Building Plans for Home Sawn Lumber in WI

[WI Walnut]

Please move this if it does not belong here. I'm working on getting house plans for a home built with my own home sawn lumber. Just wondering if there are any recommendations for someone in the Wisconsin area who specializes in rough sawn lumber plans?
The plan is to stick build off of a slab with footings. I would like to cut as much material as possible(rafters, floor joist, framing lumber etc.). I have my WI home sawn lumber grading certificate. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. 
-Tyler

[beenthere]

Tyler
Welcome to the Forestry Forum
Sounds like a good, but bold, plan and wish you well.
The question is quite broad, so maybe we can chip away at it to narrow down to bite size pieces.

Good that you have your certificate to home-saw your own lumber.
What species do you have access to for sawing?
What mill do you have?
What experience do you have with sawing logs, drying, stacking and storing rough-sawn lumber?
Plans? Are you thinking the plans need to be different using your rough-sawn lumber versus regular dimension lumber for the rafters, joists, framing?
    If so, why?

Hope you don't get discouraged with questions, as forum members only intend to help you with your goals. Going to build for your family? How many bedrooms? House size?

Note the similar threads mentioned at the bottom of the page. May lead you to some past discussions that give helpful info. 

[Don P]

A good bit of this does revolve around Beenthere's questions. Just so you do know, you or anyone can draw a set of "prescriptive" plans for a single family residence. That is, a set of plans that follow the methods, tables, etc outlined or referenced in the residential building code. When you step beyond those provisions, that is when you are required to enlist a registered design professional... a licensed architect or engineer.

 Chances are the native lumber may not appear in the codebook span tables however it does reference other acceptable span tables for many more species. I will say, avoid the temptation to saw "full size" 2x thicknesses and target store bought dimensions. Most folks don't realize commonly available fasteners and hangers were not designed for full dimension and connections more than timber is the source of most failures.

[WI Walnut]

I've got access to quality red and white pine for little cost. I have a LT40 super and have been sawing for myself and others for around six years. My real job is in the forest products industry so I have quite a few connections for both softwood and hardwood grade logs. I have built a 24x48 pole shed, sawmill shed and dry kiln using home sawn lumber and my own crude building plans. 
As far as the building goes, I would like to have a 1 1/2 or two story home around 2000 square feet with a garage attached in the 2000 square foot area as well. I am not concerned so much with the wall framing as I will saw out the studs to match store bought lumber. However I would like to use maybe 3x10 or something like that for floor joists and have them exposed. I'm not sure on the rafters as I have not seen many houses built anymore that don't use store bought trusses. 
I have tried to search the forum for stick built house builds but I have not been successful. Thank you for your help. 

[Don P]

One way is to find some floorplans you like and then design the elements you like. I think I've finally unsubscribed to all the online plans hawkers... till they find me again  :D.

The beam calcs in the toolbox lower left of the page will do sizing of the joists and rafters. For documentation you can find the info in code referenced table form at awc.org, for the odd sizes, probably "Wood Structural Design Data" under their publications tab.

[Mattjohndeere2]

Hey walnut,

I'm in NY but maybe you'll find a similar way where you are.

I'm basically doing things almost identical to what you are doing. Hybrid timber frame (stick built with timber floor and rafter roof)

My wife and I spent about a year drawing up floorplans on paper and in some free software (floorplancreator). Once we were close to what we liked I did an initial cut at the house frame in freemium version of SketchUp. I put a lot of work into sizing beams, even built a spreadsheet calculator for roof to foundation load paths, really to verify my work and educate myself.

I talked with several designers and didn't really find the right ones, until I talked with fire tower engineering. Design process was done all remotely, cost was what I expected/budgeted for. I basically plopped in front of them my design with beam sizes and my plans for what was rough cut and what wasn't. Since I figured my codes officer didn't need to see all the background engineering calculations and whatnot, the engineer basically looked over the design and resized some of the supporting members to what they should be (i.e. the center beams supporting floor joists, etc) but other than that, the beam sizes were pretty much verbatim what I had provided.

During this whole process I had talked with the codes guy several times letting him know my plans. Basically that paved the way for him to realize I had a brain with regards to building in this manner. When it came time to approve the building permit, he asked where the manufactured truss drawings were, meeting snow load, etc. Long story short I gave him a good educated rundown of how design load is gotten from ground snow load, then how that plus dead load is used to get roof load, distribute across each rafter for their loads, and then use that with wood species published design values from the American wood council association to calculate the proper beam (rafter) size. He was happy with that and let me move ahead. 

I would run your plan past your codes officer and see how he responds. You have a leg up being certified in lumber grading. Here, I was able to sign a self certification for milling my own lumber, basically saying grade 2 or better lumber will be used in the building process. Hope this helps, and try to have fun. I'm about done looking at and hearing my darn sawmill but still have a long ways to go. 

[Mattjohndeere2]

Also, as don P said - use the beam calcs. They are an enormous help. AWC has a similar calculator.

To get roof load / design snow load for my spreadsheet calculator I used one of medeeks calcs. It's a once per day use but was good enough to get me there
Medeek Design Inc. - ASCE 7-10 Snow Load Calculator

[Don P]

This is a relatively new app from ASCE for finding various design loads;
The about page;
ASCE 7 Hazard Tool

The main app page;
ASCE 7 Hazard Tool

[Prizl tha Chizl]

I too found it a pain to use "real" 2x4 material, not because of issues with hangers, (I designed without them,) but because windows and doors are also all designed to work with standard dimensional lumber sizes. Also, I used a good bit of salvaged lumber (some of it the "old fashioned" 1 5/8 x3 5/8,) and ended up having to buy some new stuff at the end- a lot of extra work to get everything to match up😫 but I did like how much extra meat the real 2x gave me around knots, etcetera, and after handling all those green 2x4s the dry store-bought nominal stuff sure felt like toothpicks😬

That got me wondering how a person would saw to end up with standard dimensional thicknesses. There are probably numerous threads on FF about this, but here's one that came up when I searched for "dimensional lumber" that lays out a few approaches
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=107554.0

[Joe Hillmann]

Before you get too far into your plan, have you talked to your building inspector.  The way the law is written in WI is, ungraded, rough sawn lumber can be used to build a single family home at the discretion of the building inspector.

I am in the process of building a log home from home sawn lumber and when it came to buying the land the second call I made was to the building inspector to make sure he wouldn't stand in the way of what I want to build.

[WI Walnut]

Thanks everyone for the advise. I have spoke with the builder inspector already.