The average modern homeowner has a few choices when it comes to heating and cooling their home. You’ve got central heat and air that runs primarily on electricity. You’ve got furnaces that can burn fuel oil, natural gas, propane, or pellets. There are even old-school properties that may still use wood-fired stoves to heat the home and provide the tools for cooking.
When everything is right with the world, what you decide to use to heat and cool your home is entirely a personal choice. But in a survival situation, especially if it’s followed by an infrastructure collapse, wood-fire stoves will be your best bet for cooking food, boiling water, and staying warm during the cold winter months.
Of course, even the best wood-fire stove is only as good as the wood you’re burning. What do you need to know to make sure you’re collecting and storing the best wood for the job?
Take a Walk in the Woods
When it comes to collecting firewood, sometimes the best thing you can do is take a walk in the woods around your survival shelter. Explore your property and start cataloging the different species you can accurately identify. You don’t necessarily need to become a full-blown arborist, but having a basic understanding of the species that grow naturally in your area can be an invaluable tool.
This is also a good opportunity to judge potential trees that you might want to cut down for firewood or other applications, as well as the availability of deadwood in the area that might make good kindling or help bolster your firewood supply. If you’re setting up a survival shelter, this sort of exploration can also be useful for planning escape routes, setting traps, and even finding plants you can forage that you can use to supplement your food supplies. Start by going for a walk in the woods. Take a forage-friendly app or book with you to help you identify trees and plants that you encounter.
Hardwood vs. Softwood
When you’re harvesting firewood, you will need to understand the differences between hardwoods and softwoods. On the biological side of things, coniferous trees like pines, cedars, and spruces produce softwoods. These trees keep the same foliage year-round and are usually fairly easy to identify. Deciduous trees — those that shed their leaves in the fall and remain bare through the winter months — produce hardwood.
Hardwoods are denser and heavier than softwoods. They’re more durable, which makes them a popular choice for furniture and flooring. Softwoods, on the other hand, generally find uses in windows and framing.
Due to their increased density, hardwoods will generally burn hotter and longer than softwoods in their natural state. If they’ve been processed down into fuel pellets with a similar density, softwoods tend to burn hotter because of an abundance of lignins in the wood. Softwoods are often easier to harvest, simply because they aren’t as hard on your equipment. If you’re harvesting hardwoods, be prepared to sharpen your axes or chainsaw blades much more frequently.
Collect the Proper Tools
Finally, before you can start collecting firewood, you need the proper tools. The tools you choose will depend entirely on your abilities and strengths, but in general, you’re going to want:
- A chainsaw or two in various sizes.
- An ax
- A splitting maul
- Splitting wedges
- A hatchet
- Various saws (manual or power)
We suggest having both power and manual tools — and knowing how to use both — because when it comes down to a survival situation, you may not be able to find gasoline to power your chainsaw or electricity for your table saw.
You will also want to stock up on safety equipment to ensure you aren’t injured while you’re out collecting wood. These will likely include:
- Gloves
- Closed-toed shoes (preferably steel-toed)
- Safety goggles
- Hearing protection (only necessary for chainsaw work)
- Appropriate clothing (long pants, long-sleeved shirts, chainsaw chaps)
The goal here is to give you the ability to heat your survival shelter, cook food, and boil water. It shouldn’t put you in a situation where you end up injuring yourself.
Deadwood vs. Fresh Cut
Should you be cutting down fresh trees for your firewood or should you spend your time hunting for deadwood and breaking that down? There are pros and cons to both. Deadwood from dead trees that are still standing is usually dry enough to be considered seasoned. The same can be said for recently fallen trees, but anything that’s been on the ground for a season or more has probably moved past seasoned and into the realm of rotten.
Fresh-cut wood, on the other hand, has a fairly high moisture content and needs to be dried and seasoned before it can be effectively used as firewood. You can burn green wood, but it is difficult to get it started and will put off a lot of smoke, so it doesn’t burn as efficiently.
As a general rule, fresh-cut wood that’s been allowed to season will be your best option for firewood, at least in the long run. If you find yourself in a pinch and in need of a quick batch of firewood, felling a standing deadwood tree can help keep you covered while you wait for your fresh-cut wood to shed its moisture and be ready for burning.
Harvesting Your Wood
Now that you have all the tools you need and are armed with a wealth of knowledge about the trees that grow naturally in your local area, the next step is to get out there and start harvesting.
Most of this is going to be felling trees, cutting them down into manageable pieces, and moving them to a location so they can season. If you’re cutting dry or deadwood, then you’ll want to move your manageable pieces somewhere you can further break them down — usually by splitting — so they’re ready for use in your fireplace or wood-burning stove.
