[If this is TL/DR for you. There are pics if you scroll down.]
Heating with firewood is good for you. It induces mental habits like society used to have by default. You can’t be a stupid lazy monkey and also heat your home with wood. It is definitely hard work. Wood burning folks are self motivated and their results are evaluated yearly. The evaluation is not a bureaucrat with a clipboard, it’s nature itself. It instills a sense of reality. Nobody stacking tons of firewood (literally) is losing their shit about a few percent variation in climate and none of them think charging their cell phone or recycling a paper bag means diddly squat on the global scale. Self-reliance is self reinforcing. You wanna’ be based? Quit cutting a check to the natural gas pipeline monopoly and hoist a chainsaw… that shit will straighten your ass right out.
I’m not joking about the value of nature based discipline. I spend a lot of time in sunny weather pondering just how much wood I’ll need in shitty weather. In shitty weather I spend a lot of time living with my decisions. Unlike the paperwork madness of modern life, it’s not just about decisions but work. Starting with a tree and processing it all the way to a BTU in your house is brutally hard work. Nor is it merely meathead heavy lifting. Make a stupid mistake with a saw or a falling tree and you’ll get a demonstration in physics the likes of which you’ll never forget… if you live. Also, there are real life complex variables you learn through experience. Your motivation to be clever in your solutions is trying to manage what seems like an impossible task. If you’re smart you aren’t cutting wood in the hottest part of summer. If you’re smart you’re not dragging logs through springtime mud. If you’re smart you get it all done well in advance so the wood dries fully and burns cleaner. If you’re doing it in the middle of a January blizzard, you fucked up. Etc…
Unlike politicians who wreck nations, generals who lose wars, and businessmen who sink enterprises, I live with the results of my own actions. Results matter. Good intentions are irrelevant. Tell your frozen pipes about how you meant to cut wood but you were busy that sunny June afternoon. How many otherwise intelligent college students and young adults (or for that matter decrepit Boomers who never grew up) live in the sham world where intention matters and results don’t?
Lets expand that thought. America’s national debt is $33,817,877,269,124,876.34. Would it be so if everyone lived within their own results? Of course not. We had to be trained to ignore logic to that degree. If people who vote and the people for whom we vote had to stack enough wood by Thanksgiving to make it through Easter the world would be a more ordered place. Nature gives us the lesson. Nobody in a suit and tie can generate six tons of split firewood with a printing press and modern monetary theory. Stack enough to stay warm… or don’t. Ant and grasshopper motherfucker! We evolved to live with nature and we get weird when we get too far away from reality.
Anyway, I’m far from perfect. Adding a rough summer to the unknowable and variable but cyclic demand for wood was a Gordian knot I failed to solve. I’m fucked (for now). But I’m not too sad about it. Life is hard and sometimes you lose. If you meet an adult who never lost, you aren’t talking to an adult. For me, “losing” means I supply 75% or so of my winter heat instead of 100%. How many people even see those sorts of numbers on the horizon? Also I’ve scrambled and done a little ad-hoc gathering of pre-cured wood. Maybe I’m not going to run out quite as early as I feared? One can hope.
As for the long term, I decided to level up. I’m getting older and the firewood game is physically demanding. Also it’s worth more now than it once was. A brief “break” while Bad Orange Man’s policies encouraged cheap furnace fuel is over. At least for a while and maybe forever we’re back to the economics of inflation and shortage. Obama / Biden did what they meant to do. Hell, you might as well call up Jimmy Carter and add him to my list of “presidents under which I had to struggle”. I’m not bitter. I’m just paying attention. All the media pronouncements in the world won’t change oil prices (or the other things that make life harder). The only thing a citizen can do is acknowledge what is true in the real world and act accordingly.
When you’re just one guy and you’re getting older (who isn’t?) the key to productivity is automation. We are smart critters. We use tools, anticipate situations, and plan ahead. Tooling up, while expensive, makes more sense now than it did in the past. I’ll add a special shout out to Carter / Obama / Biden for making it worth my while to spend more on equipment. Because of them, prices are high enough that investments in automation have a bigger / faster ROI.
