I heat with wood for 30 years also,but I enjoyed the splitter marking tip,don't know why I haven't done that before. I try to have a least a 2 year supply and most all of it stays covered. I have some woods,but most of my free fuel comes from helping out friends and neighbors with storm work. I use stihl saws and a honda powered splitter, and use the best oil and gas available. Thanks for all your informative videos,including other topics. Have a good season,Sir.
Great idea on marking the wood splitter. And yes, I definitely should be splitting kindling and what I call "starter wood" much earlier in the season to dry. Really enjoying your channel!
Just watched a second time. Lots of great info. Your wall of firewood causes no small amount of envy and a fair amount of guilt - wishing WE had more ready for the winter. Good for you!
Recently subscribed to your channel and am well on my way to having watched all of your videos. Thanks for all of the helpful tips and positive energy. My family and I just moved to a place where we can/need to heat with wood and your videos have been very helpful in building my knowledge and confidence as the head of the household. My son and I have a weekend of splitting ahead of us to keep us stocked up for the remainder of the winter. Luckily, we have a lot of standing dead trees on our property, which I know is not ideal to burn so soon, but it is better than having to go buy a cord. Thanks again, and looking forward to many more great videos. Stay warm up there and keep taking care of that family. God bless.
+Adam Croker Thanks for the kind words! You are doing it right. Just getting in and doing it. I swear every stove has there own personality. There is something so special about wood heat, the freedom it gives you, power or no power and you still stay warm, and just the satisfaction at the end of the day. Thank you for sharing. Put a smile on my face.
I Have Been Heating My House with Wood for 30 years... that being said, I expected this video to be a waste of time but I MUST SAY, I WAS WRONG. You are a very Smart Young Man and your Experience and Wisdom is beyond your Years. I Commend you on all your suggestions. Very thought out and well presented. Looking Forward to more... Godspeed My Friend, DanO
Good info, the stacking video was helpful too, I thought I needed to add more racks this year because I came across more wood than usual with all the summer storms this year. (I cut and removed a lot of downed wood for people around the area) Think I'll try the pallets stacked the way you showed so that I don't have to permanently build racks! I'd like to see a video or more info on that round house stacking too! Thanks!
Thanks. We were supposed to move this year but covid put a stop to that. So, we had a downed tree split last year and watched your other video on how to stack the wood. But never considered that after a year it may still have too much moisture, it was about a 100year old oak. I am going to bet it will be okay by fall since it has been sitting now two Texas summers of 100+ heat for weeks. You make an excellent point about the size of chunks, and I am a stickler for good kindling. I put a box of it in my shed over summer where temps reach over 150 degrees in summer. I guess there are some advantages of this heat.
Thanks for the thoughtful video. My wood stocks are much less than yours but I too stack on pallets, in my case I'm lucky and get them free from a friend who works at a plant nursery. I need to replace them every couple of years though as the rain and bugs get to them. Your stacks are so neat you put mine to shame. Like you, I also store kindling and mixed sizes of firewood for the same reasons, great minds .... and all that jazz. Your observations on this were spot on. Thanks again for sharing. Hope you have a mild winter, all my best wishes. G.
+Maple Mike That is one thing I have been playing around with this year. The wind normally comes out of the west for us so I usually face the piles towards the wind. The piles facing the south appear to be drying quicker. I may be changing things up in the future. Thank you for sharing.
Solid points. I have a mark on the door jamb of my wood shed. I check longer pieces against that mark to ensure nothing goes in the shed that won't fit into my wood stove.
+Terry Hale That is a Great idea! I put a mark on the trailer since I often have saw in hand when loading. I really need to build a wood shed like you. What a great tip. Thank you for sharing!
For kindling if you can find a sawmill that does kiln dried hardwood it works amazing, i got most of our kindling from the giant pile of of broken garbage wood from the mill i work at since it wasent usable it was free.
Our town, when it drops trees that are near the power lines each spring, they drop and limb all of them and leave for the residents to cut up and take away. They are all usually gone by lunch on a Saturday, so when you notice on a Thursday that they dropped trees, get ready Saturday morning and I got my 5 cord for the winter that way.
