Uber Holz

Here's my latest creation in movie and still.

Movie:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5998562293877429615&pr=goog-sl

Google stills: http://tinyurl.com/5d2hje

Inline Still:

Roospike said:

Do you let them sit to season for 1 or 2 years being in the trees and all ?

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Spike, I'll let you know next year.

chrisN said:

Hey Mo, How do you remove pieces from that pile? It looks like you'll need a step-ladder to take pieces off the top. Is that going to be a PITA?

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Yep, step ladder. No big deal. The PITA is getting the wood up the hill to the house.

I built this thing to consume ALL the wood I had from about 4 big oak trees. It got a bit taller than I had anticipated, but only by about a foot. This way, I only have one stack for next year. Hopefully the stuff in the middle will get dry. I think it will because there are so many really short pieces that it would have been an even bigger PITA to stack them.

The holz design really lends itself to a mix of wood sizes like I get from random tree service occurrences in my hood, and some of the twisted white oak and crap yard tree wood I sometimes have to cut really short due to tuff grain, crotches, and knots in order to split it by hand. I put all the really nice long stuff on the bottom perimeter, getting shorter as I go up. All the little stuff just gets thrown into the middle. Takes a bit of sorting, but I end up with one nice, symmetrical pile. Quite the conversation piece as well.

BG, Thanks. I estimate just under 3 cords.

WW, Thanks for the enthusiasm. It's hard to estimate total time of stacking, but I'd guess 6 to 8 hours x 2 people =~ 12 to 16 person hrs. Maybe an hour or two less. I did it piece meal so it took several months calendar time. I'd say it took longer for me than the times Todd has quoted in the past, even given his smaller HH. Given this one is a bit larger than his, it took me even more time. I tend to be very slow and methodical. I mean, hey, what's the hurry, right? This is wood burning related, so time goes out the window.

EH, Thanks. I love this form. Looks great in the back yard, and that can be important in my neighborhood. Lots of silly whiners around here worried about their property values, or in some cases, just trying to feel important, or at least more important than Mo. Mrs. Mo Heat and I sometimes refer to the holz as a giant pine cone. To my eye, it sure beats the right angles of traditional rows for blending into the woods. Just seems more pleasant to view, somehow. It's important to try and build on level ground, though, and to start with a good foundation and long length lower courses. I'll have to finish my holz wiki entry soon. I've been putting that off too long.

Hi Todd,

I found it easier to keep the [inward] slope of all the lower splits when stacking the larger holz (10 x 10 x 8). That is, there was less gap between the outside ends and so it required less attention to deal with that little nuisance than when building my smaller holz (7 x 7 x 7).

I'm glad to hear the middle stuff dried well for you. I'm hoping that isn't an issue with this big holz next year. Since most of the stuff in the middle is shorter, some is really short, I'm not expecting trouble.

I never thought of varying the rounded perimeter shape from a circle. That will be interesting to view. Space is a big consideration at my house (I want it to 'look' small), so the cylinder gives me the best bang per foot print.

BTW: my little holz collapsed about two weeks before I started burning. No big deal, though. I had expected it for quite a while and was surprised it stood as long as it did. I built it on quite a slope and it started moving and bulging down the hill a few months after completion. On the bigger holz, I used some landscaping stones to try and defeat the somewhat milder slope I built it on, but it is still on a hill. We'll see how well it does. Next time, I think I'll dump some fill within the landscape stones and start out on a level surface. That is the first instruction of the holz directions I worked from. Step 1: DO NOT BUILD ON A HILL!

Metal said:

Was that Tom Cruise in the video? : )

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Stunt double.

Todd said:

So far I haven't noticed that the wood drys faster in a HH than straight rows. I think the big advantage is the saved space. Those things hold alot of wood.

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For me, the jury is still out on how fast wood dries in an HH, especially a big one, but it is amazing how much wood gets gobbled up making one of these things. I also love the way they look.

drewmo said:

And any ideas of how well an HH would work if you cut it down in size, maybe in half?

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drewmo, I suspect the smaller the holz, the faster the drying. I size mine more for asthetics and how much wood I am trying to store. I attempted to get the whole of next year's burning into that one holz hausen.

BTW: I've got a cedar sided house with a cedar deck, both naturally finished (transparent stain), and appreciate the multiple coatings and especially the prep work you did on yours. Great job. I've had my place restained once. I was tempted to do it myself, but there are some really spooky heights that put me off. The guys that did it broke a bunch of my boards hammering in new nails and were generally pretty hard on the house in several other ways using spray washers for the prep work instead of grinding or sanding, which would be too much work and time to be profitable for them and affordable by me.

I'll let you know how the drying goes. I can say that the smaller holz I built last April and am burning now is dried to about 20%. At 20% I get just a hint of hissing when I burn it. I like my wood at 15%, but that last 5% seems to take a lot longer than the first 5%. Still, 20% is what is widely recommended and it burns just fine with no trouble getting it started.

That might be worth a try if I had a piece laying around and pre-drilled. I made some home-made termite traps by drilling pvc and I had my fill of doing that. BTW: I just received a load of Maple (my first maple, ever) and am still deciding whether to build a third holz out back, or maybe do a row along the back property line as a sort of fence. Since this maple will probably be for the winter after next, I may need to do some other projects first.

Here's the maple I got from a tree service working in the hood last week. My luck seems to be changing after having a disasterous vacation the two weeks before that. Looks like about 1.5 cords that should make a third holz sometime before next winter, to be burned the winter after. Mrs. Mo Heat is starting to get pretty nervous about where this will all end...