My Firewood: What’s left and will I make it through Winter?
This Video is from the Youtube channel: “Off-Grid with Curtis Stone”.
About Curtis Stone:
Curtis is one of the world’s most highly sought-after small farming educators. His book, The Urban Farmer, offers a new way to think about farming𑁋 one where quality of life and profitability coexist. Today, Curtis spends most of his time building his 40-acre off-grid homestead in British Columbia. He leverages his relationships with other experts to bring diverse content into the homes of gardeners and aspiring small farmers from around the world. Learn more at FromTheField.TV.
Right on brother… Lakeside Montana, mild winter here with the exception of last cold snap. -35f for about a week.
Damn. I hope we don’t get that. I don’t see it in the forecast.
that tire around the log spliter is genius
Why…? Inquiring minds want to know.🪵
@@supremepizza3710 when you chop the wood the splits can go flying making it hard to retrive especially if you have back issues, that tire keeps it on the log so you dont have to bend over i just tried it after i seen this vid it works PERFECTLY
just make sure its securecd
@@TheKutia Thank you… no back problems but can feel ya… Still a good idea. Nobody likes gophers. Split my share and somebodies else… now a gas splitter. Tried hydraulic which is good next the stove, kindling. Have tried electric but too many extension cords to the back forty… It’s a trip, watch your step…😁 Just a guy… Take care🥹
Do you have wood moisture meter to check how dry the wood is you are burning? I prefer to leave some wood at least 4 seasons, some hardwoods 2 years, before burning…
I don’t but I should get one.
@@offgridcurtisstone I randomly test wood before burning and sometimes the outside feels pretty dry but inside it is still 20 to 25% which means I leave that batch another year… no problem as long as you have enough room to store it 🙂
I’ve been asking myself the same question 😀
Nice to have mostly fir/larch. Pine is much inferior imo. The pollen from it in the summer makes a huge mess too
I’m living in a canvas wall tent. 16 by 32 with 2 woodstoves. Only have 1 going but had to start 2 when it was soo cold. I went through so much wood. Kinda worried also. Started with 7 also. Yet, the woodchuck ripped me off and did not bring full cords. My woodshed is less than half full now. Thankful for all the Birch I have left!!!
Lived in one of those, hunted, camped… kick butt twas. Woodchucks in dead of winter have you by the short hairs… whatcha going to do say no… have seen worse.🥶 Muck-field gleanings all gnarly and wet, and way short… Standing dead wood and a kid’s sled…😁
How do you manage the creosote build up from burning all that pine and pitch?
Pine is a pretty small percentage of what I burn so I can’t say I notice it. I clean my stove pipe once a year.
I would make it to where you can access and work from both ends of the greenhouse/woodshed. Otherwise, the wood at the one entrance is favored and the wood at the end wall is subject to dryrot and other issues over time. At least that is what I have experienced here in the PNW. Kinda like the food in the bottom of the chest freezer.
No… January was the beginning of kid’s sled days… Dropping standing deadwood and sledding it back… 9 cords reduced to none… every friken winter. You’d think I’d learn… Nope:
Are you concerned with creosote burning pine and other sappy wood?
From what I have seen of you Curtis, even if you run out of wood you will of course make it through the winter; what a silly question. Anyway, last year I was reminded of how much I don’t like depending on a fire to keep warm when my Geo Thermal heat pump compressor went defunct. I am happy, however, that I have a good supply of wood and a wood stove that I used to keep warm for the month of January while repairs were being made. Other than the expense of the heat pump and repairs, the actual cost of electricity to heat the house is much less than the cost of buying delivered wood or of running a natural gas furnace and there is never smoke in the house from the heat pump. Of course I do have the labor of looking at the thermostat from time to time just to make sure it is working properly.
I have been drying out my wood on, begind, or beside the woodstove!! Since most if the time i dont have access ti properly seasoned wood. Didnt know anyone else that did that. I have also burned wet and sappy softwoods and when cleaning out my stove, i have virtually no creosote!
I love the high tunnel idea.
Quite a few houses gone thanks to wood drying. I’m sure you’re not leaving it alone much but yeah. Pretty classic to have a house go up from someone trying to dry their firewood…
In Sweden we had wood rotate at 4 years or so.
The quality of the burn after that amount of time improve cleanliness markedly.
Stove type does as well. Scandinavian wood stoves are miles ahead of the old cast iron blocks popular in the US. Burning lean and clean is good for saving wood and health as well keeping the ash/smoke out of the air.
Get a thermocouple logger too and start tracking your chimney temp. You can really learn an incredible amount about what’s actually happening when it’s time to load etc by keeping an eye and logging that data. Also keeps you out of the danger zone for creo as well but that’s as much just having a functional chimney as opposed to the absurd massive ones in the US with too much thermal mass and not enough velocity. They look good but they tar up like crazy because they don’t get proper use.
I really dislike pine and birch for burning, it’s like paper. 3 hours max and I have to add more wood. East coast here it’s mostly maple and lasts for almost 6 hours per fill until you reload.
you shouldnt need a fire with all this global warming going on …we can all throw out our woodstoves !!!
Curtis: I like where you are going with greenhouse. It seems a bit overkill. I live in Wisconsin and we usually just split our wood by May/June and then the Summer temperatures dry it out. Then you don’t have to put all the effort into drying it. Different climate
We always cut our wood in half in late summer and let it dry outside under a roof. fresh wood not older than 6 months is not good for burning. larch and firs contain more resin. that is not good for your chimney unless you have stainless steel chimney. I always use beech wood (hardwood) and spruce (softwood). I would not put it in a greenhouse. that moisture building up can damage the wood and you have lower heating value.
Grandfather used to lean wood up against the wall behind the kitchen cook stove to warm and dry it before it was used in the stove.
Also have been thinking about doing something like this, I have one of the virginia style solar kilns in the koots.
I think it would be worth doing a few things if you are going to bother building infrastructure for drying firewood. I did some research and it seems to not be very commonly practiced but certainly has been widely considered.. so it makes me think there may not be big gains to be had. I suppose if you have an excess of solar power in the summer, dumping into fans to dry firewood could be a good use case.
I think airflow is the name of the game when it comes to drying. More specifically, carrying the moist air away from the wood seems to be the undervalued factor factor in drying, whereas temperature, which is easily measured/managed seems to get most of the attention. So.. systems that restrict airflow to boost temps may seem good but may not be worthwhile.
I think one way of thinking of it would be by considering a polytunnel for growing food. With the poly tunnel, If you insulate the north wall, you have pretty minor gains from insulating warm air… Easy to measure, has some small benefits. However, you have minor losses from the passive sunlight lost on the north. Hard to measure, but makes a difference. Often, given inputs to insulate and sunlight losses make it not worth the investment to insulate the north wall.
The other thing I’ve been thinking about is that super dry wood can simply rehydrate to ambient in the winter. I’m living in a snow belt area on a NW slope in the middle of the koots. It gets hot/dry in the summer and the air is very wet in other seasons. I suspect firewood that I’ve seasoned for more than a year is drier in summer yr2 than it is in winter yr2.