Why I Oughta...

Last week, I posted a couple of photos of a new firewood rack that I built from scrap wood in an attempt to get ahead of any sort of firewood shortage that some are predicting this year.  I needed that new rack because, I was planning on ordering 33% more than I normally order each late Summer/early Fall.   I've now used the same basic design on two racks that I've posted about and one more that I haven't posted just yet. This is the fourth season that we've ordered firewood from Best Firewood and third one that we've ordered during this time of year.  This year being the earliest that we've ordered yet - with a late August delivery that you see here in this post. In 2018, I ordered in late September .  In 2019, I ordered in early October . Due to the rumored 'shortage', in 2020, I ordered in late August . And, that 33% extra?  I ended up buying three face cords. 1 face cord of Birch 1 face cord of Cherry 1 face cord of Oak I've a

A few days ago, I showed off some photos of a firewood rack that I built from scrap lumber in anticipation of our annual Fall firewood order .  In that post , I mentioned that I had some additional scrap lumber around (some treated, some not) around to build a few more racks.  This post, shows at the top another rack that I built from the same basic plans.  The photo above, shows this second DIY firewood rack that I built and placed along the fence in the far back part of our yard.  It is holding just about a face cord of mostly Ash and a little bit of Hackberry/Osage Orange firewood that I acquired form next door in December of 2019 .  I started processing the rounds and by March of this year, had the wood stacked on itself along the fence.  You can see that firewood stack in the post here .  It was fine.  But, it was mostly laying on the ground and I thought I could do better.  So, I took the lumber and got started.  The bottom ledge in this version is large - a 2x10 and I had e

The last time I did a firewood consumption check was with this post on January 20th of 2020 .  A little bit over a month has past and we've exhausted probably 3/4 of the face cord that was delivered.  That's a fast pace.  In 2019, I ordered the backfill face cord in mid-February , so this year was running three weeks ahead of last year.  Last year, it seemed that the firewood lasted until right up at the beginning of Spring.  This year, I'm not so sure it will.  One of the things that we learned last year is that we wished we had firewood for during the Summer and Fall - to burn in our outdoor fireplace.  So, that means that if we burn through our rack in March, we won't have anything to burn - unless we turn to the Ash firewood that we picked up on our block . Knowing we're now in year three of buying and burning firewood, we might need to consider ordering more in the Fall or doubling the second order. 2017/2018: Ordered one face cord in January 2018/2

I shared the sad state of our firewood hoard a few days back and mentioned that another split (50/50 Oak/Cherry) Face Cord was on it's way.  Welp, today, it is here.   This is the second year in a row that I had a third Face Cord delivered during the year.  In 2019, it came in mid-February , so we're running a couple of weeks ahead of last year.  Last year, I turned to the 50/50 Cherry/Oak blend for a couple of reasons (they were out of birch, I didn't want Ash, and this was the only 50/50 mix they had at the time) and those mostly held up this year.  We'll burn this stuff up over the next few months as the weather stays cold and hopefully, this load will take us until the weather breaks.   One thing to note:  quite a bit of this wood is split what I'll call 'larger'.  Larger pieces overall and what seems like more heartwood and less sapwood.  Not sure that's possible, but it seems that I'm getting my hands on a bunch of interior/heartwood p

It has been seven weeks since I did the last "Firewood Consumption" check here on the blog with these photos on December 4th, 2019 .  Today, I'm sharing this (somewhat sad) photo showing the current state of our firewood hoard.   On the top is what Cherry firewood we have remaining (about a dozen pieces) and on the bottom is what Birch firewood we have remaining (about two dozen pieces).  This is in addition to the 'hearth-side' firewood storage box that holds about a dozen combo teams. This order was delivered in October of last year and was a face cord of Birch and a face cord of Cherry. Comparing this to last season (2018/2019), we're about two weeks ahead of where we were last year.  Check out the February 2nd post from last season (Feb 2019) and the 'stack' looks similar to today. I keep a tertiary rack on the side stoop outside of my office door that I've exhausted all the Cherry/Birch from, and once empty,  I moved the little bit

This is the first firewood check since we had a couple of face cords delivered in early October this year .  As we've done in the past, the guys stacked our Birch and Cherry firewood in a couple of spots including these racks in our screened porch that you see above.  Let's start there:  on the smaller rack in the back, all of the wood on top has been used and a little more than half of the rack has been burned down.  The rack in front is still untouched.  There's that one errant log leaning up against the fireplace, right?  That's one of the pieces that I cut from the downed Oak tree limb earlier this Fall.  Once the rack clears out, I'll drop it on there to season for a year or so.  In the screened porch, there's one other stack that existed against the wall that has already been burned off, too.  As for the other rack, it looks like it is more than halfway burned, too.    And all of the wood stacked in front of the rack has been consumed, too.  If you

Exactly one year ago, I posted photos and details of our annual firewood delivery from Best Firewood and talked about how we went with Cherry and Birch as our early season woods.  When we built our house, Nat insisted on a wood-burning fireplace with a masonry chimney.  We have one in our family room and we use the one on our screened porch.  When we bought the lot, there was a little bit of wood that had been cut down that was laying around.  Our firewood journey began with that inherited lot and some chopping in November of 2017 .   That lasted us until about mid-December.  And got us going in terms of burning fires most days we're home during the Winter.  Since then, we've had wood delivered each season that we've lived in our new house in Downers Grove starting with a mixed Face Cord that we had delivered right around Christmas of 2017 .   From there, I've done check-ins on our consumption including: February 2018 consumption check Delivery in October

