Whether you rely on a wood stove for heating your house, or you simply enjoy sitting around the campfire, you need a way to properly store your firewood. Firewood goes fast, which means you need to be able to store a lot of it outdoors. It should also be kept dry and stacked above the ground.
A lot of people choose to buy a firewood rack, but they’re so easy to build, it’s like throwing money in your fire pit. A small one ranges from $50 to $150, and a full cord will set you back at least $200 or $300.
We managed to build one for free out of literal junk that someone dumped on the side of a road, so we wanted to share it with you to show you just how easy it is to do.
Please don’t shame us for our messily stacked wood. These scrap boards and twigs are fodder for the fire pit this weekend; then we’ll fill it with neatly stacked logs for the winter.
This firewood rack holds exactly 1/4 cord of wood – 32 cubic feet. The inner dimensions are: 3′ W x 4′ L x 2’8″ H. Bear in mind, however, these dimensions may change depending on the pallets you find; we just happened to luck out.
Even if you’ve never built anything in your life, you can put this firewood rack together. It’s as easy as stacking blocks.
Things You Need
All you need to make this firewood rack is at least 3 old pallets, 1 or 2 sheets of scrap metal, a drill and screws. You may also need a saw with a metal cutting blade if you have to cut your sheet metal.
Our collection of used pallets we cleaned and stacked.
We found the pallets and the corrugated sheets of metal on the side of the road, and since we already own a power drill and plenty of screws, this project ended up being 100 percent free. The sheets of metal were already cut to 4’x2′, which was a perfect fit for the rack when we put two of them together to make a square roof.
4’x2′ corrugated steel roofing panels.
If you can’t find any free metal, it’s not expensive to buy new, especially for this project. An 8′ sheet of corrugated steel, which is all you need, costs less than $20 at Home Depot.
The easiest way to find free pallets – if you’re not lucky enough to find them on the side of the road – is to check with all your local department stores and see if they have any old or broken ones they want to throw away.
How to Build It
Building the rack is super easy. Simply stand two of the pallets up vertically and lay the third one down in between them. Then screw them together. Next, lay the sheets of corrugated metal across the top and then screw them down to the edges of the pallets. That’s it, you’re done!
We screwed the pallets together with 3″ construction screws.
We screwed the metal to the pallets with 1″ self-tapping metal roofing screws.
We used rocks to raise one end of the bottom pallet to make it level with the ground.
