Hi, my name is Rolf and I'm a new member in the club. I guess I'm the first and only one from germany here. The way we keep our cockle stoves burning, goes that way: first we buy the logs from town/community, then wood workers cut the trees and distribute the portions for every customer. You find your portion besides a forest track. The forest management has established this rule to avoid the compaction of forest soils by plenty of tractors in the woods. Having my receipt I drive my 50+ year old Deutz tractor into the forest for cutting the logs apart and bring them home. The splitting is mostly done at the yard at home. Our trad. measuring unit for firewood is "Ster" = stacked cubic meter (or Rm= Raum meter) What you call a cord is 128ft³ = 3.6246m³ So one cord means 3.6 Ster for us. I guess my storage is about 6-7 cord at the moment. I'm interested in your way to process firewood. When I look at all the stacks here I see one big difference to the traditional way that is still popular here. It's to cut the logs to length of 1 meter = 3,3 feet, then split and stack it. When it's seasoned in 1-2 years it's been cut down on a circular saw to final 13 inch each. You see that kind of wood stacks everywhere in the landscapes of germany, switzerland, austria, northern italy (Tyrol), eastern france and probably at our eastern neighbors too. Though cutting the fresh wood instantly to the final dimension is also to be seen. For our "Meterholz" stacks I produce a special cover that I serve to the forestry trade. Tarps drove me crazy - always rifts and leaking. Every year I had to replace some. But the biggest handicap in my opinion is that the wood moisture is trapped underneath the tarp. What you get is moldy wood in the upper layers. Thats it for today. I look forward to a good exchange of ideas. Cheers, Rolf
Welcome Rolf. I approved your membership request the other day as was hoping that you would be a posting member. I like the sound of meter long splits (really close to what we call a yard here) but how do you go about splitting these? I use a hydrolic splitter and it would need modification to split pieces longer than 1/2 meter. If I read you post right, you are pretty much assigned the wood that you get to burn? Is wood burning very common there, or is it a small club like it is here in the States?
Welcome aboard Rolf. Looking forward to some pictures showing your system and stacks or ster. I thought the same Grizz......how the heck to split a "round" that long.
Welcome Rolf, When you are done answering these wood burning in Germany questions, I would appreciate it if you could visit the other forum rooms and educate us on a much more important topic your country is an expert on... BEER!
Welcome to the FHC . Looking forward to some pics. What kind of material do you use instead of tarps and what is it made out of ?
Welcome to the club Rolf! Sounds like we may have just as many questions for you as you do for us! First of all, can we get some ? I'd love to see some of these 1 meter stacks. I'm working on building a holzhausen - is that same thing as the meterholz you referred to?
Welcome to FHC Rolf, glad you joined us. Your wood processing system sounds very interesting, will be interesting to share more ideas.
Welcome. Nice chat finished now. Like Blue Vomit said. Beer talk. Remember the forum rules. Pics. Or your making that chit up.
FHC international Welcome Rolf. Sounds like you have a whole bunch of old world wood processing knowledge to be shared I'd guess the forestry practices you're talking about are lands that have been logged for generations - I suppose they keep pro's in the woods for sustainability and divvy the wood to locals as a benefit to the forest
Hi Rolf welcome to the forum! I like the others here would love to see pictures of your wood stacks, methods of splitting and your stove as well.. I have been to Germany a couple of times.. In the Navy I visited Willemshaven and with work I visited Augsberg.. My present company has an old plant in Berlin and will probably visit there some day too.. Looking forward to your pics and of course beer Ray
Welcome Rolf. I drove from Waldenbuch to Garmisch a few years ago. There is firewood stacked everywhere in the countryside. Germans know their firewood! Growing up my mother worked with a native German. Her husband was a true firewood hoarder. Once I got to Germany I understood why.
Welcome hoarder from a distant land. I REALLY enjoyed your opening post, and would also love to see some pictures when you can add them. Weather would be another topic, along with your cockle stove!
Always interesting to get such different perspectives on our hobby What's the reasoning behind leaving splits so long? Seems like it adds an extra step to the process
