Cooking wood management

[ericpete]

Hope this is the right forum to post this...

Now that I have a KBQ on the way, I realized I needed a good fuel supply.

I picked up some oak & hickory this past weekend and was just going to stack it in the shade on my back porch and let it finish drying out... until I was made aware of the potential eye-sore it would create.  Hmm.  Should have seen that one coming.   It was then suggested that I could clean out this upright storage container (roughly 4'x6.5'x2') we have on the porch and put most of the wood in there.  Ok.  Easy enough.  So, the next day I was checking the wood for ants & bugs (i had already encountered quite a few ants in the process of loading / unloading) and discovered that moisture had started condensing on the inside of the container - Not good - I don't want stuff growing in there!  So now I'm keeping the doors open and have a fan blowing air through the stack of wood to help dry it out.  The guy I bought the wood from said it had been down for about 4 months but it was split the day before I picked it up so it still has some moisture, but it is definitely not green.

So how do you guys that have stick burners manage your wood supply?  Do you store it out in the open, covered, or locked up in a vault ?  Do you remove the bark, or any other things that might have been growing on the tree prior to using it in your cooker?

Thanks,

Eric

[smokeasaurus]

I keep my oak splits in a firewood log rack. Keeps them off the ground. Covered as well. I don't remove the bark.

[akruckus]

I keep my oak splits in a firewood log rack. Keeps them off the ground. Covered as well. I don't remove the bark.

x2 but maple not oak.

[1Bigg_ER]

I buy small quantities because I don't have the storage space. It's in the garage.
And moist wood is not an issue with the KBQ. As long as it's not green.

[ericpete]

Thanks for all the responses - good to know a little moisture won't be a problem.  I did notice some of the bark sided splits had some vines still attached - not sure what these were, but I'm removing them anyway since poison oak and ivy are rampant here in the South.  There also appears to be some sort of lichen (grayish, slightly textured) on some of the bark - going to remove this as well.  No fungus smoke on this BBQ...

Eric