Buying Firewood in Ohio: What a Cord Is, and Why "Seasoned" on the Invoice Proves Nothing

Firewood is the one purchase around a property where the mistake does not surface for months. A bad mulch job looks wrong the day it is spread. A bad load of firewood looks perfectly fine sitting in the driveway in September and then refuses to burn in January.

Late August is the right time to deal with it, for two reasons that pull in opposite directions. Wood cut green this year is not going to be ready for the coming heating season. Wood cut and split last spring might be, and the only way to know is to check it. Those are two different purchases, and the same word gets used for both.

Two Different Purchases Hiding Under One Word

Penn State Extension puts the general figure at six to twelve months for green wood to dry down to a point that is optimal for burning, around twenty percent moisture. The EPA divides it by wood type, and its phrasing is worth quoting carefully: split, stack, cover and store firewood for six months if it is a softwood, and at least one year for hardwoods. That hardwood number is a floor, not a target.

On a calendar, hardwood cut, split, and stacked in late August 2026 gets roughly fourteen months and a full drying season before the winter of 2027 and 2028. It does not get there for the winter now coming, and no amount of optimism changes that. Penn State's schedule for wood you actually intend to burn in a given winter is to cut it by April, split it right after felling, stack it by May, and let it dry at least six months from there.

So if the plan is to burn this winter, the wood needs to have been cut and split months ago and stored correctly the whole time. If the plan is to get ahead, buying green now is the cheaper move and it works fine, as long as everyone involved is clear that this particular pile is for the winter after next.

Density stretches the timeline. University of Missouri Extension says most dense hardwoods require at least one year to season fully, and UNH Extension puts it as a rule of thumb that the heavier the wood, the longer it takes to dry. Species-by-species tables get passed around online and most of them are not backed by anything measured. The one study we could find that measured it is from University of Maryland Extension, which tracked hardwoods felled in April. At six and a half months every species tested fell between twenty and twenty-six percent moisture, with black cherry and black locust ready to burn at sustained averages of twenty to twenty-one percent. Hickory still averaged about twenty-four percent after a full year.

Oak deserves its own sentence, because oak is what gets sold around here. It was not in the Maryland study at all. The authors would say only that oak's drying would likely resemble hickory or black locust, which happen to be the two ends of their range, one ready at six months and one still not ready at twelve. For oak, do not count months. Test it.

One caveat worth stating outright rather than slipping past: none of those schedules are Ohio publications. They come out of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Missouri, and New Hampshire. Those are reasonable analogues for Tuscarawas County, but a drying calendar borrowed from another state is a guide, not a measurement of your woodpile.

In Ohio, a Cord Is 128 Cubic Feet and a Rick Is Not a Legal Unit

This is the part most homeowners in Tuscarawas County have never been told, and it is worth more than any drying tip in this post.

Ohio Administrative Code 901:6-7-01, effective December 29, 2023, adopts the National Institute of Standards and Technology Handbook 130 as Ohio's method of sale rule. Section 2.4 of that handbook covers fireplace and stove wood. It defines a cord as the amount of wood contained in a space of 128 cubic feet when the wood is ranked and well stowed. Stacked, that is four feet high by four feet deep by eight feet long, or any arrangement that adds up to the same 128 cubic feet.

The same section governs what a seller is allowed to call it. Fireplace and stove wood is to be advertised and sold by measure using the term cord and fractional parts of a cord, or by the cubic meter. Packaged natural wood in quantities under one eighth of a cord, which is sixteen cubic feet, is the exception and gets labeled in cubic feet or cubic meters instead. The terms face cord, rack, pile, and truckload are prohibited outright, along with terms of similar import, and the Ohio Department of Agriculture's own consumer guidance names rick in that prohibited group as well.

Ohio also requires paperwork. On a non-packaged sale, the seller has to give the buyer a delivery ticket or sales invoice showing the vendor's name and address, the purchaser's name and address, the date of delivery, the quantity delivered and the quantity on which the price is based, the price of the amount delivered, and the identity of the wood in the most descriptive terms commercially practicable, including any quality representation made in connection with the sale. That last clause is the one that matters here. If a seller called the wood seasoned, that representation belongs on the ticket.