For consistency in cutting, get some cheap furring and cut pieces to length to use as a measuring stick. I cut at 16" and keep a whole bunch handy and just lay them on the logs while bucking. If you lose it, no big deal. Make a whole bunch.
I'm lucky that I have a lot of dry wood to cut. Do run into some wet ones with windfalls or larger parts of the trunk that isn't fully dried. I'll tell others watching that all these tips are good. Been heating with wood for 30+ years. I've never been able to get the 2 - 3 year supply. Never even been able to get 1 full year put up before winter.
I love your stack because I stack the same way ,I keep 25 cord in rounds and no less than 10 cord fully split ,that's huge wood piles my grandchildren go near so I take the time to stack well ,I also stack bark side down after my final split so the freshly exposed wet wood can release it's moisture without traveling thru the outside of the former round that's already below 15% moisture ,I also rely heavily on the moisture meter I picked up from Grainger supply for $69 so I'm only burning splits with moisture content in the single digits ,I can guess pretty close by clunking 2 pieces together but I like knowing the precise moisture ,many wood sellers try to convince people new to wood heat that burning 25% moisture wood is better because it burns slower ,but what they aren't telling greenhorns is that 25% moisture wood releases a shit ton of creosote, and that's dangerous ,especially for double walled pipes hidden in walls .
2:44 That is a ridiculous amount of wood... I love it. I have some nice stashes still in the woods as well as next year's wood in my yard. This years is in my wood shed and will be moved into the basement this fall.
Another basic-firewooder-tip: take a close look at "Dolkita" (Dolmar/Makita) chainsaws, specifically their PS-421 (42 cc) and PS-6100 (61 cc) saws for most all firewooding. Maybe the PS-7900 for BIG stuff. Notably better power than "comparable" stihl saws, at waaaaay better prices. Pro quality at better than stihl's homeowner-saw prices. The models I mentioned are used a lot by professionals. There's a reason their 64 cc saw is the standard Homie-rental saw, and if you can get a used one, go for it. Lots more reasons for Dolkita over stihl, but later.
+Jacques Blaque yeah they make some good saws. The one down side for us, is not many dealers near us. I can get the saw but parts involves many mile on the road. where our local ace hardware carries many common parts for Stihl, husqvarna, and jonsered. I think I will be picking up another saw this coming summer and will be taking another look at them.
look for a video on a home build outdoor wood burner like one that would go in the basement but a video of how someone build a shed around one and pumps it into house
Or you can offer to take trees out of a field fenceline, waterway, cattle pasture, etc. As long as you clean up the limbs and they trust you, you could have a lifetime supply of wood for free. Then again, there are a fair number of hills and valleys here. If it was dead flat finding trees in fields would be much tougher. I farm and with the crop ground I rent, I'll never run out of wood. And even if I did, there's plenty of other field borders around that need clearing. :)
+Trevor Betz I think one of the best ones on the market is the Blaze king series. Really efficient stoves but not cheap. I hear nothing but good things about them. I don't have one but at this is on the top of my list when we upgrade. . I would recommend looking for and EPA certified stove. If you take a look at this video you can see what a difference it can make on the wood consumed. th-cam.com/video/RauEGPNrL-Q/w-d-xo.html
We do. Not something We cut that much just because we don't have much on our property. There is an old wives tail about it causes chimney fires. In reality, Pine burns hot, which is great for starting a fire and helping keep the chimney clean. But if you have bad practices and a dirty chimney it can cause trouble. It is recommended every time starting a fire to get it nice and hot and burn in the ideal temps (250 f - 450f) to help reduce creasote from forming.. The key is dry wood (15% moister or less) and ideal stove pipe and chimney temps. Some areas that is the only wood avaiable and they have no problems. I burn it when we have it.
I just bought a house with a fireplace that has a metal wood burning insert in it. My girlfriend wants to take it out and use the open fireplace so she can see the fire that's burning but I feel like they must have put the insert in there for some reason. We really don't know jack about fireplaces or inserts right now. If anyone has any information on why they put the metal inserts in the fireplace that would be helpful.
