Are you looking for a wood stacking method that requires no materials other than firewood itself and can be built pretty much anywhere? I thought you were. Consider trying your hand at a holz hausen.
A few years ago, I wrote a blog about some hazard trees hanging over our garage. Here is the link to that blog. In the spring of 2024, we had those trees dropped and bucked up by a tree service company named Catskill Mountain Wood out of Roxbury, NY.
Two ash trees felled and bucked up on the snow-covered ground.
Over the course of 4 weeks, I chipped away with the firewood processing. I started with the big logs, cutting them into 16-inch rounds.
Ash tree logs cut into firewood rounds.
I worked my way up to the trees’ tops when my chain brake stopped working. While I waited for a new clutch cover assembly, I worked on splitting firewood. Soon enough, I was back to cutting. Cutting up the tree limbs and branches was time-intensive, but I got lots of kindling and some slash wall protection for the fruit and nut trees we planted around the house a year prior. Here is a link to the tree planting blog.
My wood stacks started to fill up, so I decided to try building a holz hausen, which means ‘wood house’. I wouldn’t need to purchase any additional materials and I could build the holz right where I was splitting.
I used slash from the tree tops to build a circular base roughly 6 feet in diameter.
6-foot diameter slash base.
You want the wood to tilt inward toward the center of the circle, so I started by laying firewood pieces end-to-end around the slash perimeter, forming a ring. Then I began laying firewood on the ring, oriented toward the center.
Building the outer wall.
When certain firewood pieces wanted to lean outward, I used thin wood scraps (shims) to get the wood leaning inward again. I had to do this a lot. As the ring of stacked firewood got higher, I began tossing shorter chunks and other weird pieces of firewood in the center. This provides support for the outer wall.
Building up the outer wall and inner scrap pile.
When the structure got to be about 4-feet tall or so, I began to build the cap, or the roof. I saw holz hausen examples that used overlapping wood slabs, bark-side up and stacked into a cone-shaped top. So, while I was splitting wood, I made sure to knock off plenty of these slabs from the firewood rounds.
Starting the roof
Building the roof was all about overlapping these slabs, one ring at a time, while building up the center pile to achieve a good slope. Mine should do the job of shedding most of the rainfall.
Finished roof.
From bottom to top, my holz hausen might be 5.5 feet tall. I’m guessing it should work just fine to dry out the wood. If I’m lucky, I may not need to use this wood for another year and a half. I definitely like the looks of it and it is quite sturdy. No additional materials were required, and I built it right where I was splitting. I’ll probably do another one someday.