None of this exists to catch neighbors selling wood out of a barn. It exists because a quarter cord priced as a rick cannot be compared against anything. For scale, University of Illinois Extension notes that a full cord occupies 128 cubic feet of space but holds closer to eighty or ninety cubic feet of actual wood once you account for the air between pieces, and that a standard pickup bed randomly loaded holds about a third of a cord, or roughly half a cord if it is neatly stacked. A truckload, in other words, is usually a third of a cord.

What You Are Actually Paying For Is Weight

University of Missouri Extension makes the point that settles most firewood arguments: one pound of oven-dry wood of any hardwood species has an available heat value of about 8,600 BTU. Resinous softwoods such as shortleaf pine run slightly higher at about 9,050 BTU per oven-dry pound. Per pound, species barely matters.

Per cord it matters a great deal, because a cord is a measure of volume. Denser wood packs more pounds into the same 128 cubic feet, and as Missouri puts it, on a volume basis the heavier the air-dried wood is, the more heat it will produce.

Penn State Extension publishes a table, drawn from University of Missouri Extension work, of million BTU per cord: osage orange 30.7, the hickory group 28.0, honey locust 26.7, the white oak group 25.7, sugar maple 24.0, the red oak group 24.0, white ash 23.6, hackberry 20.8, black walnut 20.2, black cherry 19.9, and red and silver maple 18.7. Other extension publications put the same species a million or two BTU higher or lower, so treat the ranking as reliable and the exact figure as approximate. Penn State also offers a useful benchmark: a cord of seasoned northern red oak can produce about as much heat as 159 gallons of fuel oil.

The practical version is that a mixed hardwood cord is a perfectly good product. Paying oak prices for a cord of silver maple is not. The method of sale rule already requires the seller to identify the wood in the most descriptive terms commercially practicable, so asking what species are in the load is a fair question and a reasonable one to expect an answer to.

Seasoned on an Invoice Is Not Evidence

University of Tennessee Extension ran the test everyone should know about. A researcher bought bagged oak firewood labeled Seasoned Firewood from a Knoxville supermarket and measured it. It averaged sixty-six percent moisture content on an oven-dry basis, against seventy-five to eighty percent for green oak. Not one of the tested pieces came in under twenty percent. The same publication states the underlying problem directly: the passage of time alone is not enough to ensure proper seasoning.

That is because time is not what dries wood. Air moving across split faces is. Tennessee again: logs, unsplit firewood, pieces touching the ground, and pieces deep inside a firewood pile will dry very little even after many months. Wood cut two years ago and left in rounds in a heap behind the barn is still, functionally, green wood.

The number to aim for is under twenty percent moisture, which is the EPA's recommendation for wood burning at its best. It is a recommendation and not a legal standard, and sources are not unanimous on where seasoned actually lands. UNH Extension describes split, seasoned wood as running twenty to thirty percent and reserves under twenty for kiln dried. A University of Kentucky forester puts the mark at under twenty-five percent. Under twenty is the strictest of these and the one worth building toward. Anything reading above twenty-five is not ready.

The measurement itself is where most people go wrong. The EPA's instruction is to split the piece first, then test the newly split face, inserting the probes into the wood grain. Reading the outside of a piece that has been sitting in the sun tells you about the outside of that piece and nothing else. UNH adds that you should test several pieces from different places in the stack. University of Maryland Extension gives the version that matters at delivery time: split a random piece and take the moisture reading before the truck is unloaded.

The Signs You Can Read Without a Meter

Four signs have solid extension backing. Cracks, or checks, opening at the cut ends of split pieces: UNH calls deep radial cracks at the ends of split logs an indicator of dryness, and Missouri notes that seasoning checks will be clearly evident on the ends of at least partially dried wood. Weight, since seasoned wood is lighter than green, though UNH is honest that judging this is subjective. Sound, where banging two pieces together produces a ring on dry wood and only a thud on wet. And smell, since Missouri says properly dried wood should not smell sappy.

