I know most of the fully rural folks already have log stores but a lot of semi rural and even urban preppers are now investing in wood burning fires / stoves and find themselves struggling to store their logs conveniently. Some skilled folks can use old pallets to fashion a timber store, but I have timber coming out of my ears, the bottom of the garden has uncut logs to work on, my big plastic garden store is full as is both side walls and back wall of my garage.
I need to reclaim the back wall of the integral garage for extra storage and to fit a door through to the house so I can access the garage without going outside. So I need to find a simple, compact and preferably semi portable method of storing firewood. So I've just bought two more of the 1 Ton polyprop rubble / bulk sand bags from B & Q, they are 1 meter by 1 meter by about 1.5 meter high ( I think) Ideal for a free standing log store in another part of the garage, costs for these woven polyprop bags runs from nowt if you see em getting thrown out by builders, to a fiver at some builders merchants to £8 for a posh orange one from B & Q !!
maybe we could use some old rubbish bags we get from the council for garden waste, the white woven poly bag ones, wont hold a ton but would get a lot in one, have to sort out some logs when i get my logburner but i've got a lot of scrap timber i can cut up in the meantime.
Make sure they're breathable, else your wood will rot.
(17 November 2012, 21:37)Tarrel Wrote: [ -> ]Make sure they're breathable, else your wood will rot.
Yup, all the bags I use are actually woven polyprop not a solid sheet, I use smaller ones full of wood in the conservatory in the summer to help dry the wood out.
Mind you tarrel its sounds like my little Aga fire burns as greedily as your Rayburn stove
good point tarrel ...wood needs air flowing into it.. the dryer the better.. if your wood has high water content you tend to open the air intakes to get it to burn....then water turns to steem and releases any tar in the wood... this lines the flue and chimney NOT GOOD VERY DANGEROUS...and a bastard to clean ummmm so i,m told , if you fell a tree it will be 1800 months to dry it to perfection....unless its ash ....burn that in a month ....pallets .... the square block spacers are great ...or round ones will keep your fire in all nite . like nr i,m like a rat up a shit pipe when there,s wood about ,i am in there....i have a woodland on my ground.....soon as the leaves stop falling i,ll be dropping some nice oaks and ash ..the secret is always at least a year in front... there,s less pessure on you
(17 November 2012, 22:11)Straight Shooter Wrote: [ -> ]good point tarrel ...wood needs air flowing into it.. the dryer the better.. if your wood has high water content you tend to open the air intakes to get it to burn....then water turns to steem and releases any tar in the wood... this lines the flue and chimney NOT GOOD VERY DANGEROUS...and a bastard to clean ummmm so i,m told , if you fell a tree it will be 1800 months to dry it to perfection....unless its ash ....burn that in a month ....pallets .... the square block spacers are great ...or round ones will keep your fire in all nite . like nr i,m like a rat up a shit pipe when there,s wood about ,i am in there....i have a woodland on my ground.....soon as the leaves stop falling i,ll be dropping some nice oaks and ash ..the secret is always at least a year in front... there,s less pessure on you
I guess that's 18 months you mean, otherwise we're going to have a long wait!
Yes, there's no doubt that wet wood causes problems. To be honest, ours isn't as dry as I would like. We've just not been storing it for long enough. I did consider buying in a couple of loads to get us going this season, but decided you never really know what you're getting, so I'm running with dry-ish wood (25% moisture content or less). I picked up a tip on the Navitron forum, which is to cut the wood smaller and use this to get a really good blaze going and warm up the firebox. Once the firebox is good and hot, it will cope with the damper wood more easily. This is working well for us, plus it gives me more axe-time!
I now have two sections to my wood pile; "starter wood" and "slow burn" wood. We're also planning on having the chimney swept every 3-4 months.
I'm lucky on two fronts I keep some wood in a single pile thick each side of the garage and it dries out to under 25% in under a year, but the bags of logs stuffed into the conservatory dry out in the summer to under 14% .
An added bonus is that Road Warrier has kindly offered to keep getting me chunks of old pallets to burn as well.
...another option might be `home made logs`,.. here we have a saw mill that sells logs made from sawdust very cheaply,.. they make them about the size of a can of coke, and pack them 50 to a bag,... we still have about a ton and a half from last year.
Perfectly dry, baged up so they can be stored anywhere, inside or out
Sort of like a giant wood-pellet? There's someone on another forum who makes his own bio-diesel. He makes similar logs himself, using one of the by-products of the bio-diesel process to bind them. Not sure of the technical details.
Do the woven bags not let water in ? I have a couple of them lying about up at my allotment but never thought of using for anything like that as I thought stuff would get wet in them.
Iv also seen a 'paper press' type machine that you put ur old newspapers in then pull the handle and it squashes the paper into 'logs' to burn, has anyone come across these ? And are they any good ? Seen them cost about £12