Start by figuring out which way you want the tree to fall. There are a few factors that will play into this, such as the height of the tree, the type of wood, and how the branches are laid out in the tree’s canopy. Trees that already list to one side or the other or have a set of particularly heavy branches that are pulling in one direction are already predisposed to fall that way. You can sometimes get them to fall in a different direction, but it’s often not worth the effort and can be dangerous.
Once you’ve assessed your tree and figured out where you want it to fall, it’s time to start cutting. Cut a wedge out of the tree on the side facing the direction where you want the tree to fall. Then cut the rest of the way from the other side of the tree until you reach your wedge. Make sure you’re out of the way and let the tree fall.
Now that the tree is on the ground, you can start breaking it down. Use your chainsaw or handheld saws to remove the branches. Once the trunk is relatively bare, you can break it down into more manageable pieces so you can move them back to your storage area. That brings us to the next step — drying and seasoning.
Drying Your Wood
Wood naturally absorbs water and holds it in its cells. In freshly cut wood, the moisture content can vary from 40-200%, which is far too high for any sort of long-term storage. High levels of moisture promote mold and mildew growth, as well as rot. In order to store firewood for long periods, the wood needs to dry and season. While there are kilns and ovens designed for drying wood for various applications, they’re usually only used in industrial settings. Thankfully, all you really need is sun and wind to properly season a stack of firewood.
Stack your firewood so the sun can heat it up and the wind can blow away the moisture as it evaporates. Leave it to sit for a season, and as long as you don’t live somewhere that experiences heavy rains or high humidity, it will be ready to burn at the end of the season.
Storing Your Wood
The primary goal of cutting, seasoning, and storing firewood is making sure you have enough wood to keep you warm and fed through the cold winter months. That means you need to have a way to store enough firewood for the winter while also preventing the wood from rotting, keeping pests out, and making it easily accessible. Not too difficult, right?
Opt for a dry platform that keeps the cut wood off the ground. You don’t want to pack the logs too tightly together, especially if they’re still seasoning.
The only other thing you need to do is ensure you can protect your stash from the elements, because no one wants to try and light a fire with wet wood. Something as simple as a tarp or another cover can keep water and snow off your firewood stash so it’s dry and ready to use at a moment’s notice.
Avoiding Pests
A nice, warm, dry pile of cut firewood might help you stay warm in the winter, but it’s also an inviting new home for rodents and other pests. If you keep your firewood stash right next to your home, it can also provide an inroad for these pests directly into your home. There are some steps you can take to prevent pests from making your firewood pile their home, including keeping your firewood off the floor and storing it away from your home and from any nearby trees.
Another thing to try is to make sure you’re using the first in first out method with your firewood. This means you need to use the firewood that’s been there the longest, first, because the longer it sits, the more likely it is that insects or other pests could make it their home.
You won’t generally need to treat your wood to prevent pests, as long as you’re using it regularly and storing it properly. If you are concerned about pests in freshly cut wood, cover it with a tarp after you cut it and let it sit in the sun for a couple of weeks. This will kill any pests that might be living in the bark.
It is important to only use local firewood rather than buying it from other parts of the country. Pests can travel, and what might be a minor problem in one part of the world could be a devastating plague in another. One current example is the spotted lanternfly. In its native habitat of China, India, and Vietnam, the bug’s population is kept in check by predators and pathogens. Outside of that natural range, the bug is incredibly invasive and has been devastating trees and other crops in South Korea, Japan, and many parts of the United States. The last thing you want to do in a survival situation is to bring in a pest that will make it even harder for you to stay alive.
What Wood Should You Avoid Burning?
It’s important to spend time getting to know the trees on your property, so you know what you can cut down and burn, and what you should avoid burning at all costs. Green wood, for example, won’t burn well, will generate a lot of smoke, and can clog up your chimney with creosote much faster than dry or well-seasoned wood.
Also, avoid any wood covered with vines. Poison ivy, oak, and sumac can all release a dangerous chemical called urushiol when burned. Other toxic plants, such as oleander, can be incredibly dangerous when burned.
Even if it’s your only option, don’t burn pressure-treated wood, either. Older pressure-treated wood was often treated with arsenic. The lumber industry has since retired arsenic, switching to copper instead, but it still releases toxic chemicals when burned.
Finally, while this might not always be an option in a survival situation, make sure you’re not cutting down and burning any endangered species. The last thing you want is to run afoul of local conservation groups because you’re contributing to the extinction of a rare species.
Start Stocking Up
Whether you’re planning on living off the grid or just prefer to use wood to heat your house instead of gas or electricity, it’s always better to stock up on firewood long before you need it. That way, it has plenty of time to season so that by the time you’re ready to light up your fireplace for the first time in a year, it’s ready to go.
[Note: This was a guest post.]
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