# Wood Shed



## bugoutbob (Nov 11, 2012)

Time for me to sit at the feet of my learned and experienced colleagues and draw on their combined wisdom. I am several months away from a location change and my new location will enable me, amongst other things, to burn wood. That will probably mean the construction of a wood shed, so several questions

1) Floor: wood, gravel, concrete or dirt ... which and why
2) open sided or fully closed in?

Appreciate the input


----------



## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

1) Floor: old pallets. Treated Oak preferred. 
Anything "free" is good. 
Keeps wood off the ground - VERY important.

2) open sided (somewhat)
If the wood is wet, it needs to breath as it dries. 
It need to keep from getting rained on; use your best judgment for airflow.


----------



## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

The goal of a wood shed is to let the wood dry and to keep it dry. Keep the wood off the ground or sacrifice the bottom layer as the wood will soak up moisture from the ground. Pallets work well for this but a wood floor or grid work work also. Concrete or gravel might be fine for a base but either will allow the transfer of moisture so raising the wood up is still necessary. As long as you are not stomping around in the mud, which will get you beat by the wife, any floor works as long as you have ventilation under the wood pile.

The walls should allow plenty of ventilation also. I have seen a wood shed on YouTube that was made using pallets that would work well. (Sorry, I don't have the link.) The best one we ever had was made with hand split shakes, no underlayment, and a half inch or more gap between the shakes. Some rain may make it through but not enough to matter. If your shed is in a location that gets a lot of wind when it rains you may wish to make that one side solid.

The trick to using wood for heating is to have dry wood. It takes one BTU to raise one pound of water one degree fahrenheit. It takes 960 BTU's to change a pound of water into steam. We will call it 1500 BTU's per pound of water just for a round number that you could be putting into your home rather than running up the chimney. The steam will also displace the oxygen slowing combustion and cooling the fire. The incomplete combustion will also leave more creosote in the chimney again reducing efficiency and increasing the risk of a chimney fire. I suggest a year and a half as a minimum drying time after splitting. This will probably not be possible for the first year or two.


----------



## zimmy (Aug 17, 2012)

Surplus steel studs, surplus 1/4" fiberglass sheets, vinyl membrane from gas drilling water tanks. You can't see it but there is woven fence around parameter of structure. This was cheap to build but I had to be resourceful and ambitious.


----------



## ZoomZoom (Dec 18, 2009)

LincTex said:


> 1) Floor: old pallets. Treated Oak preferred.
> Anything "free" is good.
> Keeps wood off the ground - VERY important.
> 
> ...


This is pretty much the approach I've used successfully for years.

Dirt floor with pallets. When you're using the wood and clear off a pallet or more, stand the pallet up to the side so you don't walk on it and twist your ankle (or break the slats). Standing it up also gets it out of the way so you can rake the crap that comes off the wood when handling.

My sheds are open-sided to get air. Also, make sure you don't fill with wood all the way to the roof or you won't get a good draft overhead.

I don't worry about rain water on the outside edges. If it gets wet from rain, the next sunny day will normally dry it out. Most of the time if it does get wet, it's only at the very bottom which isn't used until it's definitely into the winter so the cold's low humidity pulls it out of the wood.


----------



## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

An open faced shed, opening facing south. there should be lots of free pallets in local papers, If you are cutting poplar/aspen cut it in spring after it starts to leaf out, let it leaf on the ground , buck it and split it after a hard frost in the fall.


----------



## chigger digger (Apr 9, 2009)

here's mine


----------



## zimmy (Aug 17, 2012)

*Wood shead*

You may have a problem with moisture evaporating from the wood being enclosed and all but eventually it will dry out.


----------



## chigger digger (Apr 9, 2009)

here in okiehomie I don't use a great deal of wood , my shed is 10x20 and I stay about 2 years ahead . dryings not a big problem with 105 deg. summers .


----------



## bugoutbob (Nov 11, 2012)

Appreciate all the input


----------



## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Being in Alberta makes the drying of wood a lot easier than many places, also don't have the same degree of bugs other places deal with. I have seen everything from steel granaries to calf shelters work well. The granary worked a lot better than I would have thought but it had a whirleybird on top which resulted in a surprisingly good chimney effect, along with an aeration fan that was turned on intermittently. A calf shelter works excellent good (lean to style), as long as it is high enough to stand comfortably, you can find kits pretty cheap too.

I like metal (galvalume) for a structure like this, because it is cheap and easy but also offers some degree of fire resistance/containment. 

As I'm sure you know, any place with decent drainage in Alberta that you cover with a roof will be very dry, so dirt is fine but it will turn to dust. If you let some bark/mulch build up it is almost better.

I try to keep wood away from gravel as much as possible, it works great for drying but can get embedded into bark easily and cause all sorts of problems.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents (pre-NDP era dollars).


----------



## jimLE (Feb 25, 2015)

thats a good one..and i like it...but yet,there's 2 things i would've done.that is if i was to go that route.a flooring,that'd keep moisture away from the firewood.the 2nd is.i would of screened in the bottom side of the eve's instead of closing that in.on account.that'd allow the wind to blow the the moister for the wood shed.



chigger digger said:


> here's mine


----------

