But it sure beats paying for electricity.

Looks good
I took delivery last winter of five cords of hard sugar maple. I was very fortunate that the logger charged me the same price as birch & popple.

The nice thing about cutting & splitting is the wood warms you twice.

Where in NW Ontario are you located?

Tom

To burn next fall?

Straight north of International Falls by a couple hours.

Nope. This winter. I have about a cord and a half left over from last winter, and this four will see us the rest of the way through this winter, and half way through next winter. The house is built for the 40 below we get and we rarely burn a full 4 cords.

Outdoor furnace?

That is a nice pile of good honest hard work, right there.

R.

By Kenora or futher north?

I have been fishing/Moose hunting/ Partridge hunting the Ignace area/ Atikokan area for over fourty years. Via canoe/ power boat.
You sir do truely live in God's country.
Do you know Barry Brown out of Browns Clearwater?

It might not hurt to post a guard dog at the pile tonight. It seems to be coveted by a few folks.

Nope -- indoor forced air Hunter wood/electric. Try to use the electric sparingly when it goes much below freezing, which it is now. Small house, lots of insulation, and decent windows and doors. Wood basement makes a difference too. It has all worked great for the last 27 years.

Nice pile of wood Keith!
I cut mine while out hunting this fall,hunt in the am,cut wood in the pm.That way I could justify all the hunting I did this fall

Keith,

I'm guessing you have a large electric saw and a good splitter for processing that quantity of wood each year.

Jim

I have a Husqvarna 61 cc chainsaw and a gas powered hydraulic splitter, as well as an 8 pound splitting maul. Works good. And I need the exercise.

Wouldn't it still be kinda wet depending on when it was cut?

I'm buying my wood shortly for next year. I live in town, so it comes cut & split. $250/cord.

What's a "wood basement"?

.

Rather than have either a concrete block, or poured concrete wall basement, you dig your hole in the ground and build a wooden frame basement out of PWF wood and plywood (stands for Permanent Wood Foundation) You build walls the same as for the rest of the house, only the wood and plywood are treated for sub grade. Used to be warranteed for 40 years, but Mine is showing no signs of trouble yet, so who knows. You then build the house on top of that, and you can insulate the basement walls and then sheet them in. I have 6" of insulation in my basement walls. Works good, and it is super dry. Even my floor is wood. The only concrete in the whole house is what my furnace and chimney are sitting on. The footings are wood as well.

Flame on!

Just to expand on supercub's question. The timber species I cut for firewood to burn in the fireplace, and free standing wood stoves is stacked and dried for a minimum of 12 months. What species of wood are you burning?

We don't live around any of the "typical" hardwoods that you folks likely burn, like oak or elm or maple. My house is smallish, and I burn about 3.25 or 3.5 cords of mixed white spruce and jack pine a year. This stuff was cut and left full length with the needles on it which sucks the moisture out of it pretty good. Some of it was standing dead, so it doesn't get much dryer. But ya know what? I'll admit that I probably do everything wrong when it comes to firewood and burning it for heat. I'm a relative newcomer to it - only been doing it for a little under 30 years. With y'all's help, I could really save some money.

Edited to add a bunch of smiley faces to let you know I am writing tongue in cheek.

and the words to a song:

I'm just a boy whose intentions are good,
O, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood!

(is that enough)

BTW, supercub, for the price of a cord and a half of your wood, I can heat my house for about a year and a half. (On garbage wood improperly handled. )

Brother Keith, not for a second to question your credentials as a wood heating guru, there is some birch, poplar, and a smattering of black ash around as well.
I have heard for years to mix the woods if you have them.
Having said all that, if it turns out you have an unmangable surplus of the pine, and spruce, you know where to deliver it.
Thank you kindly in advance!

I have used birch, poplar and ash, and the house was so hot I had to open all the windows and doors, and Al Gore complained I was in a large part responsible for global warming. Seasoned pine and spruce work well for me -- lots of heat, but more controlable.

Come on up, and I'll give you enough for a weekend.

Al Gore introduced himself to me back about 1988. He did not say anything about any kind of warming then.Just running for some office, or another.
In regards to the former VP, you have my sympathy.
Perhaps Al Gore, and David Suzuki will homestead at the North Pole. Talk about a pair to draw to.

Never mind a pair ........ those two should invite a straight flush!

Thanks. I've never heard of that type of basement before. We get too much moisture here for that. Be rotted in no time.

We burn maple and/or birch here. I usually buy the wood cut and split in the sping and rank it outside till the later fall. My basement is unfinished, so I currently have 7 cords in and room for more. A lot of folks buy their wood a year in advance and burn that way. Too dry is not good either as it burns too fast w/o the same heat.

To jump in on the wood basement,I would think it depends on the wood treatment.
The right type, with good retention,the depth of treatment,can last a long time.

Apparently this treated wood can be buried in a swamp for 40 years and still retain it water repellency. My basement is from 4-7 feet in the ground, backfilled with good clean gravel, and the land is sloped away from the building, (naturally) and I have 5" rain gutters that I run ito pipes and down the hill away from the house. Very warm, very dry. And you can walk all day in your bare feet on the basement floor, and feet stay warm. It works.

There are a lot of wood basements up here. Supercub just didn't notice. I was in a home and a church with wood basement a few weeks ago in NB.

Bro. Keith, are there any buzz saws around any more? When we lived in Kirkland Lake in the '60s there were quite a few, and a few shortened arms to go with them.

They went through a cord of spruce and pine in no time at all.

Ted

I never see the buzz saws. Most of them required a tractor PTO to run, didn't they. Haven't seen one for over 40 years now.

It has been a while since I have see one. They were/are mounted on the tractor front, with a flat belt drive. A cradle held the log, and tipped, or rocked the log into the saw blade. The blade is large. I'm not sure, but 24" diameter?
As noted, they cut logs, and hands, and arms with no discrimation.
As hazardous as a chain saw can be,the chain saw can't hold a candle to the buzz saws.
They may be someone with better information, that's my take.

I know of wood basements being put in 30+ years ago in Montana that are still in great shape. They work good in places where the ground moves somewhat with the cold and dry conditions.

You got that right, split a lot of that when I was a kid at home.

have fun ... we mostly split before winter hitting us ... we had some weeks of colder weather so the wood burnt fast ...

I have one of those old buzz saws, last time I used it was 1991.
It sits out in the yard and tourists ask me about it all the time. I have often thought about fireing it up just for a demenstration but then remember how afraid of that thing I really am. They more dangerous than a whole tree log chipper.

I burn between 6 and 10 cord of birch a year with an indoor wood boiler. House and shop are attached 30 X 80 ft with in floor heat. Got a propane boiler too so the amount of wood I burn is directly proportional to how I feel about chopping wood today.

Years ago, there were two boys that used to cut and split fire wood such as the pile in your picture. they used a circular saw mounted on a small trailer, and they ran the saw from the back axle of the Pinto car they hauled the trailer with ( took wheel off and bolted up the "PTO" to the 4 studs. After every thing was cut to length they went home then brought back a gas/hydraulic wood splitter, home made as well.

Brother Keith, Would you show us the progess on the firewood?
It will look pretty cut, split, and stacked.

Actually in 1980 the PWF Foundation had wood in the ground from Louisianna to Northern Manitoba and they had been in the ground since the 1940s. At that time no deterioration of any kind was found. They are an amazing engineeered structure that is dependant on everything setting on wooden footings on a washed crushed rock substrate. I heeted my house for twenty years averaging 2 cords a year and we had -35F at least one month of the year and winter for six honest months. In the ternty years+ years I lived in the house there were never leaks and no settling. It was in gumbo clay.