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Cold temps make winter the perfect time to nest. This issue of Seven Days’ quarterly supplement about home, design and real estate takes you inside cozy abodes — from a geodesic dome to a tiny house. Plus, we help you stack that firewood!
Dome, Sweet Home ................. 6 The ups, downs and all-arounds of spherical living BY A M Y LI L LY
Discover how you can lower your energy bills and make your home more energy-efficient.
Nest House Hunt! ...................10
Following first-time home buyers on the search for their dream homes
Schedule an Energy Audit today.
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Tabletop Exercises .................13 Vermont artisans are creating some flat-out fantastic tables
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Tiny in the City ........................16 Will micro homes multiply in Burlington? BY M O LLY WAL S H
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Stacking Up .............................21
An aspiring woodchuck offers beginner’s advice on storing firewood BY K E N P I C AR D
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ON THE COVER Mike and Michaela Whitty’s geodesic dome in Weathersfield. Photo by Tom McNeill.
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Dome, Sweet Home The ups, downs and allarounds of spherical living B Y AMY L I L LY | PHOTOS BY TOM MCNEILL
When Mike and Michaela Whitty pull into their driveway in Weathersfield, they often find trangers photographing their house. No wonder: The Whittys live in a geodesic dome house — one of those spherical structures made of interlocking triangular panels that popped up around the country in the 1970s.
In the couple’s quirky example, the sphere sits on a base of radially jutting cubes — their fir t floo . And the whole cedar-shingled structure is perched atop a thick cylindrical core ringed by fi e concrete columns on a steep slope of ledge rock. The house is known locally, according to Michaela, as “the spaceship golfbal house.” She and Mike, young professionals who work in Hanover, N.H., and Stowe, are the house’s third owners but the fir t to call it their primary residence. A builder from Connecticut named David Fortin constructed it as a ski house in 1976. Fortin is now 99 and until recently lived next door in a Swisschalet-style abode. DOME, SWEET HOME
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Opposite page, top to bottom: Mike and Michaela Whitty in front of their Weathersfield hom The geodesic dome sho tly after its 1976 construction
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This page, clockwise from top Six triangle windows along the east side let in the light. Original builder David Fortin installed bunk beds in the guest rooms. Furniture is angled along the outer perimeter of the dome. A circular staircase wraps around the central core.
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each side, which make up the sphere. Six triangles along the east side are When Fortin put the dome house windows. Along the west side is the on the market, Yankee magazine ran a third-story loft. Its I-beam trusses story dubbing it “The Weathersfiel Wonder” in its February 1977 issue. The extend into the empty space of the sphere, and the whole structure is house got more press in, perhaps, 1981 supported by fi e salvaged telephone — the scribble on the Whittys’ scrappoles. booked article is faint — in The dome’s the Boston Globe. Copies of carpeted floor is both articles came with the doughnut-shaped behouse. cause of that cylindriWhat impressed those cal core. Its built-ins writers still impresses are angled along the today: not just the oddity outer perimeter. They of the form, but the craft include a galley-like that went into it and its kitchen; a curved homey feel. The Whittys kitchen table and purchased it in 2006, after M I C HA EL A WH I T T Y benches, one of which a year of house hunting. is a salvaged church Michaela recalls, “The pew; and a long couch second I walked inside, I with one attached end table. Mike, the was like, Yeah, I can live here.” marketing and sales director of von Entry is from a deck on the fir tTrapp Family Brewing in Stowe, took floor level, where those jutting cubes out the other end table to make room turn out to be a laundry room, a bathfor a small beer fridge. room and two cozy guest rooms. Each Living in this space takes some of those bedrooms contains a built-in adjustments, say the Whittys. You bunk bed and a tiny closet-cum-builtcan’t hang curtains from triangular in-dresser. The distance between these windows angled somewhere between two features is barely the width of a vertical and horizontal, so the couple person, yet there’s room for a window wakes with the sun. They also have to in each room. periodically dust the “walls” — that is, Fortin, a proficient carpenter, built the incrementally angled triangular the bunk beds, which originally fille panels. And, says Michaela, “You can’t three rooms. (The Whittys converted just go to the store and get everything. one to the laundry room and jettisoned You have to think about it fir t.” the tiny washer and dryer Fortin had Yet dome living has its advantages. squeezed into the bathroom). He also Geodesic domes are more energymade a fourth bunk for an upstairs loft efficien than rectilinear homes because room (now an office) which sits across they use less surface area to enclose from the master bedroom and bath. In greater volume. That cuts down on exall, the house originally slept 10 skiers. posure to summer heat and winter cold. The rooms radiate from a circular And heat-robbing winter winds fl w staircase wrapped around the central around the spherical shape — already core, which is beautifully lined with structurally strong due to its trianglevertical cedar panels inside the house. based design — instead of hitting a wall. The interior of the dome — the second Mike says the house heats up in no floor — is one flight up. There, all time, and in the summer he can create notion of separate ceilings and walls a “funnel effec ” with air circulation by disappears. opening the fir t-floor windows and the The dome’s space is dictated by the master-bedroom skylight. They rarely triangles, approximately four feet on
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In the mid-1970s, kits entered the market. Fortin, however, worked with an architect. “The kid — the architect, per se — … was very green, and I was the other greenhorn,” he recalled with a chuckle on a recent tour of the home. Fortin had become bored with building Colonial-style homes and wanted to try something new. The nonagenarian vividly recalls realizing that the dome was one-fifth of a turn off its correct position. “I had to pick it up at fi e points” with a crane, Fortin remembers. Fortunately, the structure was so strong and light that it lifted and turned easily. That resilience bodes well for the Whittys’ home, which retains much of its mid-’70s character. And, as the couple points out, while Vermont has at least a handful of geodesic domes, none is elevated like theirs. The Whittys’ bulbous dome, looking like it’s about to launch itself off the ledge, is a remarkable artifact of an era and a building experiment that were themselves boundary-pushing.
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need to use the air conditioner, and they burn relatively little furnace oil. Buckminster Fuller recognized all these advantages, and challenges, when he received a patent for the geodesic dome in 1954. The structure was invented in Germany in 1922, but Fuller, an American architect and idealist, worked out its complicated mathematics in the 1940s. In the 1960s, geodesic domes began springing up for all sorts of purposes, from mass entertainment to government operations. Two iconic examples from that era within driving distance of Vermont are still in use: pavilions built for the 1964 New York and 1967 Montréal world’s fairs. Now these domes serve, respectively, as the Queens Zoo aviary and an open-air truss structure enclosing the buildings of the Montréal Biosphère (not to be confused with the city’s Biodôme, which was built as a velodrome). Fuller had envisioned the possibility of geodesic domes as houses from the beginning. He hoped they would become an affo dable, mass-produced solution to the postwar housing shortage. But his patent meant that DIY builders had no access to designs. That changed when Lloyd Kahn published two how-to books, Domebook One (1970) and Domebook 2 (1971). (The latter is preserved online at issuu.com.)
Janice Battaline
House Hunt!
Following fi st-time home buyers on the search for their dream homes B Y C A R O LY N F O X
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LOCATION: within a 30-minute
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LAND:
roughly an acre
PRICE:
$250,000-300,000
EXTRAS:
garage, preferably detached; gardens; porch; hardwood floor
When Jessica and Nick have found their home, we’ll be giving them a housewarming present: a four-hour home-design consultation and $100 gift certificate from Stowe Kitchen Bath & Linens.
Follow along! We’ll keep you posted on our House Hunters’ progress on our website at sevendaysvt.com and in our biweekly e-newsletter, Nest Notes. (Sign up at sevendaysvt. com/enews for tips on home, design and real estate.)
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“We are hoping to get something old, with character, that might need a little work, but not too much work,” says Jessica, who notes that Nick is “very handy” and a good woodworker. “Anything built before 1950 is really what we’re looking for.”
