How to store your firewood

When you use wood to heat your home, it’s important to consider where and how your firewood logs should be stored. As the condition of your wood can impacts its burn efficiency, you’ll want to ensure it’s stored correctly to get the best possible heat output and make sure you aren’t damaging your home or fireplace. 

Inside or outside?

As all of the wood at Wildwood is kiln-dried, it is perfectly suitable to store indoors. An empty shed, cubby, or basket near your fireplace is a good idea and can look great. With very large amounts of kiln-dried or any non-seasoned wood, best practice is to store it in a dedicated outside area. When wood is properly stored outside it will be well ventilated and you’ll be sure to leave the moisture, fire hazard and bugs outdoors.

Leave a space

Whether kiln-dried or not yet seasoned, it’s always a good idea to leave a space around your stored wood to allow easy airflow. Avoid placing anything directly on the soil or pushed up against a wall. Instead use some 2×4’s or a pallet as a base and leave a small space behind your pile. 

Stacking technique 

You don’t want to just leave your logs in a jumbled pile as they will not receive any airflow to help draw away moisture. It is best to stack your firewood so air can flow through it. One good method is to stack in a criss-cross pattern or ‘Jenga’ style, which allows air to flow through from both directions. This is more important to consider with non-seasoned wood which requires more care to reach a suitable moisture content for burning. 

Keep covered 

When keeping your firewood outdoors you’ll need to keep it covered from the rain. Rain will make your logs soggy and wood with a moisture content has a reduced burn efficiency. You can cover them by storing them in a pre-made log store with a roof, or with a tarpaulin covering just the top. It is okay if the ends of your logs get wet with a bit of sidewards rain, as they will quickly dry with the natural action of the sun and wind. 

Long term consideration 

It is important to store your logs in a dedicated place with considerations for what this space might be used for in the future. This is less of an issue with kiln-dried logs as they can be brought inside and burned at any time, but when you buy non-seasoned or cut your own wood it requires a long period outside before it will be suitable for burning. A large amount of wood in your garden where you later plan to build a shed can be a pain to transport and re-stack in a new location.

You might decide to purchase a pre-made wood store which makes storage very simple and can be a nice feature for your garden.

At Wildwood we supply the highest quality Cornish firewood. Locally grown and seasoned in our biomass kiln, our wood is ready to burn and is a great carbon-neutral way to heat your home. Contact us for more information on any of our products or call 0300 303 4963.