Keeping wood dry

We have a wood-burning stove, so we keep a stack of wood.   It's outside since we don't have a barn.   We need to keep it dry, and we have tried various systems for this; we still haven't found the ideal solution, but I'm hoping that this latest trick will work.

It's best to keep the wood off the ground so the damp doesn't rise into it.   We had a few tin roofing panels left over from a project, and we put them on the ground, with the wood on top.   This seems to work well, and the channels in the tin allow any water that gets in, to run off.

Keeping the rain off is a different problem, and we have put cheap tarpaulins on the top, but keeping them in place is a problem.   If we tie them down, it can be hard to get at the wood, and the height of the pile reduces as we take the wood off.  So we either have to keep tightening the ropes, or accept slack ropes and a floppy tarpaulin.   We can weigh the tarpaulin down with rocks, but strong winds lift the tarpaulin and flick the rocks off, and then the rain gets to the wood.

We found a guy giving away some tatty roof tin panelling that meets our needs, and we are using it as a test of a new system.   I got some stainless steel eyes that I am bolting to the tin, and will use elastic rope to hold the tarpaulins down.  I can't put the bolts on the existing tin under the wood since I need to get behind the tin to tighten the bolts, but if this system works, I'll do that in stages as the wood gets used.