Outdoor covered storage area designs...

[beelzerob]

We have a need for a covered area to store our firewood, and we've cleared out an area roughly 24 ft X 20 ft that we can use for this. I'm trying to find some simple designs for a permanent structure that I can build myself, so I can start working up the materials cost.

I've tried various google searches for wood shed, wood shelter, outdoor covered shelter, etc, but I'm not really seeing anything that matches what I'm looking for. I want something with open sides, or at least with widely spaced siding, so that air can easily travel through but moderately horizontal rain won't. I don't care what the roof is made of, or covered with, or what design, but it'd obviously have to hold up a snow load.

One of the ideas I've had is to simple build two lean to's, facing each other (so not facing the "front"), so there's an access aisle down the middle. If each lean to were 20 ft long, then that'd be long enough, and each lean to being 12 ft deep would give us the 24 ft wide of coverage. I think a lean to is something basic enough that I could build it.

Any other ideas, or resources for pics, ideas, plans for some type of large outdoor permanent covered area?

Thanks!

 

[icellama21]

Here is how I think about it, not the cheapest way, but sometimes easier. Footings are a pain in the ass, so you'll want to minimize them. You'll also want as little wood in contact with the ground as possible to avoid problems in the future. Place your footings first, you can check local codes, but you'll need at least 8 to build just a roof that size, more if you expect snow and don't want to spend a fortune on heavier wood beams. Attach a vertical post to each footing, cross brace to hold up until you get some more framing in place. Connect the tops and the bottoms of the posts to make the supports for the roof and for the floor. Pick a roof style(I like gable, but whatever you want), and cut the tops of the posts to roughly support the style(some will be longer than others. If you are doing a gable then make sure to place a support across under the peak. Add a few ceiling joists to resist deformation of the walls and then add the rafters. Roof it as desired, plywood and shingles, metal, plastic, etc. Then add your side framing and siding as desired.

 

[Sokoloff]

If it were me, and I wanted an actual structure, I'd give a lot of thought to building an outbuilding in a style similar (or at least complementary) to the main house. In my case unfortunately, that would be brick with a slate roof. Good thing I probably couldn't get a permit to do it anyway [over some trivial "shed" size].

I agree that digging footings is a PITA, but if you're looking for a permanent structure in freeze country, you need to do them right. (Home centers have pre-made forms that aren't cheap, but sure are easy.)

If you're just looking for a place to keep and season firewood (keep it away from the main house for insect reasons), lay PT 4x4s on the ground railroad-track style (the rails, not the ties), stack the wood perpendicular to that, and cover it with a tarp. Every 8-10 feet, drive coal mine bolts (8' long galvanized threaded rod) 3-4 feet into the ground to support the ends. We did that for 20 years at my parents old place, where they burned 6-8 face cord of wood a season.

Like this:
|_________________| where the | are the coal mine bolts and the _ are the PT 4x4s. I realize that doesn't answer your question directly about a permanent structure, but I'm not sure what exactly is driving the call for a permanent structure. Tarps work great, require digging nothing, and scale up/down to size very neatly.

 

[Neurorad]

Tarps would be easier.

I don't know what coal mine bolts are, but 3-4 foot lengths of rebar would do the trick, driven through pre-drilled holes in the ends of the pressure treated ties.

Replace as often as needed - should last 10 years or so, depending on conditions.

Try google images for your searches.

 

[beelzerob]

Well, we've just undergone our "beta" winter...first winter in the house, so we've been able to learn what works and what doesn't.

We have a great abundance of logs on the property that were the result of the home construction, so this next year we need to harvest and split them and stack for drying. So it's not only storing firewood, but allowing it to season as well. There's no way we can harvest all that wood at once, so your idea about stacking logs on 4 X 4's isn't a bad idea...I'm not worried about unharvested logs getting wet, as much as being on the ground. The ground seems to do the wood in tons faster than just being exposed.

We also figured that it'd be nice to have some covered shelter for our riding lawn mower and rototiller. right now we just put them on palates beside the house and covered 'em with a tarp...but sure would be easier to just drive them into some place! In fact, it'd probably become their permanent home, year-round, as the inside parking is reserved for the ATV.

This year we had to buy lots of wood, and we wanted to store it outside, away from the house, and where it was easily accessible for the ATV, so we could use it to haul the wood to the house. The idea is pull up, throw wood into the trailer, and pull away.

This is what we used:

There was a line of pallets under the tarp, and we just stacked the wood from one end to the other. However, we had many problems with this design...

1) It wasn't NEAR large enough to hold the wood we needed for even one winter. We ended up leaving piles of wood covered with tarps, and as space was freed up, I'd throw it under the open-tarp so it could dry off by the time we needed it.

2) We went through about 3 tarps. The holes kept stripping out whenever a wind storm would come through. We tried reinforcing the entire edge of the tarp with a length of PVC pipe and zip ties, but that didn't do much. It got us through, but wasn't pretty and would need to be replaced multiple times a year.

3) The line holding up the tarp kept sagging, all the way down on top of the wood. I eventually put a pipe in the middle as a support, and that kinda helped.

4) It looked like butt.

The main reason I'm looking for a permanent structure is for aesthetics, and because wood is going to be a part of our lives here, so might as well have a place dedicated to the idea. I also want it to be as easy as possible to access the wood via the ATV, so that's a constraint. I figured there'd be footers needed, but we're going to hire a backhoe to level the area first anyway, I'll have him dig the required holes.

Here's the proposed site for the structure. The orange tape maps out the supposed max dimensions of the structure...about 24' by 20'.

