Homestead mailing list

[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

For anyone looking to build a guesthouse or whatever, this looks like another 
good, realistic idea.    Rob , I formatted the cut&paste the way you asked.  
There is a good image gallery at the link.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------



Build a Home for $10,000 in 10 Days!

By Chris McClellan

For half a century, William Castle has been building bridges, cabins and 
shanties of all shapes and sizes. His favorite projects are right in his own 
yard. Woodland areas such as that of his native Belmont, N.Y., often have an 
abundance of “junk” timber that has little commercial value because of its 
small diameter, twisted grain or other imperfections. The modified 
timber-framing method Castle has developed lets him quickly and easily turn 
this low-cost, local resource into beautiful houses, such as his daughter’s 
cabin (see the Image Gallery). The shell of the 1,000-square-foot house was 
built over an existing foundation by a crew of three to four adults and two 
children in less than 10 days — for less than $10,000!

If You Build It …

Thirty years ago “Pollywogg Hollër,” as Bill and Barb Castle call their 30 
acres surrounded by forest, began as a project to bring the family together. 
Bill had his own bridge building company, a seven-day-a-week work ethic and 
almost no connection to his growing children.

At Barb’s insistence, Bill began taking time off, and over the course of 
three summers, they and their three teenage children built a 
20-foot-by-30-foot log cabin in their back woods. They dug the well and 
foundation by hand, dragged logs out of the woods with an old tractor, peeled 
the logs with a drawknife and placed them with the help of a homemade crane.

Other than mortar, hardware and roofing, all the materials in that cabin came 
from the land. Over time it became their home. Now, it’s a rustic bed and 
breakfast “eco-retreat” that they run with their son Mikael — complete with 
solar power, a sauna, bathhouse, picnic pavilion, wine bar and wood-fired 
pizza oven. There’s even a stage for weddings and concerts. Most importantly, 
that cabin brought their family together.

As we walk through the enchanted village Castle has built, he points out the 
different local woods and the uses he puts them to: There are footbridges of 
larch (aka tamarack), which he calls “the poor man’s cedar.” Fence posts are 
rot-resistant black locust. Hemlock is used for sheathing; red oak, for 
floors; and fir, for log cabin walls.

Castle has used cedar for roof shakes in the past, but sustainably harvested 
cedar is getting harder to find at any price. These days Castle prefers to 
build low maintenance metal roofs or “living roofs” with a rubber membrane 
covered with moss and wildflowers.

A Simpler Timber-framing Technique

Castle’s building technique has evolved to allow him to do more with less. 
Hand building a log cabin over three summers is a great way to spend quality 
time with your children, but the process uses more time and material than 
timber framing a similar space. Also, while Castle prefers to work with round 
timber, the natural curves and variations in tree formation that give round 
pole construction its beauty also make it difficult and time consuming, with 
complex cutting and matching. So using low-cost material only partially makes 
up for the extra effort.

Many timber framers mill timbers flat and square on all sides. Timbers 
trimmed square and straight are easier to work with, especially when it comes 
to cutting joints or attaching sheathing to the outside of the timber frame. 
The downside is that square-timber framing usually requires expensive woods, 
such as white oak, that are dimensionally stable and don’t tend to twist as 
they dry.

Castle has found a compromise that gives him the benefits of both techniques 
— a kind of “three-quarter-round timber frame.” He simplifies his cutting and 
fitting by milling one or two sides of each log flat, but he leaves the other 
sides “in the round,” which keeps the wood stronger and less likely to twist. 
This allows him to use smaller trees of non-premium species, even with 
minimal drying.

A three-quarter-round timber-frame is assembled with flat sides of the wood 
facing out, making it easy to square and plumb the sides of the building. 
Milling only the surfaces of the wood that will be covered by the building 
sheathing also saves one-half to three-quarters of the milling time, while 
retaining the rustic beauty of the round wood where you can see it on the 
interior walls.

The system of joinery Castle has developed to work with his 
three-quarter-round timbers is quick, easy and forgiving. He starts by 
squaring the round wood at the location of the joint with a radial arm saw 
and a chisel. A chain saw will do the job a lot quicker, but the visual 
quality of the joint suffers.

Squaring the timber at the joints makes it easier to lay out cross pieces and 
knee braces. The resulting edge between the round and square portions of the 
timber also wedges the wood together in a way that adds strength to the 
joint. The connection is secured by countersinking one or two half-inch lag 
screws through the “meat” of both timbers. (See the Image Gallery.)

The flat surfaces of the three-quarter-round timber frame also make it easier 
to attach sheathing and roofing with a minimum of cutting and fitting. Castle 
usually sheathes his buildings with a “sandwich” of rough-sawn boards around 
a core of 2 inches to 4 inches of foam insulation, making these buildings 
extremely tight and well-insulated. (See Castle House Diagram.)

More Tips for the Technique

It is worth noting that designing a building on a 4-foot-by-8-foot module 
(open space between timbers of 4-feet-by-8-feet on center) has a number of 
benefits. First, the timber frame will cover most, if not all, of the joints 
if you choose to use drywall as the interior layer of your sheathing 
sandwich, saving time in the finishing process. The drywall even can be 
painted before it is hung, with no taping or masking!

Not one to waste anything, Castle’s workshop is actually sheathed with “log 
siding” made from the cut-offs or “slab wood” left over from milling the 
frame and interior sheathing for the building.

The wood in all of Castle’s buildings was selectively cut from his property 
or within a few miles. Compared to clear-cutting the forests of Canada and 
trucking in the lumber, local wood has a significantly smaller ecological 
footprint. The practice also supports the local economy.

If you use a lot of wood like Castle does, it can even make sense to purchase 
your own mill. Because Castle also carves large tables from single slabs of 
wood, he has a custom-made mill that can turn a 5-foot-diameter tree into 
lumber.

The Castle family has built two houses and a wood shop using Castle’s 
three-quarter round timber frame method. It took a small crew a little under 
10 days to rough in each building. And each of these house shells was 
completed for less than $10,000, which comes out to about $10 per square foot!

Using the same technique, Castle and a helper are building a workshop where 
he can build his trademark rustic furniture. Construction has been more time 
consuming, as the workshop is something of a showpiece with more fancy 
joinery in the stairs and porches, but even with temporary Styrofoam doors it 
is easily heated with a small, electric space heater.

But it may be a while before Castle gets back to his furniture: Before he 
disappears into the workshop, he has promised his wife a retirement cabin 
built along the same lines.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes/Timber-Frame-Homes.aspx