As I’m sure many of you are, we’re looking toward spring, which for us, also means looking toward next winter by getting the firewood cut and split so it can begin drying out.
Heating exclusively with our wood burning stove is pretty new to us. We moved to our Little House in 2007, but didn’t begin heating with just the woodstove until the winter of 2009 after a major ice storm showed us how much we could save without using the electric space heaters.
Thanks to that ice storm, we still have plenty of wood for next winter, people practically beg us to come and pick the wood up from their property. A good friend and neighbor has also let us use his log splitter.
We’re really committed to getting all of the wood cut, split and stacked for winter next year so we have a good supply of seasoned wood. Since we didn’t do it last spring, most of our wood this year is still pretty green. The trees were down, but we learned the wood doesn’t dry out until it is actually cut and split.
As well, with no cover, it has been open to the massive amounts of rain we got in the fall and the snows we’ve gotten this winter. We’ve been bringing enough to use for a couple of weeks time under the covered front porch, but I would like to have someplace other than my porch to store the wood.
I wish we would have researched this before building our Little House, I probably would have also had a wood box built into either the inside wall near the stove or on the covered front porch.
I’ve read up on seasoning and storing firewood and we’re planning on building something that keeps the newly split wood off of the ground, while allowing air to circulate, as well as exposing it to the hot summer sun.
The second aspect is moving the seasoned firewood to a woodshed or under some sort of cover this fall.
I’ve read about covered sheds that are open on all sides, as well as covered sheds that are 3-sided.
Quite frankly, I didn’t find any photos of ones that are suitable for our needs. Most of them on the Internet are for the “hobby” wood burners, not big enough for those of us who heat exclusively with wood.
We need a large covered shed or open structure that can warehouse enough wood for a winter, which for us, is at least 2 cords.
I know there are some readers here who heat primarily or only with wood and I’m interested in hearing what you think would be the best course for us for a woodshed. Comment and if you like, send Kent some photos of woodsheds here and he’ll show them off in a few days.
Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell is a full-time writer who lives in a 480-square foot home with her husband and 4 dogs. She blogs about their lives at Living Large in our Little House, as well as blogging about pet rescue at K9 Cuisine. She is an occasional guest on the Tiny House Blog.