Yep, sure is nice, huh?
That right there is six cords of hardwood, as delivered with care and love..... by the guy in the dumptruck.
Normally I just leave the wood in a heap (technical term) and bring it to the house one trailer load at a time, about 2,500 lbs. in the trailer, trailer on the porch (specifically built to bear extreme loads at vehicle track width; I drove my Expedition onto the floor before finishing the porch). But it is a pain digging through the leaves, debris, clumps of frozen wood, etc. to fill the trailer and the wood does not season well in a heap. As I hate unnessasary labor (shoveling snow, stacking firewood, and other temporary methods to use labor for absolutely no gain) I do not touch my wood (easy boys!) until it is on the way to the stove. But this year we are trying something new (to us): we are building one of these:
Sure you could say it was just a pile of stacked wood but I would say Nein! A thousand times Nein! That is a
holz hausen. Das ist die vay day stack the vood in Deutchland..... it translates to 'round house' more or less. The folklore is that they will cure wood faster than any other method of natural seasoning. I don't really believe that but 1) it is cool looking. 2) it is self- supporting (no need for end braces). 3) it is robust and not likely to fall over 4) it takes up an amazingly small space. 5) it is easy to keep the wood 'corraled' so it does not spread and make a mess- I am tired of trying to blow those few pieces of firewood that 'escaped the pile' and finally: 6) it should make an outstanding house for snakes, spiders, rodents, wood chucks and all other manner of things that will surprise me over and over as I use the wood.
That one is the 'standard' German size, 10' in diameter and <should> be 8' high but I think I am going to top out at a little better than 6'. The back of that stack is at max. height but it is not finished. Once the top is level, the final layers go on bark- up and stack high in the center to give the pile a shed roof that is supposed to shed everything like rain, leaves and snow. The key to building one, as I understand it, is to have the entire ring of outer splits pitch 'in' or down toward the center. The whole pile is started on a ring of splits layed flat to jack the first ring of splits. After that, the rings tend to level out because the wood toward the middle makes a smaller circle than the outside.... so the occasional split across the outer edges of the ring is needed to keep the pitch going. I will have Kirby test it for korrect konstruction before I finish.
Believe it or not, there is somewhere around 3 cord of wood in that thing now and it should absorb at least one more to finish. The next ones will be smaller simply because making a round stack that diameter is a pain; I think the next ones will be more like 6 or 7 feet in diameter and the same height (7' diameter X 6' high with a flat top will take almost 2 cord of wood).
We would have finished that one today but the tractor cart tires are so old and tired (!) and the sidewalls are leaking so badly that I had to put air in one of them every single trip by the end. Off to buy new tires tomorrow and continue down ze path of eigen vectors of wood stacking.
Brian
