Avora Wood Shelter

AVORA Wood Shelter

A season's firewood, stacked where you can reach it in the dark and stay dry doing it. The pile stops being a pile and becomes part of the yard.

In everyday use

Sixty-two cubic feet is a real winter's worth — enough that you buy wood once rather than three times, and enough that the delivery goes straight into the shelter instead of onto a tarpaulin. The front is open across sixty-four inches, so you stack from the side you're standing on and take from the same place without moving anything. The base sits the wood off the ground and the open sides let air move through the stack, which is how split wood gets from delivered to burnable. In summer it does other work: the opening takes a mower, and the depth swallows the long-handled tools that never quite fit anywhere. It stands against a fence line at chest height at the back, waist height at the front, so it reads as part of the boundary rather than as an object in the middle of the yard.

What sets it apart

62 cu. ft. of stacking
A full delivery goes in one place, which is the difference between a woodpile and a wood store.

Open front, 64.2 inches wide
You load and unload from the same face with nothing to lift over, and you can see at a glance how much is left.

Raised base frame
The wood sits clear of the ground on its own frame rather than directly on paving or soil.

Open sides
Air moves through the stack from both ends instead of sitting in it, which is what a wood store is for.

Sloped roof
The corrugated roof runs from 62.2 inches at the back down to 58.3 at the front, so water leaves by the open side rather than pooling on top.

Not only for wood
The 64.2 × 28.5 inch opening takes a mower, and the depth holds rakes, spades and the patio things that have nowhere to live in winter.

Fixings and gloves in the box
Four ground nails, four expansion screws and two pairs of work gloves, so assembly doesn't start with a trip to the hardware store.

Why we chose it

A wood store is a piece of infrastructure, not a purchase you think about twice. What we wanted was the one that gets the basics right: enough capacity that it's worth the ground it takes, a front open enough that stacking isn't a chore, and a base that keeps the bottom row off the paving. This has all three, and the lean-to profile means it goes against a wall or a fence rather than needing a clearing. It also stops being seasonal — come spring the same space takes the mower and the tools, which is more than a dedicated log rack ever does.

Specifications

Live Beyond Walls.