Just in the nick of time, before Sandy dumped buckets on us, turning our little creek into something much more rushing, we got the last two cords of our wood stacked up for the winter. And a pretty stack it is too. In fact, if I were a little but more crazy, I'd say we should re-stack the wood in our shed like that so that we could have two. (But I'm not that little bit more crazy, because that would be...crazy)
The interesting thing about this style of stacking is that, while it seems like it would take longer than your traditional row stack, it's actually pretty darn fast. We stacked most of the two cords in a few hours where last time it took us a couple of days of stacking for the same amount. It could be that we're just getting faster, but I think it's because you really only stack the outside. Some of the directions we read had the inside stacked upright neatly, but others said you can just toss it in, and that's the route we went with.
We started by laying logs that were roughly the same size around in a circle. I stuck an old ski pole in the center and tied a three foot long rope to it so that the circle was pretty close to perfectly round.
Once that was down we stacked the first round, bark down, propped up along that bottom circle so that they are leaning in. This is the trick to the stability of this kind of stack, as long as the logs are tilted in, if they slide or fall a little, they just fall in on themselves, making it more sturdy. When you have a few rounds down, you fill the center up. As I said, we mostly just tossed them in, although we did check now and then to make sure the gaps were filled.
Round and round, with the bark down as much as possible, until the logs are laying flat instead of tilting in.
At this point we added a whole ring similar to that first row because our logs went flat all at the same time, but in some of the pictures I've seen, you just prop up a new row whenever you need to. As we worked up, we brought the sides in just slightly to create a solid dome. (Sorry for the blurry pictures, it was getting dark at this point. Best I have)
When we got the top (ok, when Will got to the top, I was off at play rehearsal with the kids by then, the bark needs to be up to help shed the rain.
So there you go, just in case you ever need to stack a holzmiete. (Hey, you never know)
