After reviewing all of the postings, I feel I have to say: If you're thinking of technology to get wood into the house, the location of the wood shed is too far away from the house. If you have to load a monorail train or whatever, you're going to have times when suiting up to go do it will consume more time than unloading the needed wood. (It's another matter if you're living on a narrow bench in a mountain valley and the woodlot is all uphill of the cabin, for sure! As they say, gravity is not just a good idea: It's the LAW!) My ideal is to minimize hassles like getting wood in the door, by strategies like having a pass-thru ("airlock") between garage and house, so the stack is in the garage and the stove is supplied by a shelf between garage and living room or kitchen with (sliding?) doors on inner and outer sides to minimize drafts. Another solution I've seen is to bring the wood into an enclosed porch in totes and then the totes are brought in to the stove zone, but not so close as to melt or burn, eh?. Empty a tote? Fill a tote! Mollison also pointed out that passive solar heat was hard to get "On Demand" but
wood heat was a great way to meet demand, as well as having additional yields, primarily ash- for making
soap, or for Halloween, garden fertility, etc. So lots of these functions can be planned into spaces that are not primarily heated, but do add
shelter and a buffer for heated spaces, functions like potato storage, food grains, all of that sort of thing that has been a feature of cool old farmhouses. One thing for sure though, is that wood storage is great rodent habitat, ask any cat! So don't mix the two! Tote loads that can be burned in 24 hours can be inside, but the rest is out. The main wood storage ideally has good solar gain, and that gets the wood seasoned and ready to yield max BTU's. Good solar gain is appreciated by our feline friends as well, so they'll be happy to keep the varmints down in the
solar shed. (my cat is right here, and she approves of this testimony) If you need any further convincing, check out stats on how many BTU's can be wasted by burning damp wood. Sure, you CAN burn it, but vaporizing the water uses BTU's, your stovepipe will gunk up faster (and your cat will be disappointed by the lack of heat for good naps)
That's why when I was living in a cabin about the size of my current bedroom (but with a loft, too) I built my woodshed where it got sun, and could be reached easily from the front porch, where I had a back-up wood box alongside the front door. Getting wood to the cabin zone was a piece of cake: the cabin is 15 feet from the main driveway of the community, at a slight down-grade from about 2/3rds of the trees on the
land, so I scored a carpet dolly: any log that I could pick up half of, I could set on the dolly, lash it on balanced slightly forward, so, by a tad of down pressure would keep the trunk up and I could steer from the back and walk a 30 ft. fir with 10-12 inch girth at the base a half mile to my cabin. (N.B.: any log big enough and long enough was likely used for building, not firewood!) The area was ALL on about the 3rd. cut since the gringos arrived. ) If it somehow the dolly got out of control I had only to let go and the butt would hit the ground and stop the show. I could also cut logs on the dolly with a stick tripod being the 2nd rest point, and I'd use a bow saw, chainsaws stink. The trick is in positioning and holding the log in a position that is easy for you in the cutting process. Hardwoods were available, mostly as coppice regrowth, in a bundle 3 ft. around, so those were small enough to cut with hand saws, because with harder, heavier wood, the heat yield was fine, the burn slower, and less creosote. I could cut those easily with a "Swede Axe", camp axe, bow saw, or a bill hook. Cold steel rocks! No ear protection needed! I made a sawbuck for hand cutting small wood right by the wood shed, 2 X ends with 2 top rails and 2 diagonals (big bamboos) all lashed. I know chainsaws are manly, stink, are greasy and dangerous, but think of it: if you cut conifers you have to replant, while many broadleaved species will regrow. Intensive coppice systems are their own subject, but if you want to check it out, the BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) It's an organization that seeks to preserve traditional knowledge and craft. I the volume on coppice it is postulated that it is still possible to see coppice that supplied wood to make charcoal to smelt bog iron ore to forge swords for Roman Legionaries, and continues yielding today.