+blosom2315 tough to say as the reason they did that can vary. Possible they just want to be more efficient and a wood stove/insert will be more efficient for sure. It could be something more as in they did not have a good draw and smoke was filling the house. You may want to compromise with your bride and get a glass door insert or glass door wood stove. You get the benefit of seeing the fire with none of the problems that can come from it.
We have 1 fireplace and 2 wood stoves in our small house and haven't used the heat pump in over a decade. The fireplace is handy for baking potatoes, making cobler or bread in the dutch oven, and for ambiance on those cold winter nights with the wife (all three of our kids were born in late summer to fall because of this) but otherwise useless. It wastes more heat because it is so inefficient and when there isn't a fire in it, even with the damper closed, we loose heat. It got so bad a few years back that we decided to close it off completely and put a board up in front of it. Most inserts have or can be retrofited with a clear front to still have the dancing firelight but still be efficient. Using wood has multiple benefits, first my grandpa always said fire wood warms you twice (thought he was crazy till we went to using wood completly then figured it out, thus our firewood is generally put up buy mid april to avoid heat stroke in the summer), it will keep you thin and fit, we tend to make it a family affair and get the boys off the video games, and it is a truly renewable resource, not to mention I really like the smell of hickory burning. Not to mention humans are hardwired to be more comfortable in a building when there is a single heat source in the room that we can face. We live in a somewhat rural community and farmers around here are always happy to let me clean up their blow downs out of their pasture. I can honestly say that even with having bought 3 saws in the past decade (they all still run but I have an affliction for having more power it seems and it never hurts to have a backup) and buying the high dollar gerber splitting axes, that I have spent less than $800 total to heat my house for the past decade.
+blosom2315 Yeah I would recommend keeping the insert or replacing it. A open fireplace is one of the least efficient ways of heating with wood. Huge difference. If I remember right a open fireplace is like 15% efficient and most inserts are 50 - 80%. To get an idea on the difference on how much wood difference that is take a look at this video. th-cam.com/video/RauEGPNrL-Q/w-d-xo.html I am not sure why I didn't see this comment until now. Sorry
+Adam Dietrick Thanks for the invite. Seems like a great community with a lot of great and friendly people. I have really been enjoying it and seeing the cool projects everyone is working on.
I heat with wood for 30 years also,but I enjoyed the splitter marking tip,don't know why I haven't done that before. I try to have a least a 2 year supply and most all of it stays covered. I have some woods,but most of my free fuel comes from helping out friends and neighbors with storm work. I use stihl saws and a honda powered splitter, and use the best oil and gas available. Thanks for all your informative videos,including other topics. Have a good season,Sir.
Good suggestions. We’re new to burning for all our heat and appreciate the advice and experience you share in your videos. God Bless!🙏🏼🇺🇸
Great idea on marking the wood splitter. And yes, I definitely should be splitting kindling and what I call "starter wood" much earlier in the season to dry. Really enjoying your channel!
Just watched a second time. Lots of great info. Your wall of firewood causes no small amount of envy and a fair amount of guilt - wishing WE had more ready for the winter. Good for you!
These are some really good tips!! That 2-3 year supply is a good idea. I've thought about health issues too. Great video!!!
Recently subscribed to your channel and am well on my way to having watched all of your videos. Thanks for all of the helpful tips and positive energy. My family and I just moved to a place where we can/need to heat with wood and your videos have been very helpful in building my knowledge and confidence as the head of the household. My son and I have a weekend of splitting ahead of us to keep us stocked up for the remainder of the winter. Luckily, we have a lot of standing dead trees on our property, which I know is not ideal to burn so soon, but it is better than having to go buy a cord. Thanks again, and looking forward to many more great videos. Stay warm up there and keep taking care of that family. God bless.
+Adam Croker Thanks for the kind words! You are doing it right. Just getting in and doing it. I swear every stove has there own personality. There is something so special about wood heat, the freedom it gives you, power or no power and you still stay warm, and just the satisfaction at the end of the day. Thank you for sharing. Put a smile on my face.