I've posted here on the blog all about our firewood consumption over the past couple of Winters.  This past Winter, we started with a Face Cord of Cherry and a Face Cord of Birch .  Burned through both of those.  Then in February, we ordered a third Face Cord - a combo of Cherry and Oak . The previous Winter, we ordered just one Face Cord and ripped through it in no time.  We also burned a bunch of wood that we had on hand when we bought the property.  Not quite a face cord there, but close.  So, all in, that's about five Face Cords that have been burned.  We built the house new, so I *knew* that the Chimney was clean when we started.  But, I wasn't sure when we should get our chimney swept.  With the Summer here, I figured it was a slow time for the service providers, so I called one locally and set up an appointment.  When he got there, he asked me some questions:  type of wood we burn and how often.  Told him we burn everyday and we burn mostly hardwoods.  When

Just two weeks ago, I shared a photo in my ongoing tracking of our firewood consumption and mentioned that we had mostly exhausted our Fall supply of Cherry and Birch that we had delivered and stacked in our screened porch and side porch.  This photo you see above is from a week or so ago after we had a second, late-Winter delivery of another Facecord of firewood from Best Firewood in Aurora.  This would be the third Facecord of wood that we've worked through since early October.  That's four months - at approximately 1/2 of a Facecord per month.  The supplier that we use has a different type and caliber of wood available in late January/early February vs. what they have in September and October.  So, this order included a wood that we haven't bought before:  Oak.   This is a Facecord that is split 50/50 between Oak and Cherry.  But, the Cherry is *different* than the Cherry we had delivered in October.  If you look at the rack in on the right, you will see the to

It appears that I didn't do a proper firewood consumption check-in post in the month of January this year as the last time I posted a photo of the wood racks was late December of 2018 .  Here's a photo that I took a few days ago that shows only the largest rack closest to our family room.  Why?  Because the other two racks (the one outside and the other one in our screened porch) are both empty.  Above, you can see a small pile of Cherry left on top and a small pile of Birch on the bottom.  This won't last long. Compare the quantity in the photo above to where we were last February 8th when we were using the larger, metal, traditional rack .  My assumption is that the cold Winter isn't going to snap into Spring anytime soon, so I've placed an order with Best Firewood to replenish the racks.  Unfortunately, the *good* Cherry as well as the Birch firewood are all sold out for the season.  So, the backfill order was a Face cord that is split between Cherry (the

The last time I posted in the [ firewood consumption ] diary was back in the very beginning on November of this year.  At that time ( post here ), I had not touched the two 'indoor' racks (indoor meaning inside the screened porch) and had worked my way through about half-way of the outdoor third rack.  Today, I'm documenting where we are right ahead of Christmas. In today's post there's only two photos of the inside racks.  That's because we've totally consumed the outdoor rack in its entirety.  And we're working against the two indoor racks.  The top photo shows where we are in the smaller rack - with about half of that wood consumed.  The bottom portion remaining is Cherry.  Below, the second photo shows the full 'big' rack that shows we've mostly NOT touched this rack with Cherry on top and Birch on the bottom.  Feels like we've gone through about 'half' of the wood, doesn't it?  Last year, we had a Face Cord

Just like I did last year, I'm going to try to track our firewood usage over this Winter in an effort to understand how we are using it and to help plan for next year.  Here's an example of a post I put up in February of this year showing the progress . As a reminder, we had two face cords delivered in mid-September.  One face cord of Cherry.  One of Birch .   And today, you can see that we've made quite a dent in the pile.  The photo above shows the wood pile that is outside that is about half-way down from the top.  And if you look back at the original photos, you'll note that there was a pile on the left that they stacked on the ground .  But, the inside racks are still intact - and not changed.  We've been burning fires almost everyday.  Or every night, I suppose.  We go through three pieces of wood most nights and the weather hasn't been too terribly cold at night.  I'm fearful that we'll blow through our two face cords before winter is ove

Last year, I shared a couple of photos and tracked the progress of our firewood consumption during the Winter.  We started with a rack of wood I scavenged from our yard and split myself .  Having burned through that quickly, I ended up ordering a face cord of wood that arrived in early January .  By February of this year, we had burned through half of the Face Cord .  By March it was gone.   We ordered a mix of hardwoods last year and I think we got a bunch of Ash along with some Oak.   This year, I wanted to get ahead of things and decided to order in September.  And I wanted to order some specific woods:  Cherry and Birch.   Like last year, I used the same provider (Best Firewood and Mulch) but I ordered a full face cord of Birch.  And a full Face Cord of Cherry.  The Cherry for long-burning nature and, of course, the smell it puts off and the birch for the heat output and the bright and lively flames.   On the delivery day, the two guys arrived with a truck full o

Here's a little update on our firewood situation.  I'm posting this mostly for my own historical marker of what we consumed so far this winter, both for planning for next year and to document where we are in early February.  Back in early January, I posted a photo of our Face Cord (or Rick) of firewood that we had delivered and stacked in our screened porch .  Thanks to Google Photos, I made this little top/bottom comparison of the current situation (top) to where we started when the Face Cord was delivered .   For full historical accuracy here on the blog, I suppose I should mention/link to the origins of this series.  There's one more before/after photo in my firewood series, but it is from November when I started to chop my own wood from logs that were left behind on our lot when we cut down some trees pre-build.   But back to the current state in the top photo.  Based on my eye, we've used about half of our Face Cord?  Seem right to your eye?  Maybe a li