Cordwood Buildings

[Deadwood]

I was just curious if anyone on here has every built a cordwood building?

For those that do not know, they are the kind that have timber framing (or post and beam at least) then infill the walls with small round wood or split wood 8 to 12 inches long or so. A mixture of portland cement, lime and sawdust are added around the cordwood to fill it in and keep it from cracking. If you don't want to timber frame then you can cross-stack the ends of the walls and stick frame the roof trusses too. There are a couple of different ways to provide enough support for the cordwood filled walls.

I always liked how they looked, and it seemed a "green" kind of way of building and was cheap to build if you had some woodlot acreage to glean some "cordwood" from.

Someday I want to build a snowmobile shed to house the numerous snowmobiles we have kicking around (8 on the count right now). Since I worked at a railroad round house for years working on locomotives, I always thought the round shape building would be perfect for snowmobiles with their wide front ends and narrow tails. You could really cram them into a small sized round building and a cordwood exterior would be perfect for the round nature of the building.

Anyway thinking out loud, but that is what I would like to do and I would like to know if any one on here has built a building like this and what they thought about it...or even if anyone has looked into cordwood buildings.

[Furby]

A few threads from a bit back:
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=3387.0
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=11266.0
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=8200.0

[blueduck]

A few years back my sister-in-law rented one for a winter or so, and it was kinda nice to look at, the fella who built it had used western larch and split the rounds and made star patterns while also using down to about 5 inch rounds.  While most folks would not take that kind of time to build a work of art to live in, once it was complete it sure would be the talk of the town if folks knew it was being shown and if offered for sale might bring a nice sum as well depending upon the setting it was in [ok i know you wanted to build it for yerself, but the possibility of others wanting it can lead to new markets for other folks too]

I dont have any photos of that house and I dont know who is living there now [its kind of off the beaten path and around 15 miles out of town [local town is only 600 folks so some call it more of a group than a town] but I will ask her when i see her this next week who owned it and see if I can knock them up and visit..... or just get a couple of digi's.

William
Central Idaho

[anvil]

Its a funny association with me,, whenever i read about cordwood and straw bale construction... I just cannot help but think of the fairy  tale called "The Three Little Pigs".   ;D  :D. 

sorry but I just couldn't resist that. 

Seriously tho,, my question about cordwood construction is that logs shrink in diameter,,and with changing moisture conditions,, this is an ongoing process,no matter how dry they are when used.  It seems they would be hard to seal on a permanent basis..

anvil   

[TexasTimbers]

Deadwood,

We looked at this hard for about a year bought the CDs books even laid up a small wall. We did it because we liked the look. After a  while the look sort of wore off after we realized how much labor was going to be involved and how long we were going to have to wait to let the ERC logs dry out to the point we wanted them to before we could even begin instruction.

If you want to do it because of the the way it looks that's one thing. But anyone considering it should enter it with eyes wide open. I can see how it would make semnse for someone who had a woodloy with a species that wasa good candidate for cordwood construction, and had little or no money with a very meager income.

But for someone who wants to build very quickly you should not consider it. For a snowmobile shed I think it would be a great idea. We are going to build a storage shed or two that way with post and beam. Just fill in the walls but not let them be load bearing.

It's best to read a book on it because while it is fairly straight forward there are some serious mistakes a person could make using this method. We have a bunch of materials (CDs books etc.) so if you want to use them I'll be glad to send them to you and when you are done you can send them back. No hurry we won't need them back for a couple years at the earliest.

[jon12345]

Some hippies built one about a mile from where I live, but they just laid them like bricks,putting mortar between them and covering it like stucco.  They let their goats or llamas come in there even