Here are two piles that a neighbor of my client made -- I expect he will burn them as is. These are 20 -30 ft. tall and about 100 ft. long!
Lotta firewood there, but there is so much in the area (WA state, where a fire went through mixed oak pine a year ago) that there is very little salvage going on, even for firewood.
Any guesses on the flame height from those piles?! IMHO, they are a bit excessive, as there are some surviving trees nearby that will die from the blast of heat when the initial flare up (fireball) happens. He better park his truck 100 ft. away too.
My own pile is pitiful; I just keep about a cord on hand under a little shed I made. I only use it to heat the office and shop, which are in a two car garage that I re-finished with an 8 ft. ceiling. Two armloads usually makes me open a window unless it is really cold. I just take dead branch wood home from jobs, and at any one time I might have Ponderosa pine, Doug-fir, white fir, scotch pine, black pine, white oak, maple, sycamore, elm, cherry, cottonwood, arborvitae, pieces of pallets I squashed to break the fall of chunks, pieces of my house I tore out for home remodels..etc. I just sift the nails out of the ash, and then spread the ash around the yard to sweeten the soil (in the winter, so the rain nails it down).
Home is heated with a pellet stove, and I have never bothered to swap out because it is damn convenient and cleaner than hauling wood in the house. Then again, if the power fails, no heat -- the internal fans are required to make it work.
I may yet put in a wood stove -- I have a wall flue in the center of the home that taps into a cinder block and brick chimney (currently venting nothing -- I have an electric hot water heater). I could tap into (for some reason, the pellet stove is off in a corner, where I never got to insulating the walls, and taps into a four inch pie that goes at a 90 angle out through the walls and then another 90 to above the roof edge -- not good for a wood stove.
