I’ve changed some things to make burning firewood easier this year. Last year my wood was stacked and covered with blue, plastic tarps. I had to trudge through the snow to the stacks of snow covered wood, brush it off and dig it out, then haul it in through the back sliding door to the living room.
By about mid-winter the snow was so high, and with the thaws and re-freezes, the wood became buried in solid snow hills. I dug out what I could, but mostly I was careful to not use too much. There is always the threat of an ice storm that would cause days without power. If that happened, keeping my small wood stove going for a week or more would really use up the wood.
This year I have a new plan. I had a wood shed built this summer! I also added a door to the back of the garage. I can walk out the back of my garage and within a few steps I will be in the wood shed collecting dry pieces of firewood. This is much better!
Love the new wood shed!
More is stacked inside the garage and so I feel like I am ready for the winter’s cold. No more shoveling out the tarp covered piles. The wood shed was an investment that I will enjoy for a while.
I bought my cord of firewood at the end of summer for $240 and had to figure out where to stack it this season. Last year I put it in the bottom of the “hole” in the backyard of this house I rent and figured I’d just go out the back slider downstairs and bring it in as needed. I took my cue from my landlady who does the same thing, except that she has an overhang and larger flat area in the hole, so her wood is not right against the house like mine is. (See photo below) My son went out and cut some small trees that had fallen (with my landlady’s permission) and I will use those as starters.
Last Year’s Mistake
Snow outside the basement slider last year (2009)
That didn’t work out too well, since the accumulated snow from the roof slid off (it’s a metal roof) and buried my wood under hard-packed icy snow. I did manage to dig most of it out, but still had quite a bit left that I couldn’t get to until Spring. In fact, I couldn’t even use my slider to go in and out because the snow was piled about 4 feet high!
So this year, after the delivered wood dried out, and between rainy days, I dumped it down the hill using my wheelbarrow and then stacked it in my basement. Some of it is also stacked outside, but up near my porch and not in the hole. I only get one cord because I just have no place to store it. I’d like to have lots of wood and never use oil heat and it’s easy to keep the stove going once it’s heated, but it’s not my house and the set up just isn’t very good. One cord, plus the little I had left over won’t heat this place for the whole winter, so I’ll wait for very cold weather and save it up for possible ice storms when we might lose power. That has happened both of the past winters.
On top of that, I have to order seasoned wood because after August, there is no sun in my yard to dry it out. Ideally I would order “green”, not seasoned (or older cut wood), in early Spring and stack it in a nice sunny spot to dry for months to use in winter. And even better than that would be to have a big, strong, heard working man in my life who would go out and cut up dead trees and then split the wood so I wouldn’t even have to buy any! Now I am dreaming, but I have done what I could to supplement my oil heat this year.
Today the chimney lining is being replaced and soon I hope the landlady will have the furnace cleaned. Renting means you are at the mercy of someone else, so I just have to go with the flow.Related Articles
I just finished stacking my cord of firewood. I have been limited to doing a little on each nice day we’ve had this summer- all 3 of them!
Seriously, the rain just won’t quit. My pile of wood was delivered in April after I found the cheapest price in the paper and paid $170 to a nice guy who told me it would be a “mix” after I asked what kind he had. Also, it is green wood, not seasoned, but I figured I’d have the hot, sunny summer to help dry it out. HA!
One cord of “green” wood
So he dumped it at the side of the house in the most shady area of the yard and it has been sitting there getting moldy and full of snails because I only got part of it moved before the rainy month of June arrived. I’m living in a rental, and the wood has to be moved down a hill and stacked near the basement door. Then I will lug it into the basement where my wood stove will be hooked up. After living through a long winter power outage right after I moved in here, I needed to think about finding an alternative heat source.
I finished moving it this past week and it’s a load off my back! In more ways than one.
Wet wood pile
I’ve read that a cord of wood is officially 4 feet wide, 4 feet high, and 8 feet long. It seems that I have at least a cord. In fact it’s a lot more than I expected. The one drawback to the wood I bought is that some of the pieces are huge! They probably should be split. I might have to learn how to do that and see if I can manage. There is no man in my life who will do it for me.
Oh, I do have one other little problem. I don’t have a wood stove yet. *Update: I bought a used wood stove. Read my story “How to Buy a Used Wood Stove“.
More sites of interest to those of you who burn firewood: woodheat.org
A cord of wood
Power Outages in Winter
When I first wrote this post, I was new to blogging and pretty new to life in New Hampshire. I love the state, but living alone with a child and no man to help out was tough. I had to do all the things a husband would have done. From snowplowing the driveway and shoveling out the mailbox to buying and stacking firewood for winter, everything was on me.
For the most part I did okay. It helped to keep me in good shape as long as I didn’t overdo it. I was not young at this point, but having firewood was important. This place was my second rental after losing my home due to my ex-husband’s failed business venture. Right after I moved in here, we had an ice storm and were without power, or heat, for 7 days. I never had a chance to prepare, but it was a cruel lesson that made me take action. The temperature inside my place was in the 40’s. I slept in my winter coat, inside a sleeping bag!
The following winter we lost power for a few days again, but thankfully I had my woodstove by then, and plenty of wood to burn.
In May I found a guy who charged only $170 for a cord of “green” wood to be delivered so I ordered some. It will have to sit and dry out (fat chance with all this rain we’ve been getting) during the summer and hopefully will be ready to burn by winter.
Wood Delivery
I didn’t grow up with a wood stove, but we did have two fireplaces and I don’t know how much my parents paid for heat, but I remember always being cold as a kid.
This past winter I paid almost $1800 for oil to heat my small house and I kept the thermostat set at 64 most of the time. I also suffered through 8 days without any heat at all in December when a horrific ice storm came through. Thanks to my nice landlord and neighbors who had wood stoves, I was able to sleep on couches and heat canned soup up on the top of their stoves. I had just moved into my place in September and hadn’t had a chance to think about getting a wood stove- so of course that was when I needed it most.
Stacking on Pallets
I’m thinking that it’s a good thing I bought it early because most of the month of June has been too rainy to move the wood to the piles I had started. I’m hoping for sun soon to dry it out.
New England's Narrow Road 