Outdoor Firewood Stacked and Ready - August 2020

Earlier this week, I showed a couple of photos of the firewood delivery that we received from Best Firewood that included Birch, Cherry and Oak seasoned firewoods.  In that post, I mentioned that we ordered 33% more wood than we normally do - because of both the projected 'shortages' that might be coming for firewood AND the fact that I'm assuming that due to COVID, we're going to spending a lot more time around the house. 

I built a couple of firewood racks to get ready for this delivery as I knew I wasn't going to have enough room on the current rack situation.  Here's a post showing one of the racks that I put a little cedar roof on top of and built with scrap lumber (not all of it treated). 

This post is showing off three of my now 'outdoor racks'.  The past few years, I've kept all the wood that I've bought exclusively inside the screened porch and off the little covered stoop outside my office.  I'll post tomorrow to show those inside racks, but for now, let's look at the three racks here.

First, the top photo in this post shows that rack with a little angled roof.  On the left is all Birch.  On the right is all Oak firewood. You can also spot a one round that I picked up around town that I haven't processed yet - but it is Oak.

Below, is a second outdoor rack - located just to the West of the first one.  This one doesn't have a roof and is built on the same design, but with different wood - based on what I had on hand.  The biggest note here is the original rack used a 2x4 on the bottom and a 2x6 on the top.  This one (below) reverses that. 

The wood in this rack is Cherry firewood.  With a tiny bit (like 4-5 pieces) of Hackberry and Ash in the very bottom right corner.  On top of this rack is a blend of Oak, Birch, Cherry and some other stuff including a big Ash round and a bunch of Oak twigs on the far left. 

The final outdoor rack is this metal one that I've used since the beginning - bought in 2017 and used on the firewood that I inherited on our property when we moved in that Summer.  You can see it below as it is holding (here) exclusively Oak firewood.  But, it is a blend of Oaks - with the bottom two rows being Oak wood that I harvested from our backyard when a big limb was downed in an early snow storm when the tree was holding many of its leaves. 

I've measured the moisture levels in that firewood since it came down - in October of 2019.  By January of this year, the split pieces of Oak were showing a little more than 20% moisture on my meter.  This rack of Oak is underneath a roof, so it will be a place that I use 'last' in terms of what we burn. 

I'll post the two other 'inside racks' soon, but right now, my plan is to pull from these outdoor racks first and then, when the weather turns and I don't want to be going outside, I'll start to pull from the indoor racks.