Firewood storage – keep it dry!
Although it may seem obvious, firewood storage is extremely important. If your wood gets wet, it will not burn, or smoke and smoulder without lighting properly. If it remains wet it may even start rotting, leaving it totally useless. Learn how to get the most out of your physical effort and money. Store your firewood correctly and keep it dry.
A lot of people think it’s a good idea to keep green wood outside, and have the seasoned wood inside to have it closer to the fireplace, therefore saving time and trips out into the cold, but this is actually a bad idea. Firstly, there’s less airflow in your house, meaning it won’t continue drying. The other reason is that there are a lot of insects and spiders that will gladly find a new home in your house!
It’s time to choose a place for your firewood storage. If you can, try to keep it several meters away from the windows and doors to your house. This will make it less likely that any mice or little critters living in the pile will come in through any open doors or windows. Of course, it should be a dry place, with plenty of airflow. Keep it away from any water sources such as ponds or streams too.
It’s really important to avoid stacking it against a wall, because if the wood is touching a wall won’t dry properly. Keeping it off the ground will also help to maximise drying, and you can do this by making or buying metal shelves which allow airflow underneath them. If you don’t have any metal, you can just use some long wooden posts at the base.
One of the best ways to dry wood outside is to make a south facing structure with 3 walls and a roof. This means the sun will help to dry the wood, and if there are any stormy days, you can cover it with a tarpaulin. Make sure you don’t cover it all the way down to the ground, again because of that all important airflow.
Proper stacking is crucial when it comes to storing firewood. If your wood has been factory cut into symmetrically shaped blocks, it’s a big mistake to stack it like Lego bricks with no airflow. You need to leave a little space between each one and some thin slats of wood in between the layers.
One good method is to create two crisscrossed tower stacks of heavy wooden blocks at the sides of your wall of wood, and then keep the other logs in between those two stacks. Remember to stack chopped logs bark side down. This method will also help to lose more moisture.
If your wood is more of a random collection of different shaped logs and cuttings, then you will have to organise it so it’s nice and stable, whilst also letting the air flow as much as possible. You don’t want it falling over in the middle of winter!
Get your dry and ready seasoned wood from Finest Firewood Bristol, the sizes are perfect for home use, our firewood is delivered fully seasoned, so just keep it stored correctly and use it as you need. Finest Firewood offer firewood delivery to Bristol, Chepstow and Forest of Dean areas – If you are close by please contact us to see if we cover your area.
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