I Have Been Heating My House with Wood for 30 years... that being said, I expected this video to be a waste of time but I MUST SAY, I WAS WRONG. You are a very Smart Young Man and your Experience and Wisdom is beyond your Years. I Commend you on all your suggestions. Very thought out and well presented.
Looking Forward to more... Godspeed My Friend, DanO
MrDanoconnor Thank you that means a lot!
MrDanoconnor agree
Good info, the stacking video was helpful too, I thought I needed to add more racks this year because I came across more wood than usual with all the summer storms this year. (I cut and removed a lot of downed wood for people around the area) Think I'll try the pallets stacked the way you showed so that I don't have to permanently build racks! I'd like to see a video or more info on that round house stacking too! Thanks!
Thanks. We were supposed to move this year but covid put a stop to that. So, we had a downed tree split last year and watched your other video on how to stack the wood. But never considered that after a year it may still have too much moisture, it was about a 100year old oak. I am going to bet it will be okay by fall since it has been sitting now two Texas summers of 100+ heat for weeks. You make an excellent point about the size of chunks, and I am a stickler for good kindling. I put a box of it in my shed over summer where temps reach over 150 degrees in summer. I guess there are some advantages of this heat.
Thanks for the thoughtful video. My wood stocks are much less than yours but I too stack on pallets, in my case I'm lucky and get them free from a friend who works at a plant nursery. I need to replace them every couple of years though as the rain and bugs get to them. Your stacks are so neat you put mine to shame. Like you, I also store kindling and mixed sizes of firewood for the same reasons, great minds .... and all that jazz. Your observations on this were spot on. Thanks again for sharing. Hope you have a mild winter, all my best wishes. G.
Stacking it on a south face also really speeds things along! Nice job on the wood inventory.
+Maple Mike That is one thing I have been playing around with this year. The wind normally comes out of the west for us so I usually face the piles towards the wind. The piles facing the south appear to be drying quicker. I may be changing things up in the future. Thank you for sharing.
LOVE it bro, great info!
I love kindling. We cut & store it in sandbags.
This week I wanted to share a few helpful tips for cutting and heating your house with firewood.
th-cam.com/video/oYJvxKy_8c8/w-d-xo.html
great knowledge... I am all ears Keep it coming..
Solid points. I have a mark on the door jamb of my wood shed. I check longer pieces against that mark to ensure nothing goes in the shed that won't fit into my wood stove.
+Terry Hale That is a Great idea! I put a mark on the trailer since I often have saw in hand when loading. I really need to build a wood shed like you. What a great tip. Thank you for sharing!
great information, all points valuable. thanks
For kindling if you can find a sawmill that does kiln dried hardwood it works amazing, i got most of our kindling from the giant pile of of broken garbage wood from the mill i work at since it wasent usable it was free.
Love your videos sir! Also, welcome to the firewood hoarders club!
+defend223 Thank you! Spent some time checking things out on the site tongiht. Looks like a ton of great information on the site.
Some very useful tips.
Excellent video, just watched a lot of your videos, and subscribed you are very informant on your channel, God Bless and keep up excellent work
TennesseeGirl agree
Your local cabinet shop is an excellent source of free kindling, I cut mine about 8-10" and load it in metal 55 gallon drums
Hey now. Good advice. I like how you marked you splitter bed, nicely done
Hi I'm Eric I just subscribed your videos are very helpful I get a lot of tips from you
I love your farm, beautifully in place ...
Excellent video and very good tips. Thanks a lot.
Our town, when it drops trees that are near the power lines each spring, they drop and limb all of them and leave for the residents to cut up and take away. They are all usually gone by lunch on a Saturday, so when you notice on a Thursday that they dropped trees, get ready Saturday morning and I got my 5 cord for the winter that way.
Thanks for the good tips.
Kindling IS super important. However our stove usually stays full on from December to March so kindling isn't much of a concern haha
That's some lovely firewood!
Scratch Made Homestead agree
For consistency in cutting, get some cheap furring and cut pieces to length to use as a measuring stick. I cut at 16" and keep a whole bunch handy and just lay them on the logs while bucking. If you lose it, no big deal. Make a whole bunch.
