I spent a bit over $100 for 40 pavers (12" x 12" x 2-¾", laid in an 8’ x 5’ rectangle), six 8-foot lengths of pressure-treated 2x4, and tax.
Buying racks would have saved me some heavy work; but it looks like I’d have to buy three of them, which would have been more expensive. Plus I’d have to put them together and have a place for them. The reason I had to lay down the gravel and pavers is that I didn’t have a place to stack that much wood.
I’d planned on starting the moving and stacking at noon, but the SO talked me into making breakfast. Freshly-grated, crispy-on-the-outside, soft on the inside hash browned potatoes, a slice and a half of bacon each, four each Farmer John link sausages, and two over-easy eggs apiece needs time to digest a little.
Just stacked two cords of split hardwood, (delivered for $150 Can.)
Thank goodness I covered it with a big tarp, when it arrived, as it snowed another 8" over that night.
We moved it to the cribs on a sled because of all the damn snow! And it proved to be more than two cords as we had to dig out a third crib to stack it all!
But, as I write this, the fire is raging in the woodstove and it’s bitterly cold outside. Perfect to cuddling up with the dog!
I used to heat exclusively with wood. I would take in 6 cords a year. I do like the atmosphere of a true wood stove, but the mess and work is an awful lot.
I switched to a propane stove about 5 years ago. It’s great to have a thermostat again.
Consider getting or making a rack holder for it. I got the basic pieces at Tractor Supply and rigged the rest. Since then I’ve been getting better results (nicer coals and longer burns) from mine.
It’s going pretty quickly. About a quarter of a one stack (1/4 face cord/rick) will be gone by today.
I don’t think we got a whole cord. It’s about half a face cord short. True, I stacked it more than four feet high; but I don’t think it’s that much higher than it should be. The SO says that we’d burned a bunch of it. (Again, not that much.) And she says that I stacked it tighter than it probably was originally. She laughed at me because I was putting the stacks together like a puzzle. I wanted pieces to interlock somewhat to keep the stacks from tumbling or falling over.
Well, maybe not as quickly as I thought. We still have a face cord and a half. With lows in the 40s, it’s just too warm to have a fire. We’ll have a good supply come November/December.
Oh, I also chopped down the scraggly apple tree that produced mealy, tasteless, ping pong ball-sized apples, and bought an electric chainsaw to cut it up. There are a couple of arbor vitaes that need to come down too. So there’s a few more logs to add to the stack.
You bring back memories of my childhood. I learned to use a chainsaw when I was 15. Back then, it was unheard of for a girl to do so. I think I’ve stacked thousands of board-feet of firewood. We have natural gas now. I rather hate it, but hubby loves never having to go out in the cold to get firewood.
All I see are dollar signs going up the chimney. Our gas bill ran about $300/month this winter, and that’s with using the fire place just about once a week.
Thank you spring. Now I can buy groceries again!
(Then again, there’s the new truck sucking down the green tickets and dead presidents…)
