Holzhausen wood stacking

I've been cutting down dying birch trees and bucking/splitting them for use in two winters.  I stack in a holzhausen style which is a round wood pile.  We can get 4-5 cords of wood into a 10x10 footprint.  Due to drying issues in the core of the pile, this year we're doing two cylindrical stacks and trying to leave the core open.  We'll also take some pallet wood and make a roof over the stacks so it looks like a single pitch version Shakespeare's globe theater.

The holzhausen started today with the rings of wood that start the stacks on an inward tilt.  We reuse them because it takes a while to find chunks that lay flat.

Mike Haasl wrote:I've been cutting down dying birch trees and bucking/splitting them for use in two winters.  I stack in a holzhausen style which is a round wood pile.  We can get 4-5 cords of wood into a 10x10 footprint.  Due to drying issues in the core of the pile, this year we're doing two cylindrical stacks and trying to leave the core open.  We'll also take some pallet wood and make a roof over the stacks so it looks like a single pitch version Shakespeare's globe theater.

The holzhausen started today with the rings of wood that start the stacks on an inward tilt.  We reuse them because it takes a while to find chunks that lay flat.

Starting pile of wood is 10' long (per tape measure on the ground) and the general middle height is 3' so it's well over 1/2 face cord.

Mike this is the coolest woodpile I've ever seen!
I would love to see a picture of the completed holzhausen!

Thanks Clay, we really like them.  I have a good picture of an early one from several years ago and a picture from this fall but it's more distant.  Enjoy!

Is the shingle style roof a viable option for keeping the wood dry?
How do you use the wood while keeping it dry? Is this just for seasoning wood and then you store it in another style?

Time for a better update!  We've been stacking wood this way for four years and we keep learning.  The theory is that wood stacked this way is really stable and dries as fast or faster than wood in a normal stack.  So far we've determined that it is much more stable but it doesn't dry as fast.  But we're working on that last part.  I suspect that a full size pickup in 2wd wouldn't be able to push the stack over (unless it got a good run at it).

The first year we did smaller holzhausens like this one:


It had one perimeter ring of wood and the entire core was filled with round un-split logs.  It sat on a layer of pallets and didn't have a roof other than the semi-careful orientation of the topmost chunks and some pieces of birch bark.

The perimeter ring and the upper wood in the core dried out after two years but the lower core was still unseasoned.  We also built it with straight sides which started to push out (as you can see in the photo) and I ended up wrapping a piece of wire around the stack to keep it from spreading.

We then went to a double layer of pallets to get more airflow under the pile, and put a tarp down to prevent grass from growing up and blocking airflow.  We also started making them bigger (10' instead of 7-8' diameter.  This way one stack would take care of us for a winter.  We then did two perimeter stacks.  Instead of tightly packing rounds in the center, we just jumbled in the "uglies" that wouldn't stack well anyway.  That worked better but the core still didn't get fully dry after two years.

Now we're just leaving the core out.  Just a double circle so the air can chimney up through the stack easily.  We also got some sawmill slab wood and made crude shingles to shed rain better.  They're just sitting up there, no fasteners (yet).

Plans for next year are to make the piles bigger by a foot or two in diameter or height.  We might start putting in 10 foot cross logs at a few points to further brace the pile together.

I think a roof is a good idea as long as it can let air out the top.  The slab wood we're using doesn't meet at the middle (since it isn't protecting any firewood in the core).  We leave these stacks up for 2 years and then move the wood up to the house for the winter.  If you did want to remove wood from the pile, you could just tear off a foot from the top at a time and try to re-roof it to keep rain off until the next time you grab wood.

Other learnings:

Start with a base ring that is stable.  I have to deliberately split wood into an ideal shape to make for a good base piece (sketch below)

As you stack, try to keep the rows tilting inward.  Put the fat end of pieces out to help maintain the tilt

Bent, ugly, tapered, short chunks are helpful to fill gaps

When the stack gets level or slightly tilted down, put in another ring piece

Some people stick the ring pieces in willy-nilly, we try to make a full circle for aesthetic reasons

The inner ring will tilt in quicker than the outer due to the smaller radius so it might have more outer rings over the course of its height

Don't aim for a cylinder, make a slight gumdrop shape

Use 3' logs to bridge between the inner and outer row of wood.  Not a lot, maybe 12 per holzhausen

Near the top, let the rows tilt down and try to get the inner and outer to line up to a good roof slope

The pile will shrink over time so the roof pitch will get a bit shallower

Interesting, I never heard the word Holzhausen before (well, I did, because it is a common village name in Germany).
When googling a bit it seems it is only used in the US.

In Germany we would call this Holzmiete, Rundmiete or Holzfinne. There are numerous sites with explanations and How-to-Videos.
Definitely not enough wood or ground to build such a thing, but looks very neat!

Thanks Anita!  I always had a hard time finding information about them.  Getting lost in translation would explain things.  I'll do some searching for those videos.

What's the main incentive to stack this way?  It looks time-consuming and difficult to remove the wood when you need it.  I don't fancy playing jenga trying to get my firewood, how does removing pieces work?

