Storing dried lumber for myself

[Brad_bb]

So I need to figure out how to store dried lumber for myself, not to sell.  Thickness, width, and lengths vary.  I have the most Walnut and Ash, 4, 6 , and 8 feet generally.  I also have a medium amount of white oak and cherry.  Then I have small amounts of cotton wood, elm, and a few others.  I could mix those together as I can tell them apart or mark them on the ends.  I also have a decent amount of barnwood from 1"-3" thick and lengths and widths all over the place.  I'm thinking something like the racks I see in hardwood lumber sellers.  I have longer stock as well, but I'll figure out a different way to store that.  What do you think of this kind of storage?  Maybe something like this but I hope half the width?


 
   I don't have enough conditioned space to store all the wood I want to keep inside.  So it will regain some ambient moisture.  I'm thinking If I bring in what a think I'll need a month or two ahead of time to my conditioned shop space, then hopefully it would come back down to a workable MC?

Any thoughts on the plan?  Any thought on the construction  of the rack?  Thanks.

[Don P]

I prefer access to the side of the stack so I can roll thru and pick rather than pulling it out the end till I find what I want. Hmm, if you have a floor those can be drawers with wheels to the floor on the ends. A cabinet/millwork shop I worked in had kiln carts lined up. I could stack several bundles high and pull out whichever cart had the species needed. 

[Brad_bb]

if you have a floor those can be drawers with wheels to the floor on the ends. 

Not really sure what you mean.  Drawers?  Sounds complicated and material intensive?  I will have some flat stacked stacks of 8ft boards on lumber pallets that I can pick apart with the forklift when I need to access a stack.  

[kantuckid]

My storage is built into my woodshop in one corner, lengthwise with the building, with several shelves, all open. One side shelf is along the side and extends up above the floor and full of turning squares for chair parts. Much of my lumber for shop work is stored vertically in stacks against the wall in a storage barn. Ceiling heights figure in of course.
 Recently bats have decided they like the crevices in the roof and crap all over everything below.  :

The thing with storage is, it's never perfect as space is precious for most of us with wood piles.
Obviously, the less material you have, the more accessible it can be stored, or the more space you have the more choices you have to make it that way. 
My storage building is so full of my cabin projects windows, stoves and such that I can barely get my mower out for now. I'm dreaming about back when I could drive through it lengthwise. 
Many retail wood stores use verticle space for hardwood lumber.  

[WDH]

 

 

I got the idea for these lumber racks from Yellowhammer.  They are super strong and stable.  You can get them from Uline.  

[aigheadish]

Man, the eternal problem... I don't have nearly the needs you guys have but I'm still taking up tons of space with wood I may never find again. I have a rolling rack that is stacked full with space for full sheets of plywood and cutoffs, then anything in the 5' or less ranged gets stood vertically on the rack, then there is some horizontal storage for longer stuff but it's not easily accessible, then I have some horizontal racks bolted to the wall that will hold longer pieces up to 8 or so inches wide. Most of it is not terribly usable or findable, there is no organization, but typically I go look at it and either find some random piece that'll work for my project or grumble about having to cut something or square it up. I'd love to have a better solution. Those racks WDH shows may work.

[Crusarius]

If I had a shop with space like that or a high enough ceiling, I would totally picture myself setting up a powered rack like Lowes has for their carpet rolls. make very low profile carts with rollers on the bottoms and stack all the wood on it, then roll it onto the rack and lift it up to repeat the process for the next one.

biggest issue would be having to lower and move one rack out of the way to bring the others back down.

[aigheadish]

Ha! I just remembered that my FIL gave me some racking for the barn, I think it's narrow, but I hadn't thought of using it to store wood like this... Hmm, now I'll have to look at it a bit differently.

[Brad_bb]

@WDH  I like those, but I need them a bit higher.

Pallet racking would be higher, but they have angle braces on the end frames.  Just wondering if I should build from wood and if so, the design?  Maybe there's some taller steel shelving out there?  Maybe I could use pallet racking, but remove the angle braces from the end frames and attach angle braces for each shelf, and cross beams for each shelf on the ends?  Hmmm....

