Building a timber frame house, starting with plans.

[Raen]

Hi, everyone. It begins!

Intro: My name is Rachel, and my husband, Todd and I are getting ready to build. We have a lot of construction experience, but this will be our first TF structure. Todd is military, and we have moved around a lot, most recently from Maine to Missouri. We plan to be here for a while and bought 25 acres with a metal shop on it. We are living in the shop right now, which leaves a bit to be desired.

The acreage is fortunately in an area that does not have building codes, except the septic, which we have already installed. So anything we want to do is just fine and dandy. (Yay!) We have about 8 acres of forest on the property, but I don't feel like the trees are really suitable for this project (lots of twisty, hard, osage orange) so we will be buying timbers. Not sure where from, at this point. We will be doing essentially all of our own work. We have renovated several houses and are comfortable with the labor side of it.

This the basic house style we're going for.


And this is the post layout we want.


This will be a 2 story house. Is it best to have continuous posts going from the downstairs all the way up, or should we stagger the posts and use shorter lengths?

I'm thinking for speed (and cost?), we will do the downstairs subfloor and the garage with regular dimensional lumber.

I'm trying to get an idea of the materials needed for the frame. I found this ad on craigslist. http://columbiamo.craigslist.org/mat/4444195520.html

This seems like a pretty good price. Is it? are 8x8 timbers big enough for anything?

We live in an area with a somewhat sizable Amish population, and one family runs a lumber mill near our place. I'm going to go talk to them about the project tomorrow. I think it would be nice to have someone who's done this before to at least check our work as we go, or do some hands-on instruction on joint-making.

So, this has been ramble-y. I wanted to pop in and say hello so that you guys know who I am before my barrage of questions starts. I do have several TF books we're referencing as well, but I'm sure things will come up.

[Brian_Weekley]

Ahh, you moved from Maine and now you want to build a Maine barn-style house?   ;D  Check out the barn models on the Maine Barn Company website.  If you hover over and click on the models, you can see typical post layouts and designs.  They show a 30 x 48, two story design that could be modified to be close to what you're looking for if you removed one bay.  As for post and beam sizes, you must calculate the correct sizes based on the designs and loads.  The design has to come first.  You need to buy the correct timber sizes based on your design.  Don't buy timbers with the hope of using them in your design.  I'd highly recommend taking a timber frame course to learn the proper techniques for cutting the joints.

[Raen]

We loved Maine. Except the part about it being *DanG cold half the year.  ;D Love barn-style houses. That one on the Maine Barn co. website is great, thank you!

I'm not sure we have time to do a real course (hard for the husband to get adequate time off work). I'm hoping someone local can give us a few private lessons, and that we might be able to simply hire him to do the more complex joints.

[beenthere]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum.
And are you also going to build a horse barn for your daughter's horse?

[Raen]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum.
And are you also going to build a horse barn for your daughter's horse?

Ha! That's me. No kids for us. We find we have more time that way. ;-) We did build a little run in shed for the horses out of dead wood on the property, but it's just bolted together and sort of half-as sed, because we needed something quickly. Todd got a chain-saw mill thingie and sliced up the logs.



We have considered buying tree-length logs and squaring them up ourselves, but I'm not sure that in the long run, it's really worth the extra work. It takes a while to go through those things. (I may take that back when I find out how much the timbers cost!)

[S.Hyland]

Hello Rachel, I actually used a chain saw attachment to square all the timbers for my own 20x20' house (and first timber frame!). I will saw from experience that it made a good story to tell of taking my own logs and milling them with a chain saw. However, it was a huge time sink and easily took as much time as cutting the joinery. I did it once and would not do it again! Unless you have lots and lots of time you are looking to fill with the melodious sound of chainsaw I would recommend buying your timbers.

[woodsteach]

Welcome, where in Missouri?  Jim Rogers is putting on a Timber Frame Class in South East Nebraska The end of May.  It should be worth it if you are any where close, it should be a great experience. 

Paul

[Raen]

Yeah, I don't think it's realistic to cut the timbers with a chainsaw. It's too big of a house, and it would take forever. We went and talked to a couple of local saw mills today, prices were pretty reasonable.

I'm in Chilhowee, MO, maybe 2.5 hours from the southeast corner of Kansas. Where is the class? I might be able to go.

(Edit: I found the info. It's about 3 hrs from our house. Not bad. I'll try to talk my husband into it.)

[Raen]

Also, one of the lumber mills said they can only offer the timbers in white oak (but green). How crazy would that be? If we do the joints ourselves, we do plan on utilizing power tools, including a chainsaw mortiser.

[Jim_Rogers]

Lots of frames are made out of oak, all the time.

Jim Rogers

[Thehardway]

Raen,

Welcome to the forum.  You have asked a lot of good questions.  The green white oak is probably about the best wood you can possibly use if it is fairly clear and straight grained. It is not crazy at all as long as you are smart about how you go about handling the timbers and the weight of them. (they are tremendously heavy to move about and position to cut joints) You will definitely learn how to use balance points and rollers