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STYLE:
FT
three bedrooms; preferably two bathrooms
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ROOMS:
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What they’re hunting for:
big shed to accommodate Nick’s woodworking projects. An added bonus: “We liked the privacy,” she says. “We weren’t on top of neighbors there.” They put in an offe . It was accepted. However, during inspection, they found out that the house needed a lot of work — about $25,000 worth. “The sellers weren’t willing to negotiate, so we had to back out,” explains Jessica. “It was overwhelming … Julie walked us through all the steps. She helped us find a good inspecto . She talked us through all of the options. She did her best to try to negotiate with them, but they were really, really stubborn.” Since that heartbreaking letdown, “We’ve been looking all the time,” Jessica says. “There was a period where I wanted to look at every house that could conceivably work for us, even if I knew in my heart of hearts it wouldn’t work,” she explains. “It ends up wasting a lot of time. I had to learn to be more discerning up front.” Jessica’s been keeping a log of their journey, filled with elatable emotions and lessons learned along the way. We’ve excerpted a few of her entries on the right.
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Nicholas Adams and Jessica Hendry Nelson
In August, Jessica Hendry Nelson and Nicholas Adams got married. With the wedding came the desire to settle down in a home of their own. The 31-year-old couple — Jessica a writer and the author of If Only People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir; Nick a data analyst at Building Bright Futures — is renting a one-bedroom duplex in a turn-of-the-20th-century Winooski house. They love its lived-in charm, says Jessica, “But it’s too small for us. It’s time! We’re ready to buy a house.” Working with Julie Gaboriault at Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman Realty, their search was over as soon as it began — until everything fell apart. “We started looking at the end of August,” recaps Jessica, and they immediately found a great house on two acres in Georgia, conveniently located near the highway. “It was beautiful inside,” she continues. “Architecture is our thing. It’s really important to us. Old homes with character, nice architecture, details, beautiful floors and moldings, tin ceilings…” This place fit the bill with its exposed beams, hardwood floor , crown moldings, fi eplace and nice,
OM
If you’ve been through the process, you know there’s a learning curve, complete with near misses, drama and mystifying paperwork along the way. If you’re starting to think about getting out of that rental and buying your own home, our House Hunters just might have some eye-opening tips for you.
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Fire Design . Sales & Service . 802-316-3081 www.blazingdesigninc.com As the weather gets colder, I feel more anxious to get into a new home before winter bea rs down. At this point, it’s not looking promising. We keep thinking about the house we lost in Georgia. Not hing else seems to compare, but then we remember the huge repairs it requires and come back to reality. Have to let it go!
r budget, but ely, and well within ou lov is ro bo rks Sta in e This hous ’d prefer. The from Burlington than we so big and a bit farther s baking cookies wa e went to visit. Sh we en wh me ho s wa r owne and told us e. She was really lovely and having a glass of win e don’t even go “W . ing g was downsiz vin mo for n so rea ir the that ster bedroom, massive first-floor ma a th Wi d. sai e sh ,” irs upsta 1,700 to 1,800 n’t either! We’ve decided uld wo I d an k Nic ly it’s like nk that we . It seems strange to thi us for nty ple is t fee re squa than we’d like, more square footage for e” ttl “se to ve ha t migh uare feet. mes are under 2,000 sq considering how few ho
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After having m y eye on this house in Colchester fo ra long time, I fin a ly convinced Nic k to take a look , even though it’s a bit above our budget. We love the location, righ t next to Nique tte Bay State Park , and the proxim ity to Burlington an d I-89. The age and s yle are also right up our alley. Hou se hunting is ge tting more di ff icult with the time chan ge. We have to visit after wor time, and by 5 k most of the p.m., it’s alread y dark. We’d driv house, though en by the , and had a go od feeling for The yard is hu the location. ge, flat and ad jacent to the which is ideal park and woo for us. ds The first thing we noticed te was the noise r getting out of our car from nearby Ro ute 2, which I ized was so bu hadn’t realsy. We’re really hoping for a pe location, so th aceful, quiet at was a bit of a bummer. To ju price, the ho stify the use needed to be perfect fo Back to drawin r us. It isn’t. g board we go !