[WDH]

These racks come up to 120" tall.

https://www.uline.com/BL_3867/Wide-Span-Storage-Racks-Particle-Board

[aigheadish]

Interesting. Thanks for the link WDH, those look very similar to the ones I got from the Father In Law, and not as expensive as I'da thought. I think mine are like pretty tall and 18" deep? I'll really have to check that out, I'd take up substantially less space with that setup and probably be happier with the organization. 

[doc henderson]

Brad is you wood air dried or kiln dried to start, and is it destined for airconditioned space or non?  dead stacked and wrapped will remain constant.  no need to dry less than airdried if going in a non conditioned barn.

[Brad_bb]

It is air dried now on lumber pallets stickered, but will be kiln dried before going into the storage racks.  Most of it will end up in projects in air conditioned and heated space(my house etc).  I've finished most of the barn stuff that I could use just air dried for.  

@WDH  thanks.  I had looked at the laminate board racks which they don't offer that high.  It doesn't make any sense why not.  They are the same size shelf boards(96x24)?  I've just always hated particle board.  I've seen it warp and bow with gravity when in a garage (ambient humidity) over time.

Each one appears to come with 3 shelves so for 10 ft I'd need 2 or 3 additional shelves if I want to cap it at 10ft.  So for a six shelf unit it would be 761 plus tax.  I'd Probably have to pick it up in Northern IL. warehouse.  On the other hand I already own 24" pallet racking(actually I can't remember if it's 24 or 36"?  It's in my mom's storage units that I will have to remove sometime this year.  I think they are only 8ft high though.

[YellowHammer]

When we looked for ours, we found the most difficult part was to find some that was self supporting and did not have or need the diagonal end bracing which can't be used because its in the way of pulling boards.

We have load ours with max capacity wood every week and they hold up great, and the more they are loaded, the stiffer they get.  We buy a few extra shelves per rack and they will hold a lot of wood.

[doc henderson]

so for long term I would dead sack it on a palate on a very flat surface wrapped at least once with 6 mill plastic with taped joints.  not in the sun.

[WDH]

Those metal racks are amazingly stout. 

[Brad_bb]

@WDH  what can you tell me about that cutting table in the foreground of your picture?  Is there a certain design to it for cutting?  It looks like it's about knee height?

[WDH]

Yes, a cutting table.  It is as high as the distance from your fingers to the floor when you let you arms hand straight down naturally.  It also has castors so that it can be rolled around easily.  With the track saw, it is easy to crosscut boards for customers who show up in a Prius or to take the live edge off big live edge slabs.

[aigheadish]

Our labor day project is complete, thanks to you all, and Brad for bringing up the topic.

My garage ceiling height is 10' and my racking was 12' so I chopped off the top 3' to make a 9'h x 18"d x ~8'l rack for holding wood, instead of the big rolling rack I had. I was able to redo this area in the garage (for the 2nd time this year) to attempt to clean things up and this should be my best solution.

First is what it looked like before but I forgot to take a picture before moving the rolling rack out, so the picture is a bit goofy.



 

Any of the longer stuff was on cr@ppy racks bolted, likely unsafely, to the studs on the wall as seen in the top part of this picture.



 

The clean out meant tossing all the long junk in the driveway. Note that pretty much all the wood I have is scrap and crap wood. Why am I saving it? I don't know.





And the rolling rack which, as it was unloaded, toppled over and broke apart, there's a lean to the driveway which helped the whole thing fall. I'll save some the usable stuff.



 

Then the reload. This rack saved me probably half the space that rolling rack was using. It made everything more accessible and certainly more organized, even though it's just a pile of random pieces. I'm very pleased. 