 

[Sokoloff]

On the tarp durability issue, here's two thumbs way up on this style of tarp clip:
http://www.gemplers.com/product.aspx?itemN...clip|2662678825

As for the other issues, I hear ya, but here's another thing to think about if you're dealing with green wood (even if it's been felled a year now), you might be looking at two or more years before live-felled wood is ready to burn. How are you going to "rotate" your stock if you build one big square structure? Even with what we did (which was primarily take already dead trees), we would have to season for a full year (and change) before we could burn it. We were only stacking two faces deep, and even that was a PITA to access and manage. If you're trying to store and season in a square footprint with walls, I'm having a hard time telling how you're going to manage it, unless you can stack green against the outside walls and dead or more seasoned one or two faces inside and then just consume it over the course of the winter. Nothing sucks more (at least when you're 15 ) than moving firewood around in the summertime because it otherwise won't be where you need it come winter.

For safety, I wouldn't stack wood on two sides of an "aisle", as I've seen too many (minor) accidents of stacked wood toppling, and without having a good escape route, things could have been much more serious (especially if you're alone or out of earshot). No amount of cost savings, fossil fuel independence, or recycling is worth seriously hurting a human over...

 

[beelzerob]

Well, the square area is just the area we CAN use for whatever we want. Remember, I want to have ready access to the wood for the ATV, so that means it won't be one huge square of wood. I'm kinda leaning towards the idea of two lean to's that face each other, so I can drive the ATV right down the middle.

Oh ya, I've thrown more wood around than I care to. Seems to be all you do with firewood...throw it from one pile to another.

We'll probably have a pile of billets somewhere nearby and let those sit for a year or so, then split and stack in the actual woodshed area. I figured we'd just start stacking on one end and do a FIFO, as far as "rotating" goes.

The floor of this area, by the way, is just going to be gravel, not any kind of raised floor.

 

[Neurorad]

You could DIY a pole barn, or buy one pre-fab. It could have 0-4 walls. If enclosed, you could have a pass-through for the ATV (with doors that could close).

Pole Barn.

 

[beelzerob]

Hmmm...that pole barn looks like a pretty good approximation of what we want, especially that first pic. Interesting that they don't use roof trusses, they just use more poles to support the roof. Hmmm....

I was looking at a pole barn a neighbor had, and it had supports along the outer edge, and then regular roof trusses supporting the roof, but I'm just guessing the extra material of the trusses would up the material costs quite a bit, eh?

 

[Neurorad]

More ideas from 'wood shed'.

 

[beelzerob]

So correct me if I'm wrong...but (at its simplest) a pole barn is essentially 2 lean to's, where they face each other and meet at the top....right?

Now I have to build up a list of materials so we can see just how much this is going to cost.

 

[sic0048]

I guess that depends on your definition of a lean-to.

I'd consider a pole barn to be a structure that is comprised of a roof system that is supported by poles (like telephone poles). It may or may not have sides, but even if it does, the sides are not load bearing. The roof is entirely supported by the poles.

I'd consider a lean-to to be a structure where a portion (usually one side) of the roof is supported by the ground. While the other side of the roof could be supported by poles, I wouldn't neccessarily call that a pole barn.

I'm not sure my definitions would match the dictionary, but that is what I think of when someone says pole barn and lean-to.

EDIT - actually it looks like my definition of a lean to is incorrect. I guess this is what people call a leanto.

If you take something like this then I would agree that it is really both a pole barn and a lean to.

 

[beelzerob]

Hehe...I know what you're talking about Brian, and I think if it came to outdoor survival, you'd be better off creating your lean to then a pole barn!

But I guess from the pics I've been seeing, basically a lean to is half of a pole barn, with walls on 3 sides.

We'll have to discuss and see just how important walls are to us. The rain does get horizontal here occasionally, so that wouldn't protect the riding mower very well if it got soaked. Maybe just a PORTION will have walls... *shrug*.

So you'd have the posts, spaced 8' on center, and then beams go across the tops of the posts (I'm assuming probably 2 2 X 10 together), and then rafters of 2 X 10 again.

In some pics I've seen where, instead of having rafters every 16" or 2' spaced, they're more like 4' spaced, and they run 1 X 2 boards crosswise on top of the rafters, and the roofing attaches to those. I forget what those pieces of board are called, it's some weird name. Is that just an option to do, so that you don't need as many rafters? Or is that the best way to do it, or is that only for tin roofs?

I haven't decided on a roofing material. I'd think rolled asphalt would be easiest, but probably butt ugliest. She liked the idea of corrugated metal, but not only was that expensive, but I'd fear for how shiny it'd be.

Are the posts the only parts I really need to use pressure-treated for?

 

[beelzerob]

Well, doing a parts list for a "pole barn" (really a POST barn, in my case) and pricing at the Lowes costs, I end up with around $900 total, which is more than we were hoping for, since that price doesn't include concrete for the posts, or the excavation cost to level the area and spread gravel...so all that together, it's probably getting closer to $1300 or so.

Of course, that's for a 28' X 20' area. I'm thinking that for at LEAST this year, we may have to scale back that size a bit.

I'm just wonder if I'm over-engineering this. Really, the only weight the roof has to support is snow...so maybe 2 X 6's at 2' spacing and using 2 2 X 6's as beams is too much.... I'm also going to look at metal galvanized roofing instead of OSB and rolled roofing, but I know that requires additional support across the rafters.

The posts are a big cost too because at the peak I'll need about a 13' tall post, + 2 feet buried in concrete...I'm not even sure they make 16' 4X4 PT posts.

I'm just thinking more and more I need to aim for simple.

 

[Neurorad]

I'm just thinking more and more I need to aim for simple.

Have you considered an electric space heater?