I get what your trying to say. However, the very thing that makes red oak give up it’s moisture slowly, keeps it from absorbing moisture again. It’s the closed pore structure of the wood that is a road block in both lanes of traffic.
Here are a couple square stacks we did. First is some hickory we stored for a bit. Then we had a good bit of tulip poplar, it was stacked maybe 3 1/2' high...
This gentleman makes a compelling argument that red oak flows moisture quite a bit. I like the comparison to bamboo for the white oak, with sections having partitions to stop moisture flow, unlike red.
Looks like kiln dried lumber to me… My bad I thought we were having a discussion about green wood being split and dried for home heating. Not kiln dried oak lumber stuffed end grain first into a dish of water. Carry on I’ll go back to moving forward.
My actual stack isn't a Holz Hausen. It's a "Holzlager" (wood warehouse, yes I made that up) which is a giant rectangular stack. I was simply referencing to the OP the fact that wood stacked in big cubes/cylinders can and will season given enough time.
Get some pallets. I'd go with plastic as I have found out the hard way that some of the wood ones just don't last. Give some space in between the pallets. I use 4 per stack and leave about 6" in between each, enough that a split will span across. This maximizes your diameter. Use single splits and make a circle. Then start stacking other splits pointed towards the center of the circle and voila. With the center you can store uglies, shorties, etc.....but now I'm being more particular about my round length and 95% of what I split is 16". I've thrown stuff into the center and but now I just lay them down a bit more tightly. You can see pics from my Pine is FINE baby! thread. Also, I don't find that it takes any longer than traditional stacking per se...More like a different way of stacking. If you want to go to level 9000 then you do it like Rainking (heh heh) but I don't go for pretty. I'm just trying to stack the wood as efficiently as possible. Stability is key and this method works well for me. I also make sure to leave space around the hausens so that I can fit my garden cart.
Well red oak is a sponge. It’s fine stacked as normal, takes time to dry but just fine stacked. Make a huge stack of rounds on the soil and it becomes a sponge pretty effectively. Not so much from the soil. Just all the rain and snow that gets in the middle of the pile and has no sun or wind to whisk it away. I’ve seen the water pouring out of rounds stored that way for 2+ years. Green trees not dead. They also could have been split with a butter knife,,,,,,but not rotten per say. Weird. BTW I’m burning some of that red oak this year. Dry as a bone and working very nice.
Funny you mention that. I had a firewood order to fill and I grabbed a pretty split. Looked at it for a sec before realizing it was Kentucky Coffeetree. I placed it back in the stack, because I couldn’t let those primo splits go. Pulled my truck around to the ash and cherry side of the stack. It will be tough to toss that rarity in the stove. I may never get another coffeetree. I’ve got lots of shade and decent space , so I double row stack. Prevailing winds are from the NW.
I though Holez Hausing was for creating Hauses for gnomes in the center hole of the stack. Keeps them out of the garden.
I found a pic of my old stacking of wood I bought that just happened to pop up on my phone today. 2018 Jan-31. I had just gotten it dumped so I must have ended up using it winter 2018/2019.
