i have been splitting and stacking a big pile of ash that I hauled home last winter. There are almost three new holz hausen each a little more than two cords.
That is nice. Don't have the space at home, but I've been thinking about using these at the farm for next years & beyond wood.
Mine are stacked on circular pads of stones I removed from my very stony garden. I don't see why it wouldn't work on pallets.
Thanks. The third photo shows an older stack on the right, with the gray wood. You can see the side of that stack bulging - it was build with vertical sides like the others. When the sides bulge the holz hausen can eventually collapse if it bulges too far. That stack will be burnt this winter so it won't have time to collapse. I burn two of them per winter.
Thats some good looking stacks right there! Deererainman- I had mine stacked on pallets. They worked just fine. Just make sure that you get pallets that are as square as possible to maximize footprint.
I used 4 pallets and placed them in a pinwheel pattern to create a square. It left a small hole in the center, but I just sacrificed some uglies to fill in the void.
Does the Holz Hausen dry the wood on the inside rows? When I look at it, I wonder if the airflow gets into the center to dry that wood.
It could possibly slow it some, but I haven't noticed a problem. I used up my last one this past winter, it had only been standing for 10 months and had been stacked with freshly CSS'd ash. Everything was seasoned, including what was in the center, by the time I burned it. If you're on a 3 year plan I don't think there'd be an issue at all.
Looks great, Wood Duck! We'll be making an afternoon outing down your way for some apples in the coming week or two. I'll keep an eye out for your stacks!
Great looking stacks! When I was building mine, I heard that some people will use 2x4s stacked in amongst the splits, across the diameter of the circle, to help keep everything tied together. I reserved some of the straightest branches and used those instead of 2x4s. It's going on a year since I stacked it, and it hasn't budged at all. I also stacked mine on pallets.
Scotty, I can see some of the orchards from my stacks, but most of the apples are too far over the hill to see my yard. My stacks are near the high voltage powerlines south of the orchards. Shawn - these stacks are made with several rings of splits, and you want to have some pieces that tie the rings together. I haven't heard of using 2x4s, but I do stack some splits halfway between rings to try to prevent the outer ring from falling outward and collapsing the stack. It usually works.
I love the look of the Holz Hausen. The area I have to stack in is a bit tight, and I don't think I'd get more than one of those in my area. Where as with the pallets laid out properly, I should be able to get 2-3 cords. Unless I have the amount of wood that goes into a Holz Hausen.
My holz hausen are all eight feet in diameter, which means about 2.5 ft in height equals a cord. I stack mine about six feet high, so I get about 2 1/4 cords in each one.
What I like about the Holz is that I can stack much higher and they stay VERY sturdy, so really you can fit more wood per sq ft of pallet space. What I didn't like was dissembling them in the dark with a headlamp when bringing loads of wood in the house was scary. Now if I had disassembled them row by row from the top down they would have been fine, but I basically took out slices of a pie so that I could leave the rest covered with a tarp, and I had several avalanches!
