Spring Woodshed Challenge: 2017 Part I

How early is your wood stored and ready for winter?  Most experts recommend a full year in advance.

I've set myself a challenge to post pictures in spring as I improve and fill my woodshed.  (Think of these as the "before" pictures if you like... we can go back and look at the improvements over time.)

Year 1

Year 2 (tarpaper roof)

Year 3-4: shingled

Year 4 (experimental stack)

Year 5

This year's project: a DIVIDER. 

To stay a full year ahead (or more) on drying time, I need to be able to separate the cured wood from the drying wood.  And I need to start stacking wet wood somewhere to dry, in fall or mid-winter, while still having full access to my cured, dry stash. 

I do NOT want to re-stack wood back to front every time I start processing a downed tree.
 
The tool for this job is simple: a divider, like stalls in a barn. 

Now I can start the winter with two sides full.  I use the older, drier side first.  Whenever one side is empty, I can clean out and re-fill it. 

We seem to use a little over a cord per winter, and this shed is 8' by 12' inside.  So I've made the divider a little taller than 4 feet.  That gives us a cord+ on each side, plus 4 feet of semi-dry space for the chopping block and junk ... *ahem* ... "useful barbecue stuff".  
Maybe I will build a "stuff shed" onto the side of the wood shed, so we have a shaded place to store gasoline and other goodies without losing wood space.  But I suspect that no matter how many sheds you have, there will always be more stuff that drifts in there... it's like a junk magnet.

The divider is ... "ghetto chic."
A recycled pallet would have worked, but I am "saving" my palettes for a bigger project.
So this divider is made almost entirely of wood scraps that are crappier than pallet wood.  Stuff I prefer not to burn - pressure treated, OSB, painted boards.  It is gappy to allow air flow. 

It is REALLY messy looking because I got fed up with trying to find where I'd squirrelled away all my outdoor tools last winter.  (I am already a couple months behind the time I started stacking wood last year.) 
I ended up taking the scrap to a borrowed saw, cutting a few useful-ish gussets (little angled chunks of OSB), and just gobbing it together. 
I finally found my saw, safely tucked away in our new carport, about 20 minutes after I screwed the last board onto this mess.

But it works!

As of May 2:
about 1/3 cord
(1 face cord).

It makes it MUCH easier to quickly stack a pile of wood. And it gives me a thrill of hope to see the disappointed look on the faces of our two dogs. 

These two eager squeak-hunters have been tumbling the wood rows into piles, and eating chunks out of the woodshed itself, following the scent of long-gone squirrels and the sound of each others' scrabbling around.

Maybe with this divider in place, they won't be able to mix the wet wood quite so thoroughly into the last precious stacks of dry wood.

Maybe I'm being optimistic.  Two 60-pound dogs, one full-blooded terrier and one mutt, can rearrange a lot of wood when they are in the throes of "squeak-hunting."

So if I can't stop them eating my wood shed, at least I can look forward to the chewed-up corners giving a little bit of improved ventilation. 


As long as they don't chew through the support posts, we're good.  ;-)