Cords of Wood??

[Bubbas Boys]

How many cords of firewood is everyone putting up for this winter? I have 3 so far that is seasoned, split, and stacked. This will be our first year heating with wood. We have a new Kitchen Queen 480 that will be our only heat source. I am kinda nervous about how much to have out back. 6 cords?

[geo in mi]

If that's your only heat source, you can't ever have enough.. You can always use it next year, so keep it dry and off the ground....I would go for more, if you have the time and energy to bank it ahead.

geo

[Cindy in NY]

It depends on how cold your winters are and how much space you are trying to heat. We live in an old, drafty Victorian. We run the oil furnace a few cycles during the day and use the woodstove at night. We start needing heat in October and usually go till April. We get a lot of snow and have some very bitter temps and winds. We go through 4 cords of seasoned hardwood a year.

[mrs whodunit]

I will put up 12+

Bad news is I am behind in getting wood. We have 3+ cords so far.

The next 2 weeks I will be gone so no wood will be gotten till mid August and then I really need to get going.

[1shotwade]

I heat 3600 ft with wood normally I'll go thru 7-8 cord,this last year 10+.Now keep in mind I'm talking about the real cord of wood which is 48x48x96.Today people want to sell you a "new" cord which is only 32x48x96.That's only 2/3 cord.The difference is that in old days everyone had stoves that would take a 24" piece of wood. Today they are built smaller.
If this is your first year on wood only heat what I would do is store what I think I'll need,the double it.Keep in mind also that to get the most BTU from the wood it needes rto be seasoned. Most people say it's best to cut 3 years ahead so it will be the best burning wood.If you think you'll burn 5 cord then cut 10.Then cut for next year and the year after. That's 30 cord! I always try to do this but somehow life just gets in the way!


Wadw

[1shotwade]

I heat 3600 ft with wood normally I'll go thru 7-8 cord,this last year 10+.Now keep in mind I'm talking about the real cord of wood which is 48x48x96.Today people want to sell you a "new" cord which is only 32x48x96.That's only 2/3 cord.The difference is that in old days everyone had stoves that would take a 24" piece of wood. Today they are built smaller.
If this is your first year on wood only heat what I would do is store what I think I'll need,the double it.Keep in mind also that to get the most BTU from the wood it needes rto be seasoned. Most people say it's best to cut 3 years ahead so it will be the best burning wood.If you think you'll burn 5 cord then cut 10.Then cut for next year and the year after. That's 30 cord! I always try to do this but somehow life just gets in the way!


Wade

[kilgrosh]

I would get a minimum of 6 cords split and stacked by the end of August. That will give you enough time to dry the cords out, though not completely because wood should really be dried for 6 months or more. After you have your 6 cords, split and stack at least 1-2 cords a month throughout the year. This way by next year you'll have 10+ cords ready to go. And yes it sucks splitting wood in January, but I'll take January cold over July heat. Just my opinion. With this 1-2 cord a month method, you can complete your task in about 4-6 hours with logs ready to be bucked, a good chainsaw, and a decent hydraulic splitter.

[Dixie Bee Acres]

I went through a little over 7 cords last winter, and have right at 6 1/2-7 cords so far this year. Hoping to be able to get at least 4 more before cold weather sets in.
Now, if all goes well and I can get the new wood stove I want, it will burn much more efficiently than what I currently have. If that happens, 5 cord would probably get us by.
But, beings this will ne your first year burning wood, the best advice I can offer, you never have too much. Enough, maybe, but never too much.

[tab]

And then there is a face cord, 4' x 8' x 16"-18".
We have burned wood a long time and were short last winter. I knew in Oct. When that little gut feeling said to pile more, and I ignored it, that I would be sorry. I was. If you think you need more, do it!

[Nimrod]

The type of wood makes a difference too. You will burn almost twice as much pine or popple as oak or maple. That means you have to do almost twice as much work if you are heating with the softwood.

I have been heating with wood for 3 years now. Went through about 6 cords each of the first 2 years. Then the neighbor moved out. Last winter it was about 4 1/2 cords.

Use split oak in a 1950 mobile home with 2X2 walls. I put in a Drolet HT 2000 when I moved here.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/too...6353_200316353

Fleet Farm has it on sale for under $1000 sometimes. It's one of the high efficiency stoves that burns the smoke too.

I really love that it has such a big firebox. It will go all night long and then some, even at -40. I get to sleep a solid 8 hours. I hope you are not getting up in the middle of the night to put wood in the stove. It can be a bit colder here though.

[JoePa]

Three full cords ain't enough - believe me

[Dupree]

I will need around 13-16 full cord. I'm WAY behind and will have a lot of work to do this fall.. I live in northern MN and heat a poorly insulated farm house. I also heat my domestic hot water with my outdoor boiler. We burn from Mid Oct until end of may or June.

