Thursday, June 10, 2010

Shoring up the woodshed middle wall

Remember last year when I built a wall in the middle of the woodshed? If not, the idea was to split it into two areas, each capable of holding two cords. This solves the problem of "rotating my stock" -- if you always add the new, green wood to the front, the oldest wood is always in the back. Like this, I put green wood on the left, while I burn the seasoned wood on the right; then when the seasoned wood's all been burned and the right side is clear, I start putting green wood there, and burn the wood on the left, which is now seasoned. I even have a little spinning indicator that's green on one end to show which side is green wood.

As of the end of the recently completed burning season, virtually all the seasoned wood was used up, except for a tiny amount of very light pine. I've put a tiny bit of new cutting in there this year, but very, very little for now. Haven't had time to do much cutting yet this year, and with all the travel still planned, probably won't do that much. So the left side's likely to stay empty until we get a consignment of cordwood later in the season to stack there.

A problem was arising, though. Having all that weight leaning on one side of the wall but nothing on the other was causing a lot of strain on the fairly feeble bracing I used at the top to try to hook it up to the overhead trusses. The fix was pretty easy to do, though. It's not pretty, but it works.



I just nailed up two blocks on the left wall, and cut a two-by-four to length, then wedged it in. I tapped it with a hammer upwards on the right end until it was about level, thus gradually nudging the wall back to vertical. Then I nailed it in. I put in a brace on the right side too, just to prepare for the day when the left side's full and the right side's empty.

The blocks I used to affix it are a bit clumsy because the end of the wall didn't neatly line up with the stud opposite it, but the pressure on the wall won't be pushing against them, in fact it'll be pushing into them, so it shouldn't be a problem. They were mostly to just hold things in place long enough for me to affix the two-by-four.

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