Building A Holz Hausen

In Vermont they take their wood piles seriously. Last winter my son-in-law Nate built the holz hausen shown here at Eve and Nate’s house outside of Woodstock, VT.

Typically he stacks their wood in a long straight woodpile (also visible in photo), and finds it to be meditative work. Last year after building the straight wall he found that he still had a pretty sizeable amount of wood left that wasn’t going to fit, so he decided to try something different, and came across the idea of building in the round. It looked like an interesting challenge.

Says Nate, “I don’t think there is a minimum wood requirement for building a holz hausen.  If you have less wood, it ends up just being shorter!  I probably had a cord and it was the perfect amount for a woodpile about my height.”

He told me it does take a little longer to build than a normal pile because you have to find the right logs to keep the weight centered and even.  If you don’t, the pile will start to lean and eventually fall over. But even so he estimates it took about four hours in total.  He says, “After I was done I found it to be very pleasing to look at, and realized I might not want to use the wood anytime soon. So we left it up all winter.”  By spring, he told me, it actually looked like it was leaning a bit one way. “I think once the ground fully thawed it sank under the weight of the pile, and that was what finally caused it to fall.” And that’s what it took to get them to begin burning the wood from that pile!

Here is a website that has step by step how-to information on building a holz hausen, also called a beehive wood pile: http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/how-build-beehive-shaped-holz-hausen-wood-pile-video.html 

I also found this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6PJMH_9ijg

Have fun! Send us your pictures! Be sure to wear your Womanswork work gloves and Manswork work gloves when you build your holz hausen!