The Science of Wood Stacking

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Thoreau Was Wrong 
Stacking wood can, in fact, warm you any number of times.

Preventing Bottom Rot

Build your woodpile on a base that will prevent bottom rot — evidenced by streaks of yellow mold or white fruiting bodies of fungus on the ground course of (ruined) wood. The best base I've seen was a ribbon of concrete paving blocks that a neighbor cast himself in a wood frame, then laid out along his fence line. It shed rain, kept ground water where it belonged, and gave the pile a level and solid base.

Keep horizontal courses as even and level as possible. In a really fine stack, facing tiers dip down in the middle in a shallow V shape so the faces lean on one another for mutual support. Small kids can run on a good woodpile without fear of knocking it down. Set logs one-over-two/two-over-one for best stability. Just as in a stone wall, stacking round logs one above the other creates long vertical seams called "run" that can fold at the crease and the pile will collapse. Wood cures fastest if stacked in one-stick-thick ricks, but you can't take it very high unless supported by a fence or barn wall. For a stable, self-supporting pile, build two or more tiers.

Build in as much air as you can, using irregularities and odd-shaped logs to create cross-stack channels for drying air. Always stack splits bark side up. Bark is designed to keep water out of the living tree and it will continue to shed moisture in the woodpile. To support ends of piles, you can use a standing tree, a fence post, or any other found support. At free ends, build stable, square log cribs by alternating courses of north-south logs with east-west. Fashion a water-shedding weather cap by building a peaked roof from overlapping splits or shingles, bought or riven on the spot with your ax from any good splitting logs. Birch, beech, or another smooth bark makes the best cap logs. Or cover the stack securely with a sheet of plastic or a tarp.

A top cover of black plastic will absorb heat and encourage evaporation in sunny climes. If you live in a humid or rainy climate, you can build a drying house of wood framing and a black plastic cover. The Oregon Cooperative Extension Service publishes plans for a great little solar dryer suitable to their cool and foggy weather. Write to Publication Orders, Agricultural Communications, Oregon State University, ADS 422, Corvallis, OR 97331-2119. They don't charge a thing.

Shape and size of the woodpile is your option. Straight ranks marching along fence lines are traditional. Some wood stackers like to build a series of cubes like little blockhouses; others raise whimsical shapes. But my favorite woodpile is the Shaker round. You start by making a flat circle of split logs arranged like spokes in a wheel and increase its size up and out, ending with a shoulder-high, cone-topped, disk-shaped woodpile. Covered with lapped birch splits or thick shingles riven from good splitting white oak or cedar logs, it will keep your wood dry and dazzle the neighbors. If you build with a section of holed plastic leach field drainpipe down the center and covered with a tin stovepipe cap painted black, air will be drawn up through the wood and out like a chimney. I know one wood heater who topped his stack's center pipe with a muffin fan on a long, weatherproof extension cord and got himself kiln-dried fire logs that lit with a match.

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