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Masterworks
Featured: Hugh Townley, Sun as a Crow’s Black Wing, from the artist’s estate and now in the permanent collection of the Fleming Museum of Art, on view in the Marble Court.
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HO ME G O O DS
Tabletop Exercises Vermont artisans are creating some flat-out fantastic tables
TABLETOP EXERCISES
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of flat planes and angles,” he explains. Growing up in the Adirondacks, Hurwitz adds, he’s always had a close a˛ nity with the natural world. “And I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid, Dr. Seuss and so on,” he adds. Indeed, Hurwitz’s Seussian style has earned him national acclaim. In 2007, one of his pieces won the best-in-show award at the annual Vermont Fine Furniture & Woodworking Festival in Woodstock. In 2014, he was voted Vermont Woodworker of the Year by the Vermont Wood Manufacturers Association.
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David Hurwitz, of Randolph, has been carving wood since he was 6 years old. Now 48, the Plattsburgh, N.Y., native has earned a living as a professional woodworker for nearly three decades. Hurwitz’s experience shows in his works, most of which are made of wood and stone, nearly all of it sourced locally certified sustainable practices. using certifi Many of Hurwitz’s tables and mirrors feature his signature style: wood carved smooth into rich, undulating forms that flags billowing in a breeze or resemble fl waves rippling across a pond. “I’ve always had a more organic sense of form, more curvilinear instead
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David Hurwitz Originals
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B Y KEN P IC AR D
For hundreds of years, Vermont furniture and cabinetry makers have carved out niches for themselves in the Green Mountain State, taking advantage of the area’s abundant and diverse species of trees including pine, cherry, maple, birch and oak. While some of Vermont’s biggest furniture manufacturers have closed their doors in recent decades, individual artisans have continued the tradition. Many produce high-quality, handmade pieces that are sought after around the world. In this story, Nest talks with three Vermont table makers with very di˜ different styles.
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Tabletop Exercises « P.13 Locally, Hurwitz’s pieces have shown at the Statehouse in Montpelier, Bennington Museum, Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, Frog Hollow Vermont State Craft Center in Burlington,˝Studio Place Arts in Barre and Furchgott Sourdi˛ e Gallery in Shelburne. Elsewhere, his works have been featured at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Wharton Esherick Museum in Pennsylvania, Denver International Airport, Delaware Art Museum and the Hickory Museum of Art in North Carolina. Because all of Hurwitz’s tables are custom made, it takes time to turn them around. Some dining tables take him two weeks; others two months. And, as he does all the work by hand, he typically has a six- to eight-month backlog. “Most of my pieces involve a lot of carving,” Hurwitz explains, “so that’s where the hours really rack up.”
Vermont Farm Table
Wood and Metal Inspired
fodder shredder, which was essentially a horse-powered treadmill for shredding grain. The table’s base consists of an old wooden mold from the Vermont Marble Company in Proctor and a metal braking system forged in the old St. Albans Foundry. A similar table made by Bishop, which was purchased by 14th Star Brewing in St. Albans City, was made from a line pulley salvaged from a century-old machine shop nearby. Yet another glass-topped table features a steel furnace heat exchanger. Initially, Bishop considered turning it into a wine rack because its rounded heat vents were a perfect fit for wine bottles. “Then I was like, You know what? If I could put a spiral staircase of lights in the wine bottles, that would look so much nicer.” He did, and it does. Needless to say,
Six years ago, Dustin and Jessica Glasscoe founded Vermont Farm Table. Since then, the Charlotte couple has expanded the business, moving into a state-of-the-art woodworking facility in Bristol that employs four full-time woodworkers. The company has a retail outlet in downtown Burlington and a significant online presence. Vermont Farm Table has earned a national reputation for making its tables with solid wood, traditional building techniques and environmentally friendly finishes. All are custom-made to order. According to sales manager Sam Roach-Gerber, about half of the company’s tables are made from reclaimed wood from local barns, silos and other buildings; the new tables nearly all come from locally sourced wood harvests.
