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PhilG

I have been a timber framer/log crafter/saw miller/woodworker for most of my 47years, after the great recession started in 2008 I have converted my life style in many of the ways i see in your literature and videos, growing food, raising pigs and chickens, and converting my f350 to run on used veg oil . I have sold much of my equipment, as I had to let go the 30 people that worked for and with me, and started a horse logging business to supply my raw logs and completely changed the scale and in puts needed to produce the same amount of production.

I have decades of training and teaching employees how to efficiently build things to the highest level of finnish with a repeatable systems approach. I feel that the cost of todays buildings are exorbitant, why should people spend so much of their time working to pay for an ugly square box to live in or an enormous trophy to show off ? The large cities will probably always be with us but I feel the rural areas need to be developed in a collaborative, sustainable way to eliminate agro-corporations to the point were our products can soport ourselves and the massive cities around us.

That said, I would like to be involved in anything that has to do with developing this model for any one willing to pursue it. Having a nice, small,comfortable, natural dwelling to come home to after a hard days work and to raise your family in is the cornerstone to the development of the rest of the process. Your insight to building with what is on your property is perfect, i love the brick maker, but I think I could help you expand on that with the small log framing, timber framing, wood products, saw milling , forest management, draft animal power part of your equation if you would like ? I think what you are putting out their is going to resinate with a lot of people, I look forward to watching your growth.

Thanks

Phil - www.handcraftedlogandtimber.com

Nice NPR article!

DavidIAm

Hi Phil. I'm David, I worked on the plans for the hab lab and ose shop this last summer. Regarding building engineering with wood, I'd have to say that wood is less than optimal building material for the main structure. It has almost no thermal mass, it has fairly high embodied energy (you won't ever see the earth parts of an earth building burn!) (you don't find termites getting nutrition from chewing on clay and sand).

That said, it IS light and fairly easy to harvest with moderate energy, which makes it logical to use if you're working with the limited power density of livestock. Its light and strong characteristics make it easy to use to build trivial roofs and decks - the parts of a building that aren't the main structure. The speed of working with it even make it efficacious when your main cost is the time spent working on it.

I think the best, most comfortable for the inhabitants, lowest embodied energy building material available is effectively earth - be it in bricks or rammed earth configuration.

As for why people are willing to pay so much for a house... I think the real answer is that people knowing that doesn't fit the desires of those in power - the financiers. They make more money when you spend a massive portion of your income on interest on a mortgage on a house. So the more expensive that house through whatever means - making ludicrous building codes - and lots of profit for the contractors - the better. Why would they want anybody to know that you can build a house for $10,000 in materials and some time?

PhilG

Hi David,

Yes wood has its flaws, but if you live in a forrest its a great way to build, most of the log and timber frames i build are wrapped in materials like stone and sip's panels to protect them from the elements , and have never been an engineering problem to do the whole roof structure and main suport structure. Do like the rammed bricks, hay bails ( a little flammable as well i guess ?) and any other building material that could be laying around on the site I would have to build on, I guess I see the benefit and pay off as being able to make a comfortable and sturdy home out of almost anything. I think we can learn a lot from history and building with local materials - from cliff dwellings, hogans, log cabins, dove tail stacks,timber frames and plastered straw bail houses that all of which have samples around that have been standing for hundreds of years. I have seen hunting shacks with 2 x 2 rafters with 5 feet of snow on them that hold up for decades, wonder who engineered that one?

The "Ludicrous building codes " are definitely a drain on society. I need to build a house for $10,000, thats about all I'll have left after this great recession

DavidIAm

You're quite right about building from wood making economic sense when you live in a forest. I spent a good amount of time in the southwest where there aren't many forests, so I suspect that causes me to focus on extreme climate and the building material available everywhere - dirt - rather than whats some places and works adequately in moderate climates - wood.

Is not an engineering problem to do the main structure in wood so much, as a comfort and energy consumption issue during the entire lifetime of the structure.

Hay bales aren't actually noticeably flammable - they're just too dense to really catch fire. That said, I acknowledge that timber beam framing is not a fire hazard specifically - its really all the fluffy bits of wood used to enclose that really is the fire hazard. The fluff burns off and leaves the beams relatively unharmed when the building is designed with that in mind. A dovetail stack really makes my brow furrow. That is one heck of a pile of wood-burn energy all set out where air can get to it.

There're many ways to build a house for $10,000, whether that is digging up dirt and packing it into forms you build with some of that wood, or building the entire house out of wood, or getting a CEB press up and running and using that to make bricks you stack... or heck, straw bales aren't that expensive either.

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