 We only cut up already dry logs for firewood so even if it did dry faster I wouldn't find that perk incentivizing.  

The main incentives are:

I can stack 4 cords of wood in a 10' by 10' area (100 ft2).  If you do "normal" wood piles 4' high, you'd cover 128 square feet and ideally they'd be spaced apart for airflow.    

These piles are quite stable.  I wouldn't be worried about kids playing around them.

They're cool looking :)

But, I'm using them to dry wood for 2 years before I use it.  If your wood is already dry and you're going to burn it within a few months, no need to do this.  I just need 8-12 cords of wood drying so that I'm ready each winter.

Removing wood is easy.  Just start at a top corner and pull wood off until you get sick of it.  Putting it up requires more care.

Mike are you using this solely for drying and then moving to a covered area after the two years? It looks awesome. I'm just trying to figure out once it's time to burn how do you remove wood while utilizing your shake style covering.

I've only ever used traditional grandpa taught me  style stacking and it's always been under an over hang or a structure specifically for covering the wood.

I am really intrigued by the space saving possibilities and structural soundness of the stacking.

Yes, I'm just stacking wood out there in the back 40 to dry.  Then in Sep or Oct we tear one pile down and stack it up close to the house for use that winter.  So we tear it down in one fell swoop.  If someone wanted to just remove half for some reason, they could take the shingles off, demolish it down to the height they want, and stick the shingles back on.  This probably wouldn't work well if you want to grab an arm load at a time.

That makes more sense! Just brainstorming here but I wonder if there is a way to use compost or extra exhaust from a nearby heat source in the middle of the stack to speed up your cure!

That space in the middle seems like edge that's asking for some kind of function stacking.

I had wondered if it would make a good deer hunting blind.  Just set some window frames in the pile as you go (and a door) and you could hide really well.  Could also be a castle for kids to play in.  I use it partially as a view blocking device.  

Mike Haasl wrote:I had wondered if it would make a good deer hunting blind.  

Hahaha please post a picture of yourself peeking out of your wood pile with your rifle if that happens.

Also I like the view blocking idea. I had not considered that advantage

I stack mine in a similar fashion, but without the top. I turn the top layer of wood bark side up and if we are having a really heavy rain, toss an old clear shower curtain on top. In the center, I have some 5 gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottoms. I toss sticks and small branches in these all year when doing yardwork to use for kindling in the winter. Makes it easy to carry into the house. I have two at this time, one with green wood and one with seasoned wood. However, I'll probably go with a couple more to be ahead. I won't use it all in one winter, but it will be well seasoned for the next year.

I understand the tapering of the stack as you go up and adding to the structural integrity. But my concern is with the slope catching more rain and all that moisture running inside the stack, wouldn't that lead to more rot or decay?

Bentley Howard wrote:my concern is with the slope catching more rain and all that moisture running inside the stack, wouldn't that lead to more rot or decay?

Welcome to permies Bentley. Thanks for 'bumping' Mike's awesome wood stores. I would have the same concern as you in my climate. Maybe it depends on your rainfall? They do look pretty cool though. I'm never that consistent with my wood cutting, so rely on a wall at each end to stabilise my stacks, and a 'tin' roof to keep the rain off.

I'm not sure if everyone puts roofs on them but looking at my pics above you can see that most of the water runs off them and doesn't really hit the sides.  If slanting rain hits the side, it would run into the pile at times, but it's a pretty small amount of rain compared to the volume of wood it's going to touch.

In regards to rain going in...  you place the logs in that fashion until about 2/3 up your pile height for stability then stop using scraps/rings and allow it to level out.  Then you stop adding rows but put continue to build up the center to provide your pitch while making sure last few rows are bark side up to shed rain.  The little bit of water that gets on your wood won't matter, even in a down pour, that surface moisture has little effect compared to the internal moisture of green wood and is still 'dry'.  I wouldn't put rounds in middle though, rounds do not dry well and I feel they wouldn't get the chimney effect that upright, split would does.  Unless, like OP, you're stacking it for 2 years in which case it matters fairly little. Like digging into a mulch pile in the sun, it gets Hot! In the middle and that updraft is the biggest benefit of this stacking

Hi Robert,

Welcome to Permies.

Robert Wilton wrote:Like digging into a mulch pile in the sun, it gets Hot! In the middle and that updraft is the biggest benefit of this stacking

That's interesting, I wouldn't have thought there was much increased heat from wood drying (until they start rottin perhaps). I wonder if that is dependent on the wood. Usually evaporation cools.

(OT - I'm thinking now about hollow compost heaps...)

Nancy Reading wrote:(OT - I'm thinking now about hollow compost heaps...)

(Such as a capped "tube" of wire mesh into the middle, to allow in air?)

Ac Baker wrote:(Such as a capped "tube" of wire mesh into the middle, to allow in air?)

Just considering the possible thermal chimney effects and whether one could make use of them. You'd need air inlets as well; compost tends to be more solid than logstacks.