Took me 2 years to figure out I was stacking my firewood wrong

I was out in my shed last weekend pulling wood for the stove and noticed the bottom rows were all rotting. Turns out I had the stacks flat against the wall with no airflow underneath. My neighbor Bob from down the road in Littleton pointed out I needed to stack it off the ground on pallets with the bark facing up. Has anyone else dealt with rotten wood from a simple stacking mistake?

3 comments

3 Comments

paige_ellis5927d ago

Bob from down the road was right about the pallets. That's the key thing people miss. I did the exact same thing my first year burning wood. Laid it all against the house thinking it was fine. Now I've got a whole section of punky logs I can't even use. Spent a whole weekend re-stacking everything on pressure treated pallets with gaps between rows. Bark facing up really does help shed water too. It's one of those small things that makes a huge difference if you want dry wood.

adams.vera27d ago

And you know what else, I stacked mine on cinder blocks one year thinking that was good enough, but the moisture wicked up from the ground anyway. Had to toss out half a cord of stuff that was spongy and full of bugs. Ever since I switched to those pallets with the plastic strapping it’s been night and day difference.

drew_patel5727d ago

Had a buddy up in Whitefield, Mike, who stacked his wood on old railroad ties thinking they'd last forever. Three years later the ties were rotting into the ground and the whole bottom of his stack was basically compost. He lost a full cord and a half. The worst part was he had all this beautiful sugar maple he'd split himself that turned into punky mush. Now he swears by those cheap plastic pallets you can grab for free behind hardware stores. Says he's never looked back.