Enter the IBC tote. (I don’t know what IBC stands for and I don’t care.) IBC totes are used to haul industrial sized reservoirs of industrial liquids. They’re roughly 275 gallons but come in different sizes. Hopefully they were filled with something benign like motor oil or a food service fluid. (I don’t even want to think about what else they might have carried.) You can pick them up used for $50 to $100 a pop.
I bought one… just one… as an experiment. If I go for this method I’ll need at least a dozen. That means $750 – $1500 for a fleet of totes.
Here’s the stats on my experimental tote. It’s 39” by 48” and about 45” tall. The internal area available for firewood is 39’ x 48’ x 40 ½” = 75, 816 cubic inches = 40.5 cubic feet. A cord of wood is 4’ x 4’ x 8’ = 128 cubic feet.
Those numbers work out very well! For some glorious unknown reason, an IBC tote is almost exactly 1/3 of a cord of wood. Another measure of firewood is a “face cord” which is a 4’ x 8’ stack of stove bolts that are 16” long. If you see a dude standing next to an 8’ “wall” of wood, that’s a face cord.
A face cord = 1/3 cord = 1 tote. Beautiful!
To repurpose an IBC tote as a firewood container, the first thing I did is remove the top bars and yank out the liquid reservoir. That’s easy. Now you’ve got a really nice cube-like metal grid for storing wood. Also the bottom is designed for lifting by pallet forks. I put the top bars back on for stability. I think that’s unnecessary. I used a cutting wheel to cut a few parts of the grid off so I can reach in there to stack (toss) the wood. I’ve been meaning to cut up the liquid reservoir to make a “hat” for the filled container of wood. It doesn’t have to be a perfect roof, only enough to keep the snow off. What better use is there for a derelict plastic reservoir?
BTW: you ever notice how a goofy redneck like me is actively demonstrating “reduce, reuse, recycle”? Everyone else is emoting about it like rescuing a soda can is a heavenly act, but redneck homesteaders live it. I expect each “already used” tote to be good for many years of firewood stacking and drying. They will do the same job as an actual building! Ten years use for each tote, or maybe more. I scoff at some Karen’s re-usable grocery bag from Whole Foods!
So now that you’ve created this thing, what do you do? Toss firewood into it! For my experiment, I tossed (actually stacked… so they’re denser than minimum) freshly cut firewood stove bolts (split and 16” long) into the tote until it was full. It needs to air dry for at least a year.
My experiment worked very well. The open grid of the tote is ideal for air circulation and it’s stupid easy to stack with the nice grid walls! Once I install a goofy looking plastic hat, the wood filled tote can sit in the middle of a field and dry just fine. I will keep drying more or less indefinitely. No interior storage needed! (Good news because my woodshed is pretty rough and my barn is totally shot.)
The whole point of this is that the container helps firewood air dry and also a tractor with pallet forks can move an entire 1/3 cord in one shot. All hail hydraulics!
Do I have pallet forks? Nope. All plans have multiple points of failure… but I’m working on it. I’ve ordered the cheapest pair of Chinesium junk pallet forks I could find. Free shipping on Amazon! My UPS guy is going to hate me!
Until the pallet forks arrive, the IBC tote can’t be moved. It might as well be cast in cement. I tried and I can’t move it an inch. I estimate it could weigh as much as 1500 pounds. It depends on the species and how dry the wood is. The current IBC is filled with denser wetter wood. It is utterly immovable without a tractor and forks.
It’s so heavy that I don’t dare try lifting it with a pallet fork attachment on my tractor’s loader arms! (They max out at less than half a ton.) I’m ordering a 3-point hitch set of pallet forks. (The hitch supposedly can lift 1,800 pounds and the forks supposedly can manage 1,500 pounds. When I hoist that kind of weight I may have the world’s lightest steering but I’ll have unstoppable traction. Three point forks are stupid simple and hook to a tractor where it has the most ability to lift weight.
