The Forestry Forum

Hello folks,

I would like to build a home made of a timber frame on the interior and a stick frame for the exterior walls, using straw bales as infill. Now my questions:

1. Would I be able to harvest trees (mainly cedar and some pine) from my own property to reduce costs, or should I just purchase the material at the hardware store.

2. Do I have to get the lumber graded/tested to ensure quality?

3. Would Cedar be good enough for the construction?

4. I live near Sacramento, anybody here with a mobile saw mill who could help?

That's it for now. Thank you in advance for your reply.

- Karsten

Karsten
Welcome to the forum.

Answers to your questions could most likely be "yes" for all, but don't know a name for the last one.

#2 would be graded for meeting local building codes.

#3, yes if the quality is good enough.

What pine do you have? ponderosa ?  Western white?

Hope we can be of some more help to you.

And we like pics.  :)

  I was doing some backhoe work for a man building one yesterday, in Hayfork CA. I cut the frame 2 summers ago off his property, it is doug fir. Quality-wise its top notch. I don't understand about stick framing the exterior and straw bales though. I have seen only post and beam or timberframe exterior with straw infill, if there's any stick framing it's interior.

Thank you for your reply, guys. I looking forward to getting more information and hopefully finding someone able to help logging and sawing. (Not for free, of course.)

I will go out to our parcel this weekend again and check more thoroughly the kind of pine we have.