Vermont Farm Table’s pieces range from basic, no-frills square and rectangular kitchen tabletops to fancier dining- and conference-room tables. Roach-Gerber notes that the fastestgrowing part of the business is actually commercial sales. The company’s tables can be seen at many Burlington restaurants including the Skinny Pancake and Hen of the Wood. Elsewhere,
VFT has made pieces for the Venetian hotel and resort in Las Vegas and Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. While Vermont Farm Table also makes smaller kitchen items including cutting boards, pizza peels and rolling pins, “Custom handmade tables are the main focus of our company,” RoachGerber says. “We’re really good at them, and people are really happy with them.”
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David Hurwitz Originals, 728-9399. davidhurwitzoriginals.com Vermont Farm Table, 206 College St., Burlington, 888-425-8838. vermontfarmtable.com Wood and Metal Inspired, 3424 Roosevelt Hwy., Colchester, 878-8100. wood-metal-inspired.com
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each of Bishop’s pieces is unique. Despite his limited experience as a furniture maker, he has a knack for discovering interesting and creative applications for salvaged objects. One combines a barn o˛ beam, the bobbins off an old sewing machine, cast-iron furnace parts and the chains links from an antique tractor. As Bishop puts it, “I love finding interesting uses for stu˛ .”
WINTER 2015-16
Lester Bishop has been crafting tables and other furniture for less than two years, though you’d never know it from looking at his unusual creations. The 44-year-old Sheldon Springs resident left a career as general manager of Keystone Automotive Operations in Colchester a few years ago to devote himself full time to making tables, cabinets, kitchen islands and other furniture. Nearly all of his pieces, which are on display in the Colchester store he opened in April with his partner, Tammy McFarland, are crafted from reclaimed materials from Vermont’s agrarian and industrial past. None exemplifies Bishop’s approach more than his so-called Vermont History Table. He made the circular high-top using the flywheel from a 19th-century farm implement called a
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Tiny in
the City Will micro homes multiply in Burlington? B Y M OL LY WA L SH | PHOTOS B Y JAMES BU CK
When Ruby Perry and her husband, Andy Simon, were building their 400-square-foot house in Burlington’s South End last year, it became the talk of the Five Sisters neighborhood. That’s not surprising: It’s one of the smallest houses in Burlington, and it took shape as the national fascination with the tiny-house movement was inspiring documentaries, TV shows, do-it-yourself classes and conventions. The red clapboard dwelling on Locust Street is interesting for another reason, too: It’s not tucked into the woods or sitting on a semirural lot; it’s plunked down in a city backyard. So, are super-small houses viable in an urban setting? Perry answers that question with a resounding yes. For starters, if living in small quarters starts to feel confinin , a city like Burlington offers an e tate-size array of activities and amenities. Also, she suggests, tiny houses are ideal for urban infill in tight spot .
Could tiny houses be a solution to Burlington’s housing shortage? And can anyone erect a tiny house in their backyard? Not necessarily — Burlington’s zoning codes make the prospect tenuous, depending on where and what is proposed. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. It “should not be daunting to anyone,” Perry says. “We treated it as a community building process and met early, and often, with our neighbors as well as planning and zoning.” The house she and Simon built is
HO MES Opposite page: Ruby Perry and Andy Simon’s tiny house sits in a South End backyard. This page, top to bottom The kitchen has open shelving and a multipurpose island. The living space fits a dining table desk and seating area. A garden and park are visible from the open bedroom’s window.
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located in their daughter and son-inlaw’s backyard and owned by the young couple, who are raising a toddler. The arrangement is an exercise in estate planning: The grandparents paid for the $75,000 structure and took charge of the permitting and construction, knowing it would be a way to give their assets to the next generation in advance. The house was allowed as an “accessory dwelling,” defined under th city’s 376-page zoning ordinance as an efficiency or o -bedroom unit that is “subordinate” to, and does not exceed 30 percent of the total habitable floo area of, a single-family dwelling. The little red house also had to stay within a 35 percent lot-coverage limit in the neighborhood, which is zoned as residential low density, meaning it’s a district intended primarily for single-family detached dwellings and duplexes. One of the biggest hurdles was about parking. Simon and Perry, who don’t own a car, convinced the Burlington Development Review Board to waive the normal requirement for one off-street parking space. Instead of an asphalt driveway in their cozy yard, they have a garden. And, yes, it’s allowable to rent out the small house to nonfamily members so long as the primary dwelling is an owner-occupied, single-family dwelling, says David E. White, Burlington director of planning and zoning. Perry, a retired 63-year-old community development worker and activist in the group Save Open Space Burlington, believes that thinking small about housing is a great idea for the city. And she’s convinced the public is ready for new ideas on housing. “It isn’t just a fad,” she says about small houses. “It’s a whole movement about living diffe ently.” It may not be a movement just yet
The ci y waived an off-street parking requirement so the tiny house can have a garden instead.
