Building a Holz Hausen
So I’m back to burning wood again. On a large scale that is, because I’ve had cabins to heat and plenty of campfires over the past three decades. But it’s been 30 years since I’ve fed logs to a thirsty woodburning furnace. All through the 1980’s, when I was in my 20’s Goldie and I used up ten cords of wood per winter. And I never purchased a stick, cutting every log myself and hauling them home, first by snowmobile and late with an early model Yamaha Trike.
I kind of forgot how much work it all was, until now.
Yes, I have another wood furnace, not in our house but in that new project I’ve been building for the past few years.
It started on paper as a garage to store my boat, quads, garden tractor, canoes, kayaks, and the like. Then I got to thinking that it would be nice to have some additional loft storage.
I said on paper, but it was AUTOCAD actually. Somehow I digitally rambled from upstairs storage to a twobedroom loft for kids and grandkids. I fiddled around and couldn’t quite make happen what I wanted in a loft so I modified my plan to full two-story structure with a hip roof.
The only constant in life is change.
True words, and so now I’m finishing up a building with family kid’s suite on top and a carpentry shop and gun/rod and fly-tying room on the ground floor. My storage facility has moved to my old garage/workshop building. It all worked out well. I will have the woodworking shop I always wanted with a dandy wood furnace to keep me warm. I think I’m going to build another boat. I haven’t done that in 30 years, either. Change indeed, and life marches on.
Let’s get back to the business of burning wood, or rather cutting wood.
Actually I cheated big time and bought four cords of spruce cut in Central Newfoundland. Not only that, I purchased a hydraulic splitter at Princess Auto. There was none of that in the 1980s. I started out cutting those 10 cords and bucking it all up with an old cranky and painfully slow Pioneer 1074. After an hour cutting I couldn’t drink my tea without it sloshing out of the cup. You old woodcutters know what I’m talking about.
Then in 1986 I bought a Jonsered 590 out of my autumn beaver-trapping money, a 50-cc high-pitched, beastly wood slayer. My world had advanced dramatically, and I had a 200-cc Trike to haul with.
Those were wonderful years, as Bob Seger wrote, “I’d never felt that strong, like a rock,”
It’s not so easy 30 years later, even buying the wood, You still have to cut it all up into 16-inch lengths, split, and stack it for summer seasoning.
I still have the mighty Jonsered and I managed to cut up the whole four cords in about 12 or 13 hours spread over three days.
You might remember that I ruptured my bicep tendon last spring applying excessive brute force and ignorance to a stuck garage door. I’m trying to work smarter and taking care not to reinjure my arm, after all salmon season is just around the corner.
Next came the splitting and stacking.
Working smarter, I got a great sale price on that 5-ton splitter. My left bicep is still in one piece and the mountain of wood is all split. Actually, I enjoy splitting wood with an axe and maybe next year I’ll give it a go with the axe, but for this year I went full mechanical. And spruce, I think, is the toughest wood to split.
You know what gnarly means, I mean in traditional Newfoundland English? I suppose I have the spelling right. Two things, it’s a thin, sinewy, tough and strong individual, or a piece of knotty timber with the grain all twisted and wound about. This wood was half dry and was it ever bloody tough to split. Most pieces I would have to finish off with the axe because the two halves would still be clinging together by wooden sinews.
I got plenty of exercise. So with Goldie’s help I now have our firewood all split and stacked, waiting for the summer sun and drying wind. I can’t believe I used to buck, split, and stack 10 cords in a week. Good God, I could not do that now. Anyway, on the topic of stacking, in the ’80s I didn’t give much deeper thought to the higher art of woodpiles. I just stowed it all up in side by side massive long rows about four feet high.
That was it, job done. Nowadays I do too much thinking over morning coffee.
On my fishing travels in Norway I remembered seeing round woodpiles. I wondered what that was all about. So I did some coffee research to fine out.
The path of my reasoning goes something like this. We live on an acre of land aside the ocean in Spaniard’s Bay. The upper half further from the sea is flat and sheltered from the wind by trees that I planted 30 years ago.
The lower section slopes toward the beach and is open to the wind, and sunshine, fantastic for drying wood. But for considerations of slope, vegetable gardening, children playing, grass maintenance, and general esthetics, I was not fussy about building long unstable rows of wood.
Enter the Holz Hausen, a German phrase describing a beehive-shaped woodpile with a circular base. It stores and efficiently seasons a large quantity of wood in a very compact space. I built mine by first constructing a platform 10-ft square to accommodate the sloping land and to provide airflow underneath. Then using a nail driven in the center and a five-ft piece of line, I drew a 10-ft base circle to guide my first tier.
The crux of the matter is stability and airflow. You begin stacking your split wood around the circle while keeping each piece sloped slightly inward. Because you are only going to carefully stack the outer tier, the rest of the wood is just randomly thrown in the middle, a very efficient workflow.
So the outer skin of the Holz Hausen leans in on the random pile within its core, creating a very wind resistance and stable structure. In addition the outside circular layers taper to lesser diameter as you build upwards, like an igloo or beehive, natures most stable geometry.
To maintain an inward slope on each log is a bit of an art, or you can cheat as most do and lay small sticks tangent to the circle every so often. I cheated once only but I think I can do without the cheaters next time. If you use both hands and lay two split chunks together in the correct orientation you can maintain inward slope while providing for maximum airflow.
That is the art of a good Holz Hausen and art is seldom achieved without thought and effort.
When you get near the top you can then allow your outer tier to gradually take on an outward slope. This is to provide a rain shedding posture. Mound the wood upwards inside to establish a rounded top and then shingle the roof. Yes indeed, brilliant, lay split haves bark side up as you would cedar shake shingles to somewhat rainproof your woodpile. That’s it.
You can watch your wood dry from your Adirondack chair while sipping a beer or coffee on breezy warm summer days.
Then go fishing.