Bourne Accident agree
I'm lucky that I have a lot of dry wood to cut. Do run into some wet ones with windfalls or larger parts of the trunk that isn't fully dried. I'll tell others watching that all these tips are good. Been heating with wood for 30+ years. I've never been able to get the 2 - 3 year supply. Never even been able to get 1 full year put up before winter.
I love your stack because I stack the same way ,I keep 25 cord in rounds and no less than 10 cord fully split ,that's huge wood piles my grandchildren go near so I take the time to stack well ,I also stack bark side down after my final split so the freshly exposed wet wood can release it's moisture without traveling thru the outside of the former round that's already below 15% moisture ,I also rely heavily on the moisture meter I picked up from Grainger supply for $69 so I'm only burning splits with moisture content in the single digits ,I can guess pretty close by clunking 2 pieces together but I like knowing the precise moisture ,many wood sellers try to convince people new to wood heat that burning 25% moisture wood is better because it burns slower ,but what they aren't telling greenhorns is that 25% moisture wood releases a shit ton of creosote, and that's dangerous ,especially for double walled pipes hidden in walls .
2:44 That is a ridiculous amount of wood... I love it. I have some nice stashes still in the woods as well as next year's wood in my yard. This years is in my wood shed and will be moved into the basement this fall.
Awesome video Brother, I really enjoyed it, thanks much 👍
If you can get pallets for free, use them for kindling too!!
Great video man
Another great video bro! Well done!! Go Steelers!
I'm enjoying your channel. Thank you for the video.
Thank you!
Very good video. Thanks.
Quinn The Eskimo agree
Nice tips! Thank You,!
Very good video. Liked and subed.
Thanks man! Old video, not my best but much appreciated.
Mr. Self Reliance agree
Great Tips!
Another basic-firewooder-tip: take a close look at "Dolkita" (Dolmar/Makita) chainsaws, specifically their PS-421 (42 cc) and PS-6100 (61 cc) saws for most all firewooding. Maybe the PS-7900 for BIG stuff. Notably better power than "comparable" stihl saws, at waaaaay better prices. Pro quality at better than stihl's homeowner-saw prices. The models I mentioned are used a lot by professionals. There's a reason their 64 cc saw is the standard Homie-rental saw, and if you can get a used one, go for it. Lots more reasons for Dolkita over stihl, but later.
+Jacques Blaque yeah they make some good saws. The one down side for us, is not many dealers near us. I can get the saw but parts involves many mile on the road. where our local ace hardware carries many common parts for Stihl, husqvarna, and jonsered. I think I will be picking up another saw this coming summer and will be taking another look at them.
Good tips..
look for a video on a home build outdoor wood burner like one that would go in the basement but a video of how someone build a shed around one and pumps it into house
Subscribed. Thanks.
Very good.
+John Rand :) Thanks for watching!
Good tips brother. I did sub. God Bless
Or you can offer to take trees out of a field fenceline, waterway, cattle pasture, etc. As long as you clean up the limbs and they trust you, you could have a lifetime supply of wood for free. Then again, there are a fair number of hills and valleys here. If it was dead flat finding trees in fields would be much tougher. I farm and with the crop ground I rent, I'll never run out of wood. And even if I did, there's plenty of other field borders around that need clearing. :)
new sub for your videos.. you have good info
+Brad Jackson welcome! Thanks for checking things out.
what would the best wood burner be for a inside one not gonna go the outdoor route one just to exspensive . and have a small basement to .
+Trevor Betz I think one of the best ones on the market is the Blaze king series. Really efficient stoves but not cheap. I hear nothing but good things about them. I don't have one but at this is on the top of my list when we upgrade.
. I would recommend looking for and EPA certified stove. If you take a look at this video you can see what a difference it can make on the wood consumed.
th-cam.com/video/RauEGPNrL-Q/w-d-xo.html
fall your trees during winter when the sap is down and they'll dry faster, even if you wait for spring to buck them
Eric,
Do you ever use pine in your woodturning stove or is the pine just too smoky?
