How Many Ricks of Wood Do You Need for Winter?

Heating your whole home with wood takes roughly 4.5 to 7 full cords a winter, which is about 12 to 28 ricks, not the 2 to 3 ricks many sites quote. Two or three ricks fits an occasional fireplace, not a stove that carries the house. This guide covers the rick-to-cord math, quantities by how you heat, and a way to turn your fuel bill into ricks.

Test Moisture Before You Count Ricks

A rick only counts as heat if the wood is dry. The EPA says properly seasoned firewood should measure 20 percent moisture or less on a moisture meter, and that wet wood makes excess smoke, which is heat lost up the chimney. Green wood delivers noticeably less heat per rick than seasoned wood, so test before you stack.

The weights in Nebraska Extension’s firewood table show why. A cord of white oak weighs 5,573 pounds green and 4,200 pounds dry, so about 1,370 pounds of every green cord is water your stove has to boil off before the room gets any warmer. Split a few pieces from the middle of the stack, test the fresh face, and read our guide on how long oak takes to season if the numbers come in high.

How Many Ricks Are in a Cord?

A full cord is a tightly stacked pile of 128 cubic feet, usually 4 feet tall, 8 feet long and 4 feet deep, according to USU Extension and Nebraska Extension. A face cord is 4 feet high and 8 feet long but only as deep as the pieces are long, so with the usual 12 to 18 inch pieces it holds 32 to 48 cubic feet.

A rick is the everyday name for a face cord. It is not a fixed unit, so the size depends on the seller’s log length. Our page on the measurements of a rick of firewood goes deeper on the naming. Here is the math for the three common lengths.

Log length	Cubic feet in a rick	Share of a full cord	Ricks per full cord
12 inches	32	one-quarter (0.25)	4
16 inches	42.7	one-third (0.33)	3
18 inches	48	three-eighths (0.375)	2.7

To check a stack yourself, multiply height by length by depth in feet and divide by 128. If a seller will not tell you the log length or the cubic feet, assume the smallest rick.

A full-size pickup with an 8-foot bed carries about one-third to one-half of a cord according to Nebraska Extension, depending on how it is loaded, which is roughly 1 to 1.5 ricks of 16 inch wood. For weight per load, see how heavy a cord of wood is.

How Many Ricks of Wood Do You Need for Winter?

Nebraska Extension gives three ranges by how you use wood. The ranges move with stove type, wood species, house size, insulation and the temperature you want, so treat them as a planning band, not a promise. We converted the cords to ricks using the 12 to 18 inch range from the table above.

How you burn	Full cords per year	Ricks per year (12 to 18 inch wood)
Occasional fireplace	About 0.5	1.3 to 2
Supplemental stove heat	1.5 to 3	4 to 12
Primary heat for the home	4.5 to 7	12 to 28

Here is the myth to drop: “2 to 3 ricks will get you through winter” only holds for the first row. A household that relies on wood for most of its heat needs several times that. Older versions of this page also said a cord lasts about ten weeks and that some households need ten cords or more. Neither figure matches the Extension ranges, so we removed them.

To see how fast a supply goes, spread the primary-heat range over about 26 weeks. That is 0.17 to 0.27 cord a week, or about 0.5 to 0.8 rick of 16 inch wood a week, so one rick lasts roughly 1.2 to 1.9 weeks. That is our arithmetic on the Extension ranges, not a measured burn, but it shows why a few ricks disappear fast in a cold month.

Turn Your Heating Bill Into Ricks

If you already heat with oil, gas, propane or electricity, your bill is the best predictor of what wood you would need. Nebraska Extension lists the dry wood that matches each fuel: 1 gallon of #2 fuel oil equals 22.2 pounds of wood, 1 therm of natural gas equals 14 pounds, 1 gallon of propane equals 14.6 pounds, and 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity equals 0.59 pounds.

1. Add up a full year of fuel use from your bills.
2. Multiply by the pounds-of-wood factor for your fuel.
3. Divide by the dry weight of a cord of your wood. Red oak is 3,528 pounds per cord in the Extension table.
4. Multiply cords by ricks per cord (3 for 16 inch wood).

The examples below use made-up but typical-sized annual bills to show the method. Swap in your own numbers.