Now the caveats, which matter as much as the signs. Tennessee Extension states that dry firewood may, but may not, have many drying checks on the ends. Checks are evidence when they are there and prove nothing when they are absent. UNH is blunter still: it can be difficult to tell if firewood has been seasoned by sight alone, and the meter is the reliable method.

Two other signs get repeated constantly, and here the extension sources disagree with each other. University of Kentucky says that if the wood has a grey tone in color, you can be reassured that it has been drying for a long period of time. University of Georgia Extension says bark on very dry logs usually can be pulled off easily. Both are real sources saying real things. The catch is that a weathered gray surface and loose bark also turn up on wood that sat outdoors in unsplit rounds for two years, which is precisely the wood Tennessee measured and found soaking wet on the inside. Treat color and bark as weak evidence, and settle the question with a meter.

Stacking: Off the Ground, Top Covered, Sides Open

If there is one instruction every source agrees on, this is it. The EPA says to store wood outdoors, off the ground, with only the top covered, because covering the sides traps moisture in. Penn State says the pile should never be fully covered in tarp, plastic, or canvas. UNH says cover the top of the pile only, so rain is kept off while air still circulates. Kentucky puts it as top covered, sides open, so water can evaporate out through the ends. Two extension publications dissent from this, New Mexico State suggesting a shed or a large tarp and Arkansas noting that plastic tarps can extend storage time, but the weight of the guidance runs clearly against wrapping a woodpile.

Off the ground means pallets, rails, or scrap lumber. Nebraska Extension notes that raising the stack slightly increases air circulation, and Penn State recommends pallets or metal tubes to keep ground moisture out of the bottom course. Location matters too. Penn State wants somewhere dry, sunny, and windy. Missouri recommends stacking in loose piles off the ground in a storage area exposed to sunlight, covered on top and open on the sides.

Split it before you stack it. Nebraska explains why: wood dries more rapidly when a large amount of surface area without bark is exposed to air, which is the entire reason splitting matters. The EPA recommends splitting in a range of sizes to fit your stove but nothing larger than six inches, and stacking in a single row with the split side down. No source we found puts a number on how much faster split wood dries. Every one of them says it is the difference between drying and not drying.

As for stacking bark up or bark down, Purdue's forestry extension cites the National Association of State Foresters, which concluded there are benefits and drawbacks either way. It is not worth an argument at the woodpile.

Keep the Pile Away From the House

University of Illinois Extension gives the number: avoid stacking firewood against your home, garage, or shed, and try to keep stacks at least three feet away from structures.

Iowa State Extension explains the risk that actually justifies it. Wood stacked directly on the ground may be fed on by termites, and a woodpile stacked against a house can serve as an avenue for termites to infest the structure. Worth being precise here, because this gets exaggerated: the hazard is the outdoor pile leaning on the wall, not the armload sitting by the hearth. Iowa State is clear that termites carried indoors in firewood cannot establish new nests or damage the home, and that carpenter ants which warm up and walk out of a log are an annoyance with very slim odds of nesting in the house.

Do not spray the pile. Iowa State strongly advises against using insecticides on firewood, both because the treatment does not penetrate deeply enough to reach anything already boring inside the wood and because storing and burning insecticide-treated wood indoors is a health hazard. Illinois says the same and adds that burning it can produce harmful fumes.

Bring in a day or two of wood at a time. Both Illinois and Iowa State recommend it, and Iowa State gives the reasoning: insects in a pile stored outdoors stay cold and inactive, and it generally takes a couple of days indoors before they warm up and become active. A small indoor rack turned over frequently beats a large one that sits.

There is a non-pest reason as well. Kentucky advises against stacking firewood against a home or a wooden fence because moisture condensation there can cause mold and decay.

Buy It Close to Where You Will Burn It

The National Park Service and the Don't Move Firewood campaign give the same pair of numbers: get your firewood from ten miles or less from where you will burn it, and treat fifty miles as too far. Those are not the same number and they are not meant to be. Ten miles is the target and fifty is the outer limit.

