Cordwood homes

Cordwood homes is a 4 part blog post series about incredible cordwood homes, cabins, and cottages with pictures of the outside and the inside.

Disclosure: I sometimes earn products or commissions from affiliate links or partnerships on my blog. I only recommend products and services I trust to serve you. Learn more. It is quite common for us to get questions about just what cordwood masonry is. While it is a centuries-old building method, it is not widely known compared to standard construction techniques. I hope you understand and appreciate it a bit better by the end of these FAQ pages. Cordwood masonry is a method of log building that is NOT like standard log home construction.

Cordwood homes

In the realm of natural building, you have many different options. From rammed earth to straw bale to adobe, there is a building method suitable for almost any situation within the United States. In this article, we will be taking a look at a method that is perfect for the many forested areas of North America, cordwood construction. This split wood is put into stacks. This is the measurement most often used when selling firewood used as fuel to heat houses in a wood stove. People will often express the amount of wood required to heat their homes for a year in cords; in some areas you can get by on 2 cords while other areas with particularly cold and long winters might require 8 to In any case, cordwood is a short length of log that has been split into sections to be used in a heating appliance. When you have a bunch of firewood nicely split and stacked ready for the winter, it actually forms quite a wall in and of itself. It serves as both a visual barrier and a nice wind break. I am sure that everyone who has ever stacked their own wood has recognized this fact. Most homesteads have a wood shed to store the cordwood where the walls are made of this cordwood while it seasons. As such, it does not take a genius to realize that this wood could also easily be assembled into a wall of a more permanent structure. However, even a 4-foot-high stack of unsupported cordwood, let alone a full-height wall, is fairly unstable and easily pushed over if one so desired. So, in order to build from this material, this inherent weakness needs to be overcome. To remedy the inherent instability of a stack of wood, natural builders have turned to mortar to lock the individual pieces of cordwood into a single monolithic unit.

The cordwood homes are warm and beautiful, showing off exposed sections of logs — further adding to the aesthetics of funky exterior wall designs and home interiors. Sage Mountain Center, Montana showing a substantial foundation.

Cordwood offers the imagination a chance to play. Random patterning, special features, bottle bricks and designs are all popular ways to make your cordwood home special. Imaginative use of space, making your dreams come to reality, learning a time honored, planet friendly technique are all part and parcel of Cordwood Construction. The Best Practices approach to building with cordwood will allow your creation to be safe, warm and well built. Bottle bricks, stones, glass beads, metal and special mementoes from your life make your home special.

Cordwood offers the imagination a chance to play. Random patterning, special features, bottle bricks and designs are all popular ways to make your cordwood home special. Imaginative use of space, making your dreams come to reality, learning a time honored, planet friendly technique are all part and parcel of Cordwood Construction. The Best Practices approach to building with cordwood will allow your creation to be safe, warm and well built. Bottle bricks, stones, glass beads, metal and special mementoes from your life make your home special. To place these objects in the wall itself as you build creates a unique statement. A wine bottle taped together with a canning jar gives that stained glass effect.

Cordwood homes

There are many reasons that building with cordwood just makes sense! The environmentally friendly nature of cordwood houses is a major pull for me. I try to be as energy efficient as possible whenever I build something new. What Is A Cordwood House? A cordwood house is a home made up of horizontally stacked logs and putty-like mortar.

Mad thesaurus

In both cases, we went with 12" thick cordwood walls, and I do not recommend any more than that for such small buildings. Apply W. Building green. A cordwood house that is poorly built without sufficient insulation can result in higher heating costs than a traditional stud-frame house. Been loving cordwood const. But the R-value of a cordwood masonry wall must take into consideration both the wooden portion and the insulated mortar portion as a combined system. The important consideration is to prevent outward thrust on the cordwood walls, which, by themselves, are weak on tension. Financial Aspects. They just hold the posts in position. Each course of plates should be made of 2-inch thick planks.

In the realm of natural building, you have many different options. From rammed earth to straw bale to adobe, there is a building method suitable for almost any situation within the United States. In this article, we will be taking a look at a method that is perfect for the many forested areas of North America, cordwood construction.

If you were to build a strong 6-posted timber frame, with roof installed first, all the cordwood work can proceed under the umbrella protection of the roof and roof overhang. With thicker walls, such as 16" or 24", this inefficiency is further accented. Build with a rot-resistant wood like cedar, if possible. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. If you would like more information, please visit www. Just cut the proper angle degrees into the ends of the corner quoins. This establishes a consistent one-inch final mortar joint. It might be a bit easier to find a contractor willing to build more conventionally with those things in mind. Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links Wikipedia introduction cleanup from March All pages needing cleanup Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from March All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify Articles needing cleanup from March Articles containing how-to sections Articles with multiple maintenance issues All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from March Articles with unsourced statements from November Can you use any logs for this type of building? Personally, I would go for four more internal posts down the middle, corresponding to the location of the posts on the foot sides. Cordwood buildings typically have significantly lower embodied energy than other construction solutions, provided the wood used is local, or better yet, sourced on-site. Check www. Although it takes quite a bit of wood to construct a home from cordwood, most of the time, builders of these homes utilize wood cut from their own properties.