One of the things I like about being in the tarp business is that I learn a lot from our customers. Up until this morning I had never heard of the name Holz Hausen. That's when one of our customers from Halifax Nova Scotia sent us this photo of his tarping project along with a nice testimonial. It turns out Holz Hausen is a German fellow who designed this technique for stacking wood in a circular/cylindrical pattern.
The nice thing about this stacking pattern is that the pile is self-supporting and the wood is open on all sides so it gets a lot of airflow to help it dry out faster. The "trick" to making the pile stable is to slant the first couple of bottom rows so that the wood is sloped inward. This makes it so the walls of the stack won't be inclined to fall outward and it can't fall inward since the wall is supporting itself. Leave it to a German to come up with this clever design.
If you are ordering a cover for this type of woodpile it is best to order a round tarp. This will ensure uniform coverage on all sides. For the most part, you really just need to cover the top in order to keep the pile dry. Don't cover too much of the sides so that the pile gets lots of air. If you want to prevent the water that sheds off the tarp from falling onto the wood you might consider putting a couple of poles or 2x4s on top of the pile to support the tarp rather than allowing it to droop down over the wood like we see in this photo.
If you have an interesting project where you have used on of our Heavy Duty Tarps please send us a photo. We are always looking for new ideas for our blog and even for our own DIY projects.