When my new gadget comes I’ll try moving the tote. Assuming no surprises, I’ll probably report back that the experiment worked. (Or that my UPS driver mutinied.) If the fork’s cheap metal bends like a noodle? Well I guess I’ll have to straighten and re-weld that bridge when I get to it.
An empty IBC tote is no big deal. Two guys can lift it into a truck. An 8′ bed… like all real trucks once had, is plenty for 2 totes. If you’re desperate you might be able to stack them… I wouldn’t recommend it though.
Two guys lifting a tote into a truck is easy. One guy lifting it back out of the truck is possible. The cat helped.
It’s easy to remove the top bars and muscle the bladder out of the tote. Then cut a few of the bars so you’ve got room to toss wood in there. (I reinstalled the top bars later… I think that was unnecessary.) The totes are not perfect squares. There’s a narrow side and a wide side. They’re built to accept forks in either direction. I arbitrarily cut mine to access it on the narrow side. The super cheap forks I bought might not be able to squeeze in the narrow direction. Oh well, live and learn. 
The experiment isn’t yet a success but it looks good. I have 1,500 pounds of next year’s wood sitting in my lawn. It’s stuck in a box that looks neat and tidy. It will work with forks I don’t have. Presumably my tractor has enough grunt to lift it when the time comes. It takes time to assemble all the pieces of a system. At least I’m trying.
A.C.
If using clamp on pallet forks on your bucket, use a chain or other reinforcement at the center of the bucket to the top bar of the bucket.
Otherwise you will find a load that will bed your bucket.
Trust me on this. Even if you have to weld a hook or other device so you can hook a chain, it is a better thing than the 5 foot or longer unsupported bucket edge that will bend downward.
B from Middle of the Right
If you know the IBC (Industrial Bulk Container) was used for foodstuffs and you power wash it the cut off bottom makes a nice start to an aquaculture tank.
Rob Bob has some excellent YouTubes about this. Even a summer fish harvest isn’t a bad thing and the waste water is awesome for gardens and fruit trees.
Unknown IBC’s I do not use for even my critter food storage. Hydraulic fluid residue (for example) is bad for critter foods.
My nurse daughter, having been forwarded this piece, notes: “Chopping wood boosts testosterone by 50% after one hour, compared to sports booting it 30%…
(I spent many hours (many) sawing and splitting oaks (that had fallen or been ringed the year before to dry vertical) on a CA ranch up in the Sierras I worked on in college. The only heat we had for several November days after a storm cut the power. Great column.)
Thanks for the compliment. Chopping wood is not only superior for testosterone but all the sawdust makes your beard look cooler. 🙂
On the pallet forks, I wish I had known before you ordered, but if those cheap Chineseium ones break I’ve a Cat-2 bale fork that could double as a pallet fork for ya. I think I paid a neighbor something like $50 for it a few years ago, and with a skid-steer and fork attachment I’ve not much need any longer. I could hook ya up. Here’s a pro tip — take one of those containers on your 3-point forks and throw in some wood or concrete or whatever until there’s about a half-ton or more of weight on the back end of your tractor, then ratchet-strap the thing in place. You’ve now enough weight to get excellent traction in winter and take the excess snow-in-bucket weight off the front end when moving snow. On the mighty “20hp-of-welded-steel-and-sex-appeal” Ferguson, about which has been previously remarked upon, a thousand pound bale arranged that way on the 3-point made it a first-class snow-pusher and made it much easier to steer when loaded up. One additional thought, I don’t know where you might be, but around here to your west farmers have been pushing trees into piles and farming fencerow-to-fencerow. It doesn’t take much driving to find a pile and get permission to cut into it. Which, you can get used 18′ car trailers for about a thousand bucks. Add $200 worth of 2×12’s to the sides to get a 3′ x 18′ x 6′ trailer, you can haul 2.5 cords at a shot even with the gunwales and three if over-stacked a bit. Three cords a shot for free might just make up for the fuel required to travel, plus it’ll haul your tractor when it might need to visit a dealer which saves some coin versus on-farm service or hauling rates. Just a thought.