 

[Brad_bb]

Well, like most farmers, I try to be cost effective and re-use when I can.  The solution I came up with was these light duty pallet racks  that I already had.  The H frames have 1.75"x1.75" cross section and are 30" deep.  The shelf beams are 72" long and 3.5" high.  I do not know how much weight these can hold but I did a calculation and if the 5 shelves in each rack section were full, assuming 3lbs/BF, it would be about 1200 LB per section.  So I decided that I will put three sections together with only 2" in between to give me 8ft deep.  I figure I'll put 1/2"  plywood on each shelf as to support the wood instead of putting it directly on the shelves which are 30" between the beams.  The plywood will help keep from the boards getting caught sliding in.  This will effectively do the same as some of other shelving units noted.  I'm not sure how difficult it would be to find similar racking as I haven't seen much of this lighter duty stuff on CL or marketplace. I think 24" wide H frames would have been better, but 30"  is what I had.  I'm not done building it yet as I need more beams and we are slowly taking the shelving out of my mom's storage spaces as she is getting rid if stuff and preparing to move the rest.  I should be able to get enough next week to finish.  I'm going to do a third section with only two sections of racking that is only 5 feet deep for shorter boards and barnwood.  I don't have to pay anything additional for this racking that I bought back in the early 2000's, except for a bunch of hardware to secure the beams and chains to span one diagonal of each rack to prevent racking.  Maybe $80-$100 worth of hardware.  I will have to pay for 15 sheets of 1/2" plywood which will be the most expensive part.


 

 

[Brad_bb]

I'm also considering building a timberframe around it to have a second floor deck with a railing above it to store additional stuff up above.  There's another 7' above, might as well take advantage of it.

[Brad_bb]

Well I got my shelving unit finished, and got all my pallet wood sorted and organized on 2 shelves.  We've had a lot of 8'-12' long pallets from our construction, with good material that I took apart and de-nailed.  I use pallets in our hay storage building to set bales on that get stacked and when boards break, I have material to quickly repair them, or to make lumber drying pallets.  I'll be adding on to the right side, 2 sections to hold 4-6 foot KD material.  The shorts and cutoffs. The rest of the shelving will hold KD 8' hardwood boards.  As some have seen in the timberframe section recently, I'm going to build a timber frame over top of this for a 2nd floor to store more stuff up there.  Since this unit is only 8' high, I have another 7-8 feet above to store stuff.  
Timber Frame over Shelving


 

[doc henderson]

for a second floor storage, you will need steps or a ladder to safely get up there.  an elevator would be nice, but depends on if these are small pieces.  maybe a genie lift that could be used for other stuff like construction but also to get stuff up there.  could do a rolling library ladder but hard to carry long lumber up a ladder.  for long stuff it can be leaned onto the floor of the storage space and pulled up from above.

Is this an air conditioned space.  or are sealing the wood or going to run a dehumidifier,  Is this area sealed off from outdoor air?
If you could find one of the rolling ladder/step thingy like they use to get to a top shelf at a big box store, that might be a good compromise.  or have it fabbed.  just throwing out thoughts.  Doc.

[Brad_bb]

@doc henderson I have a forklift, so lifting stuff up there isn't a problem.  I will have narrow stairs on one side.  This is in my ag building/pole barn.  It's not AC or heat, but the funny thing is, the thermal mass of the concrete floor keeps the temperature in there such that it changes very slowly.  There is 3/4 plywood on the walls and ceiling.  It will still be much cooler in there at the end of June than it is outside.  Before we poured the concrete floor, it was gravel with vapor barrier, but it was also 3/4 full of square hay bales(hay is now in another building), and that thermal mass really held the temp in there.  The floor has not sweat, but there hasn't been a lot of air exchange.  Once I get the dust collection in there, it will be interesting to see if I do get some condensation in spring if using the dust collection a lot?  I may decide to enclose/seal the bottom portion of the frame and dehumidify.  I'll decide that once the frame is cut.  I'll also monitor my KD walnut MC throughout the summer in there.

[metalspinner]

When building my shop, I bought rolling Werner 6' scaffold. It was very helpful during construction. My plan was to just sell it when I was done with the building. 
But it is great for putting boxes and stuff up on top of the high shelves and on the decks above the rooms.