[PlowGirl]

Congrats on your kitchen queen. I used 4 face cords of hardwood last winter here in Oklahoma with that same stove. What I have found is to load the stove with split wood for really hot fires and full rounds for the overnight burns. Your fuel consumption will be much higher with split wood.

[BlackFeather]

I burnt 12 face cord last winter, as previously mentioned a face cord is 4'high by 8' long and 16" deep, normally I burn about 10 face cord. Right now I have 7-8 cut up and need about 4 or 5 more. Usually I have a year ahead so it's seasoned but last year I was in the hospital, and had to recover so I used my year of back up. I hope to be done cutting by mid August and then in October get another years worth done. It's taken me longer to cut because I have other work to do in the summer, but come fall I can devote my entire time to it. I can take down a large tree and my daughter and I can cut it up in a day. It takes about 6 large trees to give me a winters supply. The house I heat was built in 1833 and uses a barn frame construction, no space in the walls for insulation, did put some in the attic though. The main floor is 800 square feet, a stove in the kitchen and a furnace in the cellar. Use mostly the kitchen stove unless it gets really cold. There is 1 3'x3' register in the floor right over the furnace, thats the only outlet for heat. The upstairs only gets it's warmth from what ever heat rises to that floor.

[idigbeets]

Ya'll must like your house hot... I go through about 3.5 cords (4x4x8') and heat our entire house as the sole source, and PA isn't that warm from Oct-April. We have 6-8 cords on hand at all times, this year we are doing really well with 14 cords in piles, haven't stacked it but it is on a concrete pad.... so it should drain well. Have another 2 cords in the shed ready to burn.

[DaleK]

Gonna be interesting. Usually 80-100 cords per winter but last year all my customers were begging for more by March so I only have about 20 cords of hardwood to sell this year, plus 25 or so of softwood I'll burn in my and my parents' OWBs.

[MichaelZ]

Many factors affect this. Is this your only source of heat? How well insulated is your house? How big is your house? How warm do you keep your house? To get a good idea, find another person in your climate with a similar situation.

I only cut about 3 full cords but we have an oil furnace too. Also, our home is kept pretty cool. We, like most, ran out last year.

[jwal10]

We burn about a cord 4'x4'x8' of mixed wood, mostly Douglas fir scrap lumber from building sites, a little Douglas fir wood, some oak and limb wood. I have to split it small for our little burner. I have a cord of old cedar shingles in the barn for kindling. I got 3 Douglas fir trees this year when the electric company trimmed trees. All cut, split and stacked in the barn for future years. I usually get up in the morning, build a fire to make hot water for breakfast, heat water for showers and warm up the house and then let it go out. If it is sunny it stays good for the day. If cloudy I will start another fire a couple hours before bed then let it die out....James

[FarmChix]

Last year, we nearly ran out. We usually go through around 6 cords. We are down to 1 and are heading out to get around 7 more to start with. With our house for sale, we weren't going to put up as much. I've heard it's going to be a rough winter, so better safe than sorry. Like everyone else said, you can always use them later. We have a couple trees that are huge, still standing and dead. If we can only find a brave soul to come help with a chainsaw (they are way too close to the house), we will have more than enough.

[o&itw]

It is mostly wood sellers that have come up with the "different" sizes of what a cord represents. A cord of wood is simply this: a stack of wood 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long. The name originaly came form cord-wood (wood cut for paper making pulp) which was 4 feet in length.

There is a lot of people out there selling a "truckload" of wood and calling it a cord. That would require and 8' bed (unusual any more) with the wood stacked tightly, straight up, and more than two feet higher than the sides. In other words, one would have to have sideboards to even stack that much, and most of the trucks one sees today would not support that much weight without riding on the axels.

I heat a house that has an 1800 sq ft main level and an 1800 foot basement on about 3 or 4 cords a year. Even then, I burn my wood furnace opened up more than normal, because to burn it more efficiently would build up more creosote. I suspect that if I had a couple of more modern efficient wood stoves and was around all the time to tend it, I could get by on 1/2 to 3/4 of that.

I do burn mostly oak (post, white, red) and some hickory which put out more heat than some of the softer hardwoods like elm and ash.

There are other factors also. Bark (except for maybe some of the hickories) hardly puts out enough heat to burn itself. For that reason, split wood from larger trees is much better than cut limbs, which have a much higher percentage of bark to their volume. (The bark is also where most of ones ash comes from)

All that being said, as several have mentioned, extra wood will always be even better wood next year, especially if it is kept up off the ground and out of the weather. We had an unusually cold winter here this year and I was down to "ends and pieces" by the time the weather warmed up. The worst thing you can do is end up trying to burn green wood.