I was almost done stacking my Poplar Holz Hausen this afternoon when this happened...the south side had started to lean a little outward, and I couldn't get it back. Lesson learned: a 9' diameter Hausen with 18" splits is a real challenge to maintain the proper cant required to keep everything stable. Back to the drawing board.
Should I see a "buldge" in my stacks, I take a sledge and am usually successful in tapping the splits back where they belong. I've noticed that tendency more with the smooth barked beech wood. Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk
You could leave it til Halloween and decorate in some gory fashion to look like it's leaking its innards... Hate that all that hard work needs redone, tho.
Thanks for the condolences, all...I'm decided I'm going to restack as an 11' diameter Hausen this time. Much easier, and can hold 4.5 cords at 6' high.
Definitely...that was my first attempt, and that side was always a little wonky anyway. My second HH is an 11-footer, and is coming out much better. I just have to finish splitting the Ash, Walnut, Mulberry, Hickory, and Hackberry in order to finish it off.
That looks like a ton of work, but I bet it will come out looking real sharp. Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
Got the 9 footer mostly taken apart yesterday after work, and might begin stacking the 11 footer this weekend if I can fit it in between honey-dos.
We do that with three or four holz hauzens every year. Funny thing but my wife like to make then but will not maintain an angle on the outer ring. So they always blow out.... and then she re-stacks them and then they blow out. The outer ring on those has to be canted down toward the center; if the outer ring is even close to level, internal pressure will always cause them to shift. The key is to put splits 'sideways' along the outside edge to keep the angle fairly steep as it is built up. The natural tendency of stacking anything in a circle is to have the inner diameter raise as the level of the build rises. Also the outside wall has to be vertical at most, or with a slight in-ward cant. If the diameter grows as it is built up, again, it will blow out sooner or later. The first two we built were about 10' in diameter and worked well enough but then we went to 8' diameter to fit on pallets and my wife started to build them alone. Had one blow out in the middle of the night and it sounded like a distant bomb went off.... had to search around for a while before we saw that half of an 8' tall hauzen had blown out. Brian
I was actually kicking myself for making it that small in the first place...the failure just gave me an excuse to make it bigger!
I stack mine with two horizontal-ish rings of splits. That is, I place another ring of splits inside the outer ring. Make sure all splits in both rings are sloped slightly toward the center of the holz hausen, rather than laying horizontal or sloped to the outside of the ring. I lay the wood in the center in a criss-cross pattern with each split more or less horizontal, or I place the ulgies in the center. You don't want any wood leaning or sliding toward the outside of the ring; you want any shifts in position to push in toward the center.
