Cleaning Out A Lumber Yard Free Wood For The Off Grid Homestead

I found an ad in the classifieds offering free wood from an old lumber yard. A company bought it out and needed all the wood gone. I felt this was a prayer answer to my tiny house project. Free wood. Tons of free wood.

Wednesday morning I went right over with my car to check out all the lumber. It looked like the mother lode. There are pallets of wood neatly stacked up and huge piles of lumber all over the place.

I checked the piles of 2x4s which is what I need the most for my tiny house and they seemed to be in very good shape. The top ones are solid but weathered gray from the sun. I figured a bit of color will not hurt at all. The inner ones looked to be nearly perfect.

I talked to the owner and he said I could have all of the wood if I promise to take the good and the bad. There were some piles of wood with some nice thick boards which will be perfect for my kitchen counter tops, dining room table and other projects I have in mind. There are a few massive 3 inch thick by 24 inch wide boards which will make perfect solid work benches.

I agreed to take the wood.

I drove right to the mechanics where my truck was waiting for me and swapped out my truck for my car and headed right back to the lumber yard to load up.

The top few boards were pretty solid but sadly underneath water and termites had done a lot of damage. Both the owner and I thought that as I went down into the pile deeper the wood would be better. We were wrong. It got worse.

I loaded up the truck with about 2,500 pounds of wet wood and headed home with it. I drove it out into the woods a ways and used the dump bed on my truck to dump the load off. I had to move fast in order to get another load before 4 pm. The place closes up in the afternoon.

I made it back for a second load and this wood was even more wet. It was heavy and all sloppy. It is not good for construction. Two loads in my truck only took out one pallet of 2x4s.

I estimate this will be around 30 loads of wood. Maybe more.

I took this load home and parked the truck in front of my garden. I laid down some paper I had saved for the job and paved my garden walk ways with the wood out of the bed of my truck. It is not good for building with but it sure makes a perfect walk way for my garden in between the rows.

I think I found a good use for some of the rotted wood at least. I figure I can compost the worst of the rotten stuff to use as fertilizer next year. The more solid stuff goes into the garden walkways. Anything usable for construction can be used in my tiny house or the chicken coop.

The problem is that this will be a lot of wood to haul off and it will cost me time and gas to get it out of there. I now wonder if it is worth it. Last year I drove all over the place for free compost for my garden.

Some of this wood I can burn as well. It would be perfect for my maple syrup harvest next year. You cannot burn pine in the wood stove in your house because it will coat the chimney with creosote but you can use a little now and then. I can use the bulk of it for boiling my maple tree sap down instead of using my good hard wood.

I will talk to the guy about compensation for the clean up job. Otherwise it will cost me way too much to get all of the wood out of here. We both had though it was good usable wood but we were wrong.

He did say he could hook me up with a wind turbine tower when I am done. I have to consider what the value of that is compared to the work involved in this clean up.

Follow my daily progress on the path to self sufficiency on my off grid solar homestead.
https://www.youtube.com/user/techman2015/playlists?view=50&shelf_id=10&sort=dd

Please donate to help keep The Off Grid Project going: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3TQSWXLLRZ6HW

Join The Off Grid Project and The Do It Yourself World forum and share your ideas, tips and projects.
http://www.thediyworld.com/forum

The Off Grid Project is presented by The Do It Yourself World.
http://www.TheDIYworld.com

Experiments and projects in off grid living, alternate energy, survival, hiking and more.