Summer isn’t the time of year that most people think about firewood. Maybe that’s because their firewood isn’t elegant enough.
“When I saw it, I said, ‘That’s beautiful.’ It caught my eye,” is how Cathy Cushing described the big, beehive-shaped wood pile she built, with a bit of experimentation, at her Hopkinton home.
Last month, Cushing bought a cord of firewood for her home fireplace and it was delivered in a big, loose pile, leaving her to stack it.
Stacking firewood is something that New Hampshireites have been doing for as long as New Hampshire has existed, and we know what to do: take the maul and split pieces of firewood and lay them next to each other in parallel rows, layer atop layer, to form a small wall of timber.
In fact, this is the definition of a cord of wood as put together by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a definition that has been adopted by the state of New Hampshire under RSA 438:20.
NIST says a cord is 128 cubic feet of firewood (usually 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet) that is “ranked and well stowed,” which “shall be construed to mean that pieces of wood are placed in a line or row, with individual pieces touching and parallel to each other, and stacked in a compact manner.”
That works fine, leaving the ends of wood exposed to help pieces dry out and making it straightforward to remove pieces one at a time, but it’s a little predictable.
“I went online to look for how people get the ends lined up so that it doesn’t tip over when they stack it in the traditional style, and up came ‘the German style of stacking wood’ – that’s all it said,” Cushing recalled.
Intrigued, she looked further and discovered Holzhausen, a German word meaning “wood house.” It’s one of several methods that have been developed around the world for stacking cut and split firewood using a built-up circle that turns into a beehive-like shape.
“I read up on it. I thought, ‘It doesn’t look that hard,’ ” Cushing said.
The tall dome shape was familiar for another reason: She builds snow shelters known as quinzees in the winter, and Holzhausen are similar in outline, if not in construction material.
“I think I’m drawn to that kind of shape,” she admitted.
Cushing picked a flat spot, marked out the circulate base, and started placing wood. She wasn’t alone: Her mother, Mildred, who is 94, helped.
“On my first attempt for the base, I got the wood around in the first circle – it’s not easy to start – and I stopped and looked at it and realized, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s an oval, that’s not good!’ ” she said.
She took it apart, re-measured the 3½-foot diameter circle and started again, more carefully, using a piece of rope staked to the center of the circle to keep things lined up.
It worked better the second time, Cushing said.
“This is not a museum piece,” she added. “There were some gaps, but I’d just pick a different piece of wood.”
A big advantage came once the circular wall was high enough.
I continued around and around, then started just chucking wood into the inside,” she said. Certainly easier than stacking.
Thing got more complicated when the time came to form the roof.
“My challenge, and I knew it was going to happen, is I didn’t know quite how to gauge when to keep decreasing the size so I would get the right form. My concern is that I would run out of wood before I had finished,” she said.
She didn’t run out of wood but the final shape isn’t exactly what she wanted. “Next year when I do it, I’ll know exactly when to decrease the diameter,” Cushing said.
She’ll also find out how well her construction does on the main jobs of a woodpile, helping the green wood that she bought become seasoned wood which burns cleanly come winter.
“Because of the way it is built, it almost has a convection type of drying. The air goes on through the center and up. I think the wood has cured remarkably fast,” she said.
Cushing is realistic – she doesn’t expect all Granite State woodpiles to transform into beehive shapes – but she’s happy with what she’s done and plans to do it again.
“People see it, friends and family – they say, ‘Wow – what is it called again?’ ” she said.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)