Unscheduled wood stacking.

[Warm_in_NH]

Wife says, "Those stacks are leaning pretty good."
I reply, "Yep, have been since fall, they're not going anywhere. "
We go to lunch. Return home. We both look out the window same time.
The dreaded words....
Wife says, "I told ya so!"



Turns out the worst part about this is that the wood is already where you need to stack it. So it's been stacked once. Fell over. Now it needs to be moved away, area straightened up and brought back and stacked again.
It really triples the work when this happens.

 

[begreen]

Bummer. You wanted more exercise, right?

 

[BringinHeat]

Not sure what's worse...the work of re-stacking all that or hearing the wife say "I told you so"?

 

[Fred Wright]

That bites. As if stacking the first time wasn't enough work already.

Soft maple is notorious for falling; I've had to restack maple piles more than any other. Got some good, needed advice from the folks here: Stop stacking it so darn high.

 

[begreen]

To help secure the stack, about mid-pile tie a rope across the pile snug between the upright supports. Then stack more splits on top of that rope. The additional weight of the wood will tension the rope further and help hold the stack together. Avoiding a leaning stack starts with having a level platform to begin with and checking for level every few courses of splits. Our last row in the shed is 8 ft tall so we want to be extra sure it is either level or leaning slightly backward so that it won't fall down, especially when you are offloading wood! This can happen (don't ask how I know. )

 

[Warm_in_NH]

New stacks are a little shorter and 1/2 way up I have some old deck balusters that span from the back pile through the front ones. That was a suggestion from a bud of mine, somehow it really seems to sure them up.
I was gonna try to rotate them this year anyway as I started off wrong a while back and had some older stuff behind the newer stuff, not any more...

 

[Corey]

My stacks generally run N/S and always seem to take an eastwardly lean. A few times during the first year, I take a larger log and use it as sort of a battering ram to 'tamp' the shifted pieces back in. By keeping up with the shift little-by-little, you can avoid a big collapse and a lotta work.

 

[Mag Craft]

I have had a few stacks fall over also. Sometimes it is from shrinkage and sometimes the wind blows them over.
I just figured it comes with the turf. Good luck with your stacking.

 

[drz1050]

I had a few fall over, I lean them in against each other now.. no problems that way, yet.

 

[CountryBoy19]

Turns out the worst part about this is that the wood is already where you need to stack it. So it's been stacked once. Fell over. Now it needs to be moved away, area straightened up and brought back and stacked again.
It really triples the work when this happens.

When that happens I just start a new stack with the fallen wood and add other splits back into the space in my pile left by the fallen stuff.

That being said, if you keep up with the lean (pushing it back in) before it gets too bad, you can generally prevent a toppled stack...

 

[Soundchasm]

Seems like you've got two stacks running parallel. I've read that if you span both stacks with a long branch periodically it will stabilize both stacks. I had stacks falling over regularly after it got cold. I attributed it to frost-heave in the ground - that same phenomenon that eliminates the nice 1-2" clearance the gates had above ground level and the ground has expended and now the
gate barely skids across the ground surface. I pounded EMT pipe into the ground to support the concrete blocks.,and that took care of it.

The pipes 2' into the ground made a stable platform for the concrete blocks,and managing the wood shrinkage by tapping the
splits back into a straight line.

Nothing has fallen down with this two-teired approach. Hope this makes sense.

Stacking 16" splits about 5' is a challenge.