We do. Not something We cut that much just because we don't have much on our property. There is an old wives tail about it causes chimney fires. In reality, Pine burns hot, which is great for starting a fire and helping keep the chimney clean. But if you have bad practices and a dirty chimney it can cause trouble. It is recommended every time starting a fire to get it nice and hot and burn in the ideal temps (250 f - 450f) to help reduce creasote from forming.. The key is dry wood (15% moister or less) and ideal stove pipe and chimney temps. Some areas that is the only wood avaiable and they have no problems. I burn it when we have it.
"Cut your wood by easter to heat your keister"- craig browne
like all of your tips other than the leaving a note in someones mailbox, not unless you are a postal worker. only postage mail is put in a mailbox
+Vern Robinson Correct not in. Often in the newspaper box or using a rubber band and connecting it to the outside. Great point.
Very fast correction, like how you present yourself, pretty sure that you are a Christian.
I just bought a house with a fireplace that has a metal wood burning insert in it. My girlfriend wants to take it out and use the open fireplace so she can see the fire that's burning but I feel like they must have put the insert in there for some reason. We really don't know jack about fireplaces or inserts right now. If anyone has any information on why they put the metal inserts in the fireplace that would be helpful.
+blosom2315 tough to say as the reason they did that can vary.
Possible they just want to be more efficient and a wood stove/insert will be more efficient for sure.
It could be something more as in they did not have a good draw and smoke was filling the house.
You may want to compromise with your bride and get a glass door insert or glass door wood stove. You get the benefit of seeing the fire with none of the problems that can come from it.
We have 1 fireplace and 2 wood stoves in our small house and haven't used the heat pump in over a decade. The fireplace is handy for baking potatoes, making cobler or bread in the dutch oven, and for ambiance on those cold winter nights with the wife (all three of our kids were born in late summer to fall because of this) but otherwise useless. It wastes more heat because it is so inefficient and when there isn't a fire in it, even with the damper closed, we loose heat. It got so bad a few years back that we decided to close it off completely and put a board up in front of it. Most inserts have or can be retrofited with a clear front to still have the dancing firelight but still be efficient.
Using wood has multiple benefits, first my grandpa always said fire wood warms you twice (thought he was crazy till we went to using wood completly then figured it out, thus our firewood is generally put up buy mid april to avoid heat stroke in the summer), it will keep you thin and fit, we tend to make it a family affair and get the boys off the video games, and it is a truly renewable resource, not to mention I really like the smell of hickory burning. Not to mention humans are hardwired to be more comfortable in a building when there is a single heat source in the room that we can face.
We live in a somewhat rural community and farmers around here are always happy to let me clean up their blow downs out of their pasture. I can honestly say that even with having bought 3 saws in the past decade (they all still run but I have an affliction for having more power it seems and it never hurts to have a backup) and buying the high dollar gerber splitting axes, that I have spent less than $800 total to heat my house for the past decade.
+blosom2315 Yeah I would recommend keeping the insert or replacing it. A open fireplace is one of the least efficient ways of heating with wood. Huge difference. If I remember right a open fireplace is like 15% efficient and most inserts are 50 - 80%. To get an idea on the difference on how much wood difference that is take a look at this video.
th-cam.com/video/RauEGPNrL-Q/w-d-xo.html
I am not sure why I didn't see this comment until now. Sorry
Or just get abig round and baton it
it is illegal to put things in mailboxes that don't come from the U.S. Postal service nice idea but no cigar
+David Gaylord Well I didn't specify, but I don't stick it actually in the mailbox but often in the newspaper bin next to ist. Great point.
+Life in Farmland well you did say at 5:53 to put it in the mailbox anyway Great vids
Kinda ..
Love your videos. If you haven't already, check out our forum at firewoodhoardersclub.com -- we would love to have you as a member!
+Adam Dietrick I was not aware of this site. Thank you for sharing! I just created an account.
Glad to have you with us!
+Adam Dietrick Thanks for the invite. Seems like a great community with a lot of great and friendly people. I have really been enjoying it and seeing the cool projects everyone is working on.
Thank you for the informative videos.
+Scott Evans Thanks for watching!