outdoor wood storage??

[opticsguy]

Needing to cut wood soon for several upcoming projects in the next 2 to 7 months and have NO place for drying and storage. So am thinking about "outside" storage.  Living in the greater Seattle area, means rain in winter. 

So what options for stacking and storing lumber?  Mostly overhead protection from the rains and not very impressed with the short life expectancy of tarps. Thank you for your replies and ideas.

[Stephen1]

I like to find used steel roofing or siding, tarps attract moisture, as a last resort, i can buy 4x8 exterior particle plywood, good for a cpl of years where I am, not as moisture as what you would get. It might not be a good idea for you.

[sawmillhand]

i believe there was a thread about that on  here you would have to search for it, but i think all they done was cut there lumber and sticker stack it and then left enough space from the top and put tin on top of it like a make shift roof.

[WDH]

It is one thing to dry the lumber with stickers and use tin or metal roofing to cover it, but storing the air dried lumber is another challenge if you have a good bit of it.  Just ask metalspinner, or someone who stashes wood.  I have a woodshop with long shed roofs on each side that exend 26 feet on each side.  The air dried lumber is stored in racks horizontally or standing vertically against the workshop walls.   



 



 

You might not be able to build this type of large shed structure in Seattle.  However, you could make some metal covers for your air drying stacks with good extension on all sides.  You could buy a small out-building like you see at Lowes where the doors open all the way to the sides and build some racks for the lumber that has finished air drying.  You could store four or five thousand feet in a 10 x10 building very efficiently.  The cost would be quite affordable, and those little buildings look nice and won't be offensive to the sensitivities of the neighbors  .  If you did go with a small out-building, racks would allow you to sort the lumber by species or grade, and it would make it easier to get to that one board the you need that is invariably on the bottom of a huge flat stack :-\.

[kelLOGg]

Store it 18" above ground, stickered, cover and weight with any roofing material, and wrap it w/ landscape fabric.



 

[bandmiller2]

We all don't have ideal drying conditions.Lifts off the ground by at least 8-10",4' wide x whatever legnth well stickered,have good wind movement around stack no weeds.Metal roofing is a good idea if you got it.What I do is overlap boards to a peak at the top to shed water.As soon as wood is air dried it should be used or stored under cover. Frank C.

[Piston]

Why not just use some of the boards you mill, to shed the water from the top? 

You could even use slabs or poor quality boards.  Like Frank said, just overlap them as you go from the outside edges in to the middle.  Maybe cut some small angled 2x4's or something to place underneath the top boards, basically making a shallow pitched roof, same idea as siding? 

[Sixacresand]

I stack/sticker my lumber in 2-3 ft wide stacks on concrete blocks and cover with 5 V metal roofing (tin).  Narrow stacks work well for me because I can straddle the stack with my log arch and move the whole stack.  I don't have a place to put dried lumber yet. 

BTW, nice setup WDH.   

[Piston]

  Narrow stacks work well for me because I can straddle the stack with my log arch and move the whole stack.  I don't have a place to put dried lumber yet. 

BTW, nice setup WDH.   

That's a great idea!

[Sawdust Lover]

Google Andrew Pitts Woodworking and see how he stores his lumber.

[paul case]

This is how a pallet company I used to sell to did it. They moved the roofs with a forklift.



  

 

PC

[Tree Feller]

Check out the air-drying roof the guy in the attached video link uses. Among all my other round-to-its, I want to build a couple or three of these roofs for air drying my lumber. They not only protect the stack well but they keep weight on it to help reduce warp.

It's a fairly long video but the stack roof part starts at 16:30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Aioc9Hza5w&feature=relmfu

Also, to further help keep rain off the stack, you can get a product called shade cloth from a nursery supply. Just drape it over the sides of the stack below the roof. It allows air to come through but repels blown-in rain.

[WDH]

Nice roof, looks very professional and tidy.

[grweldon]

I saw this video months ago and I want to do it, but I don't have any way to move the roof as of yet.  I was thinking about suspending it from two poles on each side of the stack and raising and lowering it with a manual winch.  As someone mentioned, when I get around to it I will!

[WDH]

Just go buy a $30,000 tractor with FEL and you will be set  :D.

[redbeard]

Metal roofing works good for covering stickered stacks you do need to put weight on them we get some heavy winds in this area. I would like to thank Jim Rodgers for his pallet idea to starting your stack and keeping drying sticks neatly organized. I will be attatching metal roofing to the pallets that are on top in near future before rain n wind weather starts. Here are couple pics of drying shed iam building some more walls to stack dry lumber and slabs verticle.

  

  

  

 

[Too Big To Fail]

grweldon, I've thought about the lift-roof too, like an "olde" dutch hay mow: (scroll down a bit) http://www.hvva.org/hvvanews3-1.htm 
Probably more trouble than it's worth though.

Anybody ever try just banding a stack and wrapping it with tyvek?