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in Vermont. White says he’s not seeing many proposals for what would constitute tiny houses in Burlington. Nor are local real estate agents getting calls from legions of prospective tiny-home buyers. “It hasn’t caught on yet,” says Robbi Handy Holmes, a realtor at Century 21 Jack Associates in South Burlington. “We’re not quite there yet.” What exactly is a tiny house? It’s generally understood to be a structure less than 350 square feet, sometimes on wheels. Perry and Simon’s abode is a tad bigger and has a foundation. But it embodies many tiny-house principles, starting with the potential to save money. “Our major motivation was to find a way to live cheaply,” says Perry. That’s often the driving factor when people build small, says Lina Menard, a small-house designer, consultant and blogger who teaches at Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield When people aren’t working to pay off a fat mortgage, they have more liberty to choose the lifestyle they want
— jobs or volunteer work that satisfy, or pursuit of personal ambitions. “One of the words I most hear associated with tiny houses is ‘freedom,’” notes Menard, who lives in a 100-square-foot house she built herself for $25,000.
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Most of the tiny houses she’s aware of in Vermont are in rural settings, but Menard believes the model will eventually hit the city. “I think there’s probably going to be more in urban areas than rural areas,” she says. “People are trying to figu e out ways to live in the city affo dably.” In Burlington, tiny houses would be allowed under zoning in much of the city as accessory dwellings, but they have to meet height, lot-coverage and parking requirements, says White.
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Simon and Perry raided their retirement funds to build the little house 20 feet from the main house’s back door. The arrangement allows the older couple to enjoy city life, live up to their environmental standards and help care for granddaughter Lyle Ruth, now 18 months old. The bright, airy, U-shaped interior of their house is reminiscent of a nice studio apartment. The kitchen has open shelving, a reclaimed enamel sink, and a superefficien refrigerator and freezer. There’s enough room for a wood-topped table with two chairs, a secretary against one wall and a woodstove that provides most of the heat for the heavily insulated home, which has 12-inch-thick walls. Two slipper chairs, a rocker and a lime-green ottoman form a sitting area in a corner next to an open bedroom. With a big garden right outside and the park visible beyond the backyard’s picket fence, the house does not feel cramped. “It doesn’t take a lot of maintenance, and it reflects our taste,” said Perry.
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Burlington does have one plus for fans of tiny houses, though: There’s no minimum square-footage requirement for new homes. “Construct it in your backyard, and there you go,” White says. “Whether it’s a tiny house or a traditional carriage house, that certainly would be an option for somebody as an accessory dwelling unit.” Still, due to high land costs, he predicts that micro apartments in the 350- to 500-square-foot range will come to Burlington fir t. Apartment units can be stacked upward, maximizing density and financial return on land. Perry’s own journey to living small happened gradually. She and her husband owned a country house in Westford for many years and decided to downsize about six years ago. They bought a school bus and explored the country, living in the vehicle on and off, as well as in apartments in the Burlington area. The tiny-house idea came after Perry’s daughter and her husband bought a single-family home across from Calahan Park. The young couple were expecting a child, and all agreed it would be nice for the grandparents to live close by.
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Stacking Up An aspiring woodchuck offers beginner’s advice on storing fi ewood S TO RY A ND PHOT OS BY KEN PICARD SEVENDAYSVT.COM
Let’s get this out of the way from the start: I’m no woodpile master. My ancestors weren’t lumberjacks back in the old country, nor have my kinfolk been stacking fi ewood in the Green Mountains since Ethan Allen fi st learned to wield an ax.
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• A pair of sturdy boots, work gloves and a pocket knife
• Eight to 10 bricks, preferably the kind with holes in them
• Three or four wooden pa lets (available free at many local businesses)
• A roll of clothesline or other weather-resistant rope
• Two tarps: one as ground cover (optional) and the other to keep snow off the stack.
• A free afternoon and/or several non-whiny teenagers with sturdy backs
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TO BUILD A WOODPILE FROM A CORD OF WOOD, YOU’LL NEED:
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constitutes a proper woodpile. Several even suggest that you can judge your neighbors’ characters by how well they stack their fi ewood. Personally, I judge my neighbors’ characters by their willingness to clean up their dog’s poop, and their occasional texts saying my kids are eating dinner at their house. That their woodpile happens to have the structural integrity of a suspension bridge just reminds me that they’re both architects. Still, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Every man looks upon his woodpile with a sort of affection ”
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Also, if you’re reading this story expecting instructions on how to turn your woodpile into a children’s fort, man cave, snowy owl or the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, stop reading right now. A quick internet search will turn up directions for building all manner of artistic wood creations, including one beehive-shaped woodpile called a holzhausen. I’m pretty sure that’s German for, “My wife does all the parenting, so I have way too much time on my hands.” Indeed, YouTube is rife with videos of hirsute men in hunter plaid espousing their regional preferences for what
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When I looked upon mine from last year, it was with bemusement and mild embarrassment. So I did some homework and boned up on how to construct a sturdy New England woodpile. When all’s said and done, a woodpile needs to perform several basic functions. First, it should allow newly cut wood to season, preferably for at least a year. Burning green fi ewood isn’t just inefficien and wasteful; it can also lead to dangerous levels of creosote buildup in your chimney and cause a house fi e. Second, a woodpile should keep your fi ewood neat, easy to access, off the ground, and away from water, mold, fungus and insects.
to circulate around and through it in order to speed the seasoning process. Begin at one end by stacking logs into cribbing — rows of three logs each, stacked perpendicular to each other — and building upward. Once a cribbed end is at least four feet high — a standard cord of wood measures 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet — begin stacking the logs horizontally. About eight feet from the fir t cribbing, begin a second crib and build upward. If the cribbing is built properly, each should stand on its own without leaning. Fill in the wood between the cribs accordingly. Avoid stacking logs too tightly, and leave plenty of room for air to circulate. Also, it’s best not to stack a woodpile taller than fi e feet. Otherwise, if it becomes unstable as the wood is withdrawn, it could fall on you. Besides,
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It’s best to determine where you intend to build your woodpile before the wood is delivered. It should be stacked far enough from the house and garage so as not to invite snakes, rodents, termites and other critters to take up residence in your own dwelling. But it shouldn’t be so far away that you would have to post-hole through 100 yards of waist-deep snow to reach it. Popular lore suggests siting your woodpile in maximum sun, much like a vegetable garden, to help the fi ewood cure. Choose a level, dry area where water doesn’t pool. In my case, I mowed a 12-by-14-foot area of scrub brush behind last year’s woodpile and covered it with a ground tarp to keep the poison ivy from sprouting through the wood in the spring. Next, lay out your wooden pallets either end-to-end or in a U shape. Ideally, your woodpile should allow air
a towering woodpile makes it difficu to remove the snow that will inevitably accumulate on top. When the woodpile is finished drape a tarp over it, leaving the sides open to the elements. Next, cut four lengths of rope, drape them across the tarp and tie each end to a brick to hold the tarp down in the wind. One local logger suggests cutting the rope segments short enough to allow the bricks to dangle from each side. That way, as the woodpile dwindles throughout the winter, there’s no need to retie the tarp down. Admittedly, my latest woodpile will win no awards for aesthetic beauty, nor will Architectural Digest be sending a photographer over anytime soon. Still, the chipmunks seem to be enjoying it already, and we’re set for home heating through the winter of 2017.
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