Example yearly use	Pounds of wood	Cords of red oak	Ricks (16 inch)
800 gallons of fuel oil	17,760	5.0	about 15
1,000 therms of natural gas	14,000	4.0	about 12
900 gallons of propane	13,140	3.7	about 11
12,000 kWh of electricity	7,080	2.0	about 6

Treat the result as a starting point. The conversion compares fuels, not your particular appliance, and the EPA says certified stoves can use up to one-third less wood for the same heat than older models, so an old stove could push your number up.

Which Wood You Burn Changes the Count

Two ricks are not equal if they are different species. Nebraska Extension lists heat per cord from 13.8 million BTU for basswood to 29.1 million BTU for white oak, and USU Extension reprints the same figures. The table below shows how many cords of each species it takes to match the heat in 5 cords of green ash (100 million BTU in the Extension table).

Species	Dry weight per cord (lb)	Million BTU per cord	Cords to match 5 cords of green ash	Ricks (16 inch)
White oak	4,200	29.1	3.4	about 10
Red oak	3,528	24.6	4.1	about 12
Maple (other than silver)	3,680	25.5	3.9	about 12
Black cherry	2,928	20.4	4.9	about 15
Green ash	2,880	20.0	5.0	about 15
Cottonwood	2,272	15.8	6.3	about 19
Eastern white pine	2,250	15.6	6.4	about 19
Basswood (linden)	1,984	13.8	7.2	about 22

In practice, a stack of low-density wood like cottonwood or pine gives you about half the heat per rick of white oak. Extension also notes that softwood resins add smoke, sparks and creosote, so a big supply of pine is a chimney-cleaning problem as well as a quantity problem. Our page on cottonwood as firewood has the details for that species.

What Else Moves Your Number

• Appliance: the EPA calls a wood-burning fireplace a very inefficient way to heat a home, while certified stoves deliver more heat per log.
• House size and insulation: a leaky house burns more wood to hold the same temperature.
• Climate: a longer, colder heating season pushes you toward the top of the Extension range.
• Species and dryness: covered in the sections above, and the two biggest levers you control.

If you are wondering whether a stove can carry a whole house, our guide on whether a wood burner can heat the whole house works through the BTU sizing. To price your supply, see how much a cord of wood costs.

Store Your Ricks So They Last

Once you know your number, keep the wood dry through the season. Our guide to stacking firewood so it actually seasons covers spacing, airflow and covering the pile, and it is worth doing before the first snow.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many ricks of wood do I need for winter?

It depends on how you heat. Nebraska Extension estimates 4.5 to 7 full cords a year to heat a home with wood, which is about 12 to 28 ricks of 12 to 18 inch wood. A supplemental stove needs 1.5 to 3 cords (4 to 12 ricks), and an occasional fireplace needs about half a cord (1.3 to 2 ricks).

How long will a rick of wood last?

A rick of 16 inch wood is about one-third of a cord. If a home burning 4.5 to 7 cords spreads that over roughly 26 weeks, one rick lasts about 1.2 to 1.9 weeks. With an occasional fireplace, one rick can last a whole season. Those figures are our estimates from the Extension ranges, not a measured burn.

Will a cord of wood last all winter?

Only if you burn occasionally. Nebraska Extension puts occasional fireplace use at about half a cord, supplemental stove heat at 1.5 to 3 cords, and whole-house heat at 4.5 to 7 cords. One cord is plenty for a fireplace but falls short for anything heavier.

Is a rick the same as a face cord?

In most places, yes. Rick is a common name for a face cord, a stack 4 feet high and 8 feet long that is as deep as the pieces are long. Because the depth changes with log length, a face cord holds 32 to 48 cubic feet, which is one-quarter to three-eighths of a full cord.

How many ricks fit in a pickup truck?

Nebraska Extension says a full-size pickup with an 8-foot bed holds about one-third to one-half of a cord, depending on how it is loaded, and more when the wood is stacked instead of thrown. That is roughly 1 to 1.5 ricks of 16 inch wood.

Conclusion

For a fireplace you light now and then, plan on 1 to 2 ricks. For a stove that helps with heating, plan on 4 to 12. For a home that runs mainly on wood, plan on 12 to 28, and buy dry, species-matched wood you have tested. Sources: Nebraska Extension NebGuide G1554, Heating With Wood, USU Extension, Wood Heating and EPA Burn Wise.