For Ohio specifically, the federal emerald ash borer quarantine was removed effective January 14, 2021. That ended one federal rule. It did not make hauling firewood across the state a good idea, and other restrictions still apply. Ohio has three active quarantines that name firewood as a regulated article, and one of them reaches this county.

Spongy moth is the one that matters locally. Ohio's rules under Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 901:5-52 list firewood among regulated articles, and the federal regulated area list under 7 CFR 301.45-3, dated April 15, 2026, names the entire county of Tuscarawas as generally infested, along with Holmes, Stark, Carroll, and Coshocton. Roughly half of Ohio's counties sit outside that area. Moving a regulated article from a regulated area into a non-regulated one calls for a certificate. In plain terms, hauling your own firewood from Dover to a cabin in western Ohio is the trip that runs into this, not the delivery from a supplier down the road.

Spotted lanternfly is the opposite case. The Ohio Department of Agriculture issued a statewide quarantine in February 2026, and firewood sits on the regulated article list under Ohio Administrative Code 901:5-56-03. Because the entire state is now regulated, moving firewood from Dover to Sugarcreek is regulated area to regulated area, which triggers nothing. The statewide scope is exactly what makes it a non-issue within Ohio.

Asian longhorned beetle is a southwest Ohio problem. About 37.8 square miles of Clermont County remained under quarantine after the Ohio Department of Agriculture released roughly 4,000 acres on August 17, 2026, and that quarantine prohibits moving firewood of all hardwood species out of the zone without a compliance agreement, permit, or certificate.

One more distinction worth keeping straight. Seasoned is not the same as safe to move. Don't Move Firewood is specific that only packaged, heat-treated firewood carrying a USDA APHIS heat treatment seal or an equivalent state seal is considered safe to transport, and that a kiln dried label on its own is a different claim entirely.

What Not to Burn, and the Chimney

The EPA's never-burn list: household trash including cardboard, plastics, foam, and colored ink; coated, painted, and pressure-treated wood; ocean driftwood, plywood, particle board, and any glued wood; wet, rotted, diseased, or moldy wood; and plastic, asbestos, rubber, manure, and animal remains. Penn State adds the toxic species, meaning poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac, along with anything treated or stained, and notes that rotting or decomposing wood produces large amounts of ash and smoke.

Creosote is the reason wet wood is not merely inefficient. The Chimney Safety Institute of America names the three conditions that accelerate it: restricted air supply, unseasoned wood, and cooler than normal chimney temperatures. Illinois Extension describes the mechanism, which is that exhaust gases cool and condense on the chimney walls, leaving a highly flammable deposit. Burning wet wood sits on CSIA's list of the specific habits that cause buildup, alongside closing glass doors, inadequate damper opening, and overfilling the firebox.

Inspection and cleaning are two separate things, and they get conflated constantly. NFPA 211, as quoted by CSIA, calls for chimneys, fireplaces, and vents to be inspected at least once a year for soundness, freedom from deposits, and correct clearances. Cleaning is triggered by what that inspection finds. CSIA's threshold for a masonry fireplace is one eighth of an inch of sooty buildup, and sooner if any glaze is present. Annual inspection is the schedule. The sweeping happens when the inspection says it should.

When to Call Stoll's

We sell firewood by the cord, cut and split hardwood, delivered and stacked if you would rather not move it yourself. We will also tell you plainly whether a given load is ready to burn this winter or is a pile to put up and let sit, because those are two different products at two different prices, and blurring the line is exactly how people end up fighting a fire in January.

Ask about piece length and split size when you order so what shows up actually fits your stove, insert, or fire pit. Tell us where the wood should go. Access paths, gate widths, and ground conditions all matter when a full cord comes off a truck, and we confirm the logistics and the price before anything rolls.

Stoll's Landscaping serves Dover, New Philadelphia, Sugarcreek, Strasburg, Bolivar, and Uhrichsville. Fall cleanup and snow season fill the schedule fast around here. Firewood is the one to handle early, because the pile you buy in September is the one you are grateful for in February.