A free farm implement! Damn! I missed out! I’ll contact ya’ if the Chinesium forks fail. Either way, thanks for the offer!
I was already thinking about the traction aspect. My tractor is modern and has 4×4 so it doesn’t get stuck but it also has utility tires meaning it can’t push too much on icy conditions. I was planning that if things get icy and the forks actually work I could always grab some of my firewood, carry it around while plowing snow, and then return it when I’m done. Weird, but weight on the 3 point seems to make sense to both of us. I actually plow snow with a push bucket (meant for snow). That means I’m only lifting weight at the end of a “run” when I push the snow into a tall pile. The rest of the time it’s floating. A snowbucket was expensive but it works very well. Highly recommended.
Folks here aren’t farming fencerow to fencerow lately. I don’t know if that is a trend or just an artifact of expensive fuel (why burn extra fuel on the least productive 0.5% of a field). I can probably find all the dead trees I need for “free”. It’s the labor of cutting them up that is slowing me down. There’s always next summer.
Your tractor is “modern” so it “doesn’t get stuck.” Hey, you said it! You owe me a phone call, gas money and a bottle of your favorite bourbon to come pull you out. *Every* tractor gets stuck at least once in it’s life if it’s being used. Well, used properly, that is.
Oh God I shouldn’t have used that phrase! Everything gets stuck eventually!
All I can say is even with utility tires it handles snow a whole lot better than my old 2n. But I usually leave it in 4×4 all winter and go back to 2WD in spring.
Also, tire chains. You want tire chains. You just don’t know it yet, because your modern tractor hasn’t been stuck. Yet. When I bought my skid-steer I was informed by the dealer, the mechanic, and even my banker that you simply cannot get a skid-steer stuck and I could forget about a need for chains. It took perhaps four hours of actual snow-removal work before it was stuck tight. Chains solved the problem of traction after an ice storm, after a thaw-freeze cycle, and pushing snow deep and high. They are, to quote Tony the Tiger, great!
Man I put my foot in it when I said “doesn’t get stuck”! Of course everything with wheels gets stuck eventually.
But so far it’s been pretty chill with my little tractor though. I have a snowwpusher bucket which is a lot more forgiving than other options. If I’m in real deep snow I might lose traction but that doesn’t really mire me down. If I planned well I’ll be sitting on cleared ground. I just backup, lift the bucket to take a lesser slice, and then nibble away at the snow. It’s not that bad and it’s worth it to have the heated cab. Chains might be nice but I don’t own them. Luckily my driveway is mostly flat.
An old farmer we hauled hay for in the 70’s-80’s (was that really 50 years ago?) told us; “God invented propane so I wouldn’t have to cut wood anymore!” Of course he was cutting with an axe and buck saw and hand splitting with his dad yelling at him.
F. Hubert
The old farmer was totally right… except it was God’s way of saying “you’re using an axe and a bucksaw… get with the times caveman”. 🙂
I have another friend that uses the same logic for automatic transmission. I prefer manual (which is hard to find these days) but he says “if I’m going to pay that much for a vehicle, the damn thing ought to shift for me”.
Also, I have a propane tank for a generator and one tiny little furnace. And the damn thing fails every cold snap. I know that LP can be reliable, but not within the labor pool I’ve got locally.
For the third Anonymous, if the head flies off the ax whilst one is chopping, the language skills can improve IMMENSELY.
AC – Will you please have someone video the event when you lift that loaded tote with your tractor? I sense immense entertainment possibilities.
There is definitely a chance of things going off the rails. I probably won’t record it but if the tractor does a wheelie the entire continent will hear my swearing.
Although a bit hard on the lawn, you COULD add a couple of runners and just pull it…
I’m not ruling it out but if I do so I should do it to the tune of Yakety Sax.
So who will you get to play as “Hill’s Angels?”
These guys.
tip that IBC on its side to stack your wood No need to cut a slot. Set it back up straight to move.
What? It weighs something like 1500 pounds when full. I’m supposed to tilt that back up straight? There’s not enough spinach in Popeye’s stash to make me that strong. 🙂
Pussy.
Tree Mike