At Ermitaj, we’ve stacked many piles of firewood… And during the first couple of years, we saw quite a few collapse. We were all from the city; none of us had grown up with wood heating.
Then a good friend, whose life has long revolved around fireplaces and stoves, explained the basic principles. Since then, every pile we’ve made has stood tall for as long as needed.
Here are the lessons from our ten years of experience with stacking firewood… Between physics, rural common sense, and a touch of meditation.
One of the wood piles that turned out quite well — I wanted to make it look nice and added some beautiful red plum logs here and there.
The Ideal Setup
If you’re lucky enough to have the space, the best solution for stacking firewood is to build a structure sheltered from rain but open to the wind. Divide your storage area into three parts:
– Freshly cut wood, to be used in two years
– One-year-old wood, half-dry
– Two-year-old wood, dry and ready to burn
Bonus: a small area for kindling wood.
At Ermitaj, we still haven’t found the time, money, or materials to build that perfect shed. Maybe next year.
For now, we stack our wood along a wall or make round piles. Here, the wind (and thus the rain) rarely comes from the east, so east-facing walls are a good enough place for stacking firewood
When You Don’t Have a Shelter for Stacking your Firewood
If you’re short on covered space, you can fell the tree and leave it in a sunny place for about a year.
Even exposed to the rain, the logs will start drying. After that first year, it’s time for stacking your firewood, you can split them and store them under cover. This method saves sheltered space while letting the first drying phase happen outdoors.
Of course, the ideal solution is still to cut, split, and stack right away. It means less work later and faster drying with fewer losses.
How to Make a Stable Pile
A pile that stands obeys simple laws of gravity.
It must always lean against something—a wall, another pile, or itself, in the case of a round or double-row stack.
Here’s the key geometry: no log is perfectly regular—each one has a thicker end and a thinner one. The thinner end should face the wall (or the center, for round or double piles), at least at the beginning, to guide the slope correctly.
The whole pile should have a slight inward tilt, ideally almost invisible, but enough to resist gravity during the drying months.
Keeping the sides vertical, both at the ends and the front, requires attention. At the edges, alternate the direction of each layer—one perpendicular to the wall, the next parallel. The pile should lean slightly toward the wall and toward its center.
Stacking firewood directly on the ground: the bottom logs will sink a bit and may rot slightly, but that’s not a big deal—just be aware of it and tilt the base logs inward a bit more. If the ground isn’t level, place a few thin logs across to stabilize the base.
Leave a small gap between the wall and the pile, especially if your wood is irregular. Keep your most regular logs for the visible face and edges, tuck the twisted ones at the back, and wedge them well.
Zen and Stacking Firewood
Stacking firewood rewards slowness and focus.
You can rush through it, or you can live it like a kind of meditation.
At Ermitaj, some of our best reflections happen mid-stack—the rhythm of the movement, the breath, the patience.
Take your time. Breathe.
Make a pile that’s solid, honest, and beautiful.
And when winter comes and the stove crackles, you’ll know that every flame was earned.
Stacking your Firewood Right is a Good Thing, but the Type of Wood Matters Also
The only wood that doesn’t burn is the one you don’t have—but let’s not overdo it. Even though it’s renewable, it takes time to regenerate.
Two cubic meters of willow produce roughly the same heat as one cubic meter of hornbeam. It’s a matter of density.
Density determines energy per volume.
All dry woods contain about the same amount of energy per kilogram, but not per cubic meter. The difference comes from how much actual wood mass there is in that volume.
Hornbeam is one of the densest hardwoods in Europe; willow is light and spongy. As a result, it takes about twice as much willow volume to produce the same heat.
So when you buy firewood, remember: weight is a more accurate indicator than volume—provided the wood is equally dry.
The “clack clack” trick
We don’t have a moisture tester at Ermitaj yet, but it probably doesn’t cost much. In the meantime, you can rely on feel: the weight, the color (reddish for dry wood, greenish for wet), and the sound—dry logs make a clear “clack” when struck together.
Green Wood
If planning a year or two ahead can save 20% of trees, that’s worth thinking about. Freshly cut (“green”) wood can contain between 45% and 100% moisture relative to its dry weight.
When you burn it, much of the heat first goes into boiling and evaporating that water… Before the wood even starts to warm you.
This causes:
- an energy loss of around 20–30%, depending on the species
- a colder, less efficient fire—you burn more to get the same heat
- poorer combustion, with more smoke and weaker draft
- the formation of creosote, that black, sticky substance that coats chimney flues (and increases the chimney fire risk).
Some people told me that they mix green wood to slow down the combustion. But I really think this is a bad idea. Indeed, there are other options:
- Control the air intake: use your stove’s air vents and dampers to regulate the flame after ignition. Once the fire is well established and the stove has reached operating temperature, you can gradually reduce the airflow to slow down combustion and extend heat output.
- Choose the right type of wood: for a slow, steady burn, prefer dense hardwoods such as oak, hornbeam, beech, or ash. They burn longer and more evenly than softwoods like birch.
- Add a larger log to an already hot fire: a big fat log helps keep the temperature high and stable without triggering a rapid flare-up.
Keeping Some Wood Indoors
Stacking a bit of firewood in dry, temperate place—away from the stove—helps remove surface moisture. It also preheat the logs. They catch fire more easily, burn hotter, and burn cleaner.
Very cold wood brought into a warm room can create condensation on its surface. Bringing in a stock for three or four days allows gradual warming and prevents this.
It may seem minor, but if it’s -10 °C outside and 20 °C inside, that’s a 30-degree difference—no small thing.
Yes, there will be spiders and a few insects, but nothing dramatic. Just don’t store three cubic meters—keep enough for a few days.
But don’t expect indoor heat to magically dry green wood: it will never replace two years of open-air drying.
Going Further: Permaculture Zones and Holmgren’s Principles
Permaculture zones and firewood
In permaculture design, zones are areas organized by how often they’re visited and how much attention and care they require — from Zone 0 (the house) to Zone 5 (wild nature left mostly untouched). This layout helps place elements where they’ll be most efficient and easy to manage. Each zone reflects a different rhythm of care and energy exchange. This way of organizing isn’t just about comfort—it’s about reducing the energy (human and material) spent on repetitive tasks. When it’s rainy, windy, and two degrees outside—or -15 °C with half a meter of snow—you really don’t want to walk five minutes with a wheelbarrow to fetch firewood.
Dry, ready-to-burn wood belongs in Zone 1 — the area you visit every day, or at the edge between Zones 1 and 2, helping define the boundary between these spaces.
Wood that’s still drying, especially if you don’t yet have a perfect three-compartment shed, can be in Zone 2/3—further away, but easy to reach without too much effort (access road), in a sunny place and not too far from the workshop.
Zone 3 and 4 are traditionnaly the privilegied places for wood production: coppicing or pollarding system, hedgerows, woodlands and also extensive orchards belong to these zones.
Zone 5, the wild zone, is not harvested but observed. It shows how the forest naturally cycles energy: trees fall, decay, and return to soil.
Find out more about this concept here
This Article on Stacking Firewood and the Permaculture principles
This article reflects several of Holmgren’s twelve permaculture principles:
– Observe and interact: it’s based on ten years of practical observation, including our early collapses and our understanding of local factors (like “the wind rarely comes from the east”).
– Catch and store energy: firewood is literally stored solar energy. Dividing the stock by age and focusing on proper drying maximizes that storage. Placing the piles near access routes or close to the house also saves energy.
– Obtain a yield: the aim is to maximize useful heat per volume of wood (density, dryness) while minimizing waste and smoke.
– Produce no waste: burning dry wood minimizes smoke and creosote—waste and pollution. Efficiency is, by definition, a low-waste approach.
– Integrate rather than segregate: the method considers the whole system—wood, wind, rain, architecture, soil, access, and human process.