengths of treated 2x4 over that, with metal fence posts at the end. Probably overkill, but it worked great.

Also, expect critters of all kinds to find your pile and assume squatter's rights. I was startled by mice and such many times. Not unheard of for bees/hornets/wasps of various kinds and attitudes to colonize, too.
posted by Caxton1476 at 8:47 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: 1a) Most tree species split easier when "green" than when "seasoned". Early splitting also gives more surface area to evaporate water and things with at least one flat side stack easier.
1b) splitting wood demands both eye- and shin-protection: chain-saw chaps and visor work well enough
2) Breeze is more important than sun for shedding water - that's why tarpophobia is so widespread.
3) It's useful to have something on top to keep the rain out although it's the internal water that is more important for firewood to lose.
Welcome to the chop-chop club, it's good fun and good exercise.
The Woodfire Handbook by Vincent Thurkettle
Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way by Lars Mytting was a best seller ten years ago. Both books are a bit small-r religious about wood, in a way I find agreeable.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:35 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm in Maine. A cord should be as defined above, Maine law is quite clear on this, and I'd be appalled to get less. I've used the same dealer for 12+ years because they're so reliable. Wood here is sold in 18" lengths, split. My stove is smaller; I get 16" wood. It's more expensive because it's more work, and smaller pieces mean the truck delivers more wood, because it's designed to carry 2 18" cords.

Dry wood lights easier, burns better and produces less creosote. I buy wood a year in advance so it can season, and usually store it on pallets. I put a tarp under it, as moisture rises from the soil, and on top. I try to have 2 - 3 days' of wood in the house in winter, where it dries even more. You can burn pine if it's quite well seasoned, but hardwood is preferred.

I happened to get some metal racks on sale this year. I have space for them and they're handy but not required. I get a lot of use out of my wheelbarrow for getting wood from the delivery pile to storage locations and for bringing in wood when a storm is predicted. We get snow, sometimes a lot of it, and I occasionally have to shovel down to get wood, so stacking it tall is always useful. I have limited areas where wood can be stored, so it's always a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. Some years are colder and I burn more, some years I have wood left over. 10" lengths are going to be harder to stack; but if you cut as needed, that would resolve the issue.

For splitting wood, see if you can get a nice big round of hardwood. Freecycle, craigslist, etc., often have wood listed if you pick it up. Sometimes it's sodden crap and sometimes it's great. I have a rack full of lumber scraps from freecycle, cut down for kindling.

If you cut down longer wood, you may want to buy or make a sawbuck. I happened to get a metal one on freecycle this summer.

My old wood stove cleaned the glass on its own with a nice hot fire; I have a different stove now to learn; we'll see. I have gotten tons of help from the forums on hearth.com, including minor repairs on my old stove. Your stove is a beauty; enjoy it.
posted by theora55 at 10:29 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Order your wood now so it will have all summer to season. I heated with wood for three decades. I split a lot of wood with a sledgehammer and a wedge until my kids got old enough to take over that chore. Unless you're out in the country and have access to lots of woods you don't need a chainsaw. I think I would have loved something like this tool.

If you do have wood delivered make sure they know you need 12" length and that it's seasoned hardwood. As for where to find wood ask your friends who heat with wood.

Make sure your stove is installed properly with correct distances from anything flammable. Clean your chimney at least once a year.
posted by mareli at 11:15 AM on July 8, 2022

Strongly aeconding the "Norwegian Wood" book linked above.

My particular setup: Gas powered Stihl chainsaw for larger trees, smaller electric chainsaw for limbing and smaller trees. You can absolutely get by with electric only - the EGO power ones if you want larger, or something like the ryobi system for smaller. For the really big trees our tree guy bucks them into reasonable rounds (most of our wood is storm fall or dead standing stuff we take down ourselves as needed). I split by hand, using a Fiskars splitting axe.

I try to stay about a year ahead - split and stack outside, then put it in the covered outdoor wood storage for a few months before using. It only comes inside for a week or two before using.
posted by true at 5:53 PM on July 8, 2022

We heat exclusively with wood. Every spring through fall we take down dead standing and dead fall and buck it up with a chainsaw into lengths that will fit into our woodstove. It's mostly birch and cedar, with some spruce and pine. Then it gets split into usable sized pieces with a wedge, maul, and axe. I also have a leveraxe that works great to split and chop at the same time so you're not swinging a maul all day.

Then the split wood gets stacked in the woodshed on 2x4s to keep it off the ground, to cure and dry for at least a year. We alternate right and left sides to keep the newer wood separate. Birch that's too small to split gets stacked outside the shed, under the eaves, and covered with a tarp during winter to keep it dry. We go through 2 to 3 cords of wood every winter, and we stockpile when we can so the woodshed pretty much always has 5 or 6 cords.

We strip the bark to use for kindling. Birch bark is especially good for this.
posted by ananci at 6:51 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

We did the whole thing of cutting down our own trees, and chopping, and splitting and stacking and drying, and it was all very satisfying and the lot we lived was in great need of some woods management so that was great. But it was a ton of work. A well0powered chainsaw was non- optional; not sure what the situation with battery power is these days. We had lots of safety garments and Ppe and spotted each other. Still managed to have a few hairy near misses.

We also sometimes had precut cords delivered (it was always an option to specify the log length - sometimes if a log or two was oversized, we got out the axe or chainsaw.). We still needed a lot of kindling collection. Still lots of stacking. No matter what promises are made about “preseasoned”, we always had to dry delivered wood so made sure to order in Spring.

We made simple racks for stacking - just something to get the stacks off the ground and to provide some structure. You probably don’t want to store the wood right next to the house because mice will live in it no matter what. So then you also need a temporary stack location that’s not 100 feet from the house so you can pop out for a few logs at 10 at night. We would transfer a few days of wood to that every week or so - shaking off critters before bringing it close to the house.

We eventually moved to Bio Blocks and that was sooooo much less work. They can be stacked right in the house. Much less ash to empty. Always fit in stove. At least the years we bought them, because of some elevated wood prices, they were not much more $$ than real wood delivered although ofc more than cutting down from the backyard.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:12 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: not sure what the situation with battery power is these days

I love my battery-powered chainsaw; it's absolutely an improvement over gas-powered. (The self-sharpening is real nice too, though the chains are more expensive and can be harder to find.) Much much quieter, and infinitely easier to get going compared to those stupid pullcord starters. I can take apart about half a tree per battery charge, which is about as long as I should be using a chainsaw in one go anyway (any longer than that and I start getting tired or taking probably-less-safe shortcuts.)
posted by ook at 10:10 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: All, thank you so much! I think I’ve taken something important from every one of your answers. If you were nearby, I’d invite you in for a fireside chat come winter.
posted by 10ch at 5:48 PM on July 12, 2022