Norwegian Round Stacks

and solar heat.

We have a sophisticated solar array that heats our home in long Michigan winters.

The system relies on a “battery cell” that stores solar energy in organic form. The longer the battery is exposed to sunlight the more capacity (larger) it becomes. The batteries are both sophisticated and attractive. While charging they cooperate with the ecosystem around them by providing habitat and nutrients. Efficient at using space, (their chief growth is vertical), they are also attractive in a landscape unlike so many other solar arrays.

Michigan winters can be long and gray so one of our favorite aspects of our solar heating system is the quality of the heat. We’re not really fans of the dry and raspy feel of electric heat. Radiant is nice but too anonymous for my taste. But when we deploy one of the batteries from our solar set-up in order to heat the home, it releases a burst of the summer sun, both heat and light, within the house, and it slowly discharges that little bit of summer for several hours.

When the battery is expended there is no toxic waste, chemical runoff, or refuse. Just ash which goes back to the earth providing essential nutrients for the next round of batteries already reaching toward the sun.

You guessed it. We heat with wood.

For millions of years our race has seen in this blessed fire the means and emblem of light, warmth, protection, friendly gathering, council. All the hallow of the ancient thoughts, hearth, fireside, home, is centred in its glow, and the home-tie itself is weakened with the waning of the home-fire. Not in the steam radiator can we find the spell; not in the water coil; not even in the gas-log; they do not reach the heart. Only the ancient sacred fire of wood has power to touch and thrill the chords of primitive remembrance.

- Ernest Thompson Seton

And as I argued in the “Tools for Natural Fitness” series there’s another way that heating with wood stores then deploys solar energy for warmth.

The process of gathering (bucking) the wood, processing, transporting, splitting, and stacking it takes quite a bit of energy. Especially if you’re doing most of the work by hand or with simple tools, you’ll be turning up your own internal heat-producing engine and likely work up a healthy sweat. That heat comes from the food you ate which, whether plant or animal, involves profound reliance on solar energy. Our food, like our wood is a pretty sophisticated battery for storing solar energy.

The Norwegian round stack is one of the last stops for our solar batteries before they come inside. They spend about a year in the stacks seasoning before we bring them in for burning. We use a high-efficiency stove with a catalyst that requires a very low moisture content in the wood for it to burn properly. We’ve had great luck with the Norwegian stacks which because of their shape are supposed to help season the wood a little faster than the straight stacks we’re all familiar with.

I’ll spare you exhaustive detail about how to build these—there are several step-by-steps available online but the following photo progression will give you a good sense of how it works.

The pallets are important in order to prevent your first couple rows from becoming water-logged especially with melting snow. The stack begins with a ring of logs upon which others are laid as if blocking up a wall.

You can’t see it in the photo but the center of the stack is filled with wood as well. There is no special format for the wood in the center—you just throw it in and it fills up and seasons beautifully while supporting the exterior walls so they don’t cave in. The center is where I throw misshapen pieces that are an eye sore but will burn just fine.

The finished stack features a peak in the center which allows a tarp over top to channel the water off the stack entirely. We use a couple logs to hold the tarp in place and find that the finished product actually adds a certain charm to the space. Each stack resembles a small hut, and lined up in a row they give an inviting shape to the woodlot.

An important point about inviting shapes in conclusion:

Lars Mytting in his book Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way,¹ recounts that in traditional Scandinavian culture, an eligible bachelor’s suitability was assessed by whether his stacks were full, neat, and strong. A man’s wood stacks are emblematic of his masculinity and ability to provide in every way. Woe to he with drooping and sagging stacks.

1. Mytting’s book is a treasure by the way. Beautiful pictures of wood and axes.