Pictures of my 7 foot diameter Holzhaufen. Started and completed today, 1/12/2007. Going for 7 feet high and 2.1 cords!
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My first Holzhaufen!! Construction pictures
- Thread starter ctlovell
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Started at 9:30am and was done at 2:30 with a few breaks and lunch. I wasn't moving too fast since my buddy and I split that wood and another 2+ cords at his house from Thursday pm and Friday pm. Needless to say I have had my share of wood this weekend! But, a good start on next year's firewood.
Is the interior wood standing on end? Or just tossed in? Me and the boys tried to build a couple and we determined to be PIA so we aborted the idea once the one side fell out.. We had our interior wood standing up as advised somewhere.
There is a slight inward/downward pitch to the radial splits and the interior wood is for the most part vertical. The uglies, splinters and the crotch pieces are just tossed in.
I am equally impressed and envious :exclaim:ctlovell said:Thanks to everyone on this Forum who provided information and encouragement on this project
I have a new goal in life- to do this someday.
Do you think splitter split wood is necessary, or can it be done with irregularly hand split stuff?
Is some stacking skill necessary or is it more a matter of patience and planning?
I'm a lousy stacker for some reason...
That looks great!
I hadn't even thought of putting the perimeter splits at the same height, (to make the decorative/functional rings) but it looks good, and maybe that's what people are supposed to do. Whenever I've worked on mine--including the day I started, in a hurry--I haven't looked at photos to remind me of how it's supposed to be done. We'll see how well that method works! The wood going into mine isn't even split, as it's mostly branchwood. And I'm putting pieces along the perimeter wherever I need one, which has been very irregular so far since the pieces are so different. But it's all tilting inward, so I'm hoping it will keep itself stable.
Congratulations on your functional sculpture!
I hadn't even thought of putting the perimeter splits at the same height, (to make the decorative/functional rings) but it looks good, and maybe that's what people are supposed to do. Whenever I've worked on mine--including the day I started, in a hurry--I haven't looked at photos to remind me of how it's supposed to be done. We'll see how well that method works! The wood going into mine isn't even split, as it's mostly branchwood. And I'm putting pieces along the perimeter wherever I need one, which has been very irregular so far since the pieces are so different. But it's all tilting inward, so I'm hoping it will keep itself stable.
Congratulations on your functional sculpture!
I would think that any split wood, hand or machine, would be fine. Even with machine split wood there is a large variation in size, shape and quality, which I believe helped since I had shims and wedges which I sometimes used to fill spaces if I didn't have just the right size split.
I have no experience in using round, unsplit branch wood but I am sure it would work, although it would probably be more tricky to maintain the evenness of the courses. The really ugly, knotty and crotch pieces I think are best placed in the middle rather than on the perimeter "wall". Their odd shapes seemed to throw off the shape I was looking for as a hexagonal brick would throw off a brick wall built of rectangular bricks.
I did find that placing the thicker end of a tapered towards the outside edge of the pile rather than towards the middle, as I intuitively wanted to do, helped maintain the inward tilt of the splits and helped keep the splits tighter on the outside. Also, take special care to ensure that the walls remain plumb while building upward. One thing I did to maintain the plumb sides was to tighten up any pieces which stuck out from the wall by tapping them back into place with the butt of an axe, just to keep everything aligned.
I have no experience in using round, unsplit branch wood but I am sure it would work, although it would probably be more tricky to maintain the evenness of the courses. The really ugly, knotty and crotch pieces I think are best placed in the middle rather than on the perimeter "wall". Their odd shapes seemed to throw off the shape I was looking for as a hexagonal brick would throw off a brick wall built of rectangular bricks.
I did find that placing the thicker end of a tapered towards the outside edge of the pile rather than towards the middle, as I intuitively wanted to do, helped maintain the inward tilt of the splits and helped keep the splits tighter on the outside. Also, take special care to ensure that the walls remain plumb while building upward. One thing I did to maintain the plumb sides was to tighten up any pieces which stuck out from the wall by tapping them back into place with the butt of an axe, just to keep everything aligned.
Based on my experience, you may want to start tapering the diameter a little more. The sides on my first one were nice and straight, then a month later they bulged out and it collapsed.
Collapse:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/10930/
Lessons Learned:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/10350/
Collapse:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/10930/
Lessons Learned:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/10350/
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