What to Keep in Mind When Stacking Firewood On a Hill
Not every wood burner has that perfect spot on their property for stacking the firewood they prepared – maybe it gets just too little sunshine, perhaps the wind doesn’t blow as well there.
In other cases, the place itself might not be too level, or even worse, be a straight up hill.
How do you stack the wood rightly in a spot of such curvature? This article answers exactly that.
It’s all about keeping everything level
Image by Tsvetkov A. A. via Wikimedia Commons
You really can stack wood on any sort of hill or slope you want, you just have to be sure you’re extra careful about it.
The only way you can actually be sure about this is if you stack all the wood you have as level as humanly possible.
How much effort and care will you have to put into it all depends on how severe the grade on your land is – if it’s a gradual decrease, you may not need to do much.
If it’s more serious where you can’t keep stacking regularly as the firewood starts to roll over, you have to use some sort of platform for support.
Use pallets
I don’t think there is anything better in this world than pallets for the uses we need here.
A pallet can withstand a lot of weight, not to mention the ample space for the wood to rest on.
The pallets will need to be propped up in order to keep everything on it plumb, as otherwise it’ll fall (obviously).
You can add the needed height with something solid, like cinder blocks.
If you don’t have access to pallets, there is an alternative approach. Longer scrap lumber pieces should work well enough for doing the same thing, albeit the whole process should also take up more time.
More ideas…
Instead of utilizing pallets and all that in your stack construction, why not ditch it altogether and go for a post?
That is, drive a piece of wood right where your stacks end, regardless of how steep the hill is, and hope it won’t split and make the firewood roll due to stress.
This is, no way shape or form, a safe method to go about it, but if you don’t have much to risk on your property, this might be not bad at all.
Ultimately, you may want to ditch the idea of stacking and just pile all the firewood you have. Because the wood will contour the ground naturally, you won’t need to do anything I talk about here!
That being said, this comes with its own pros and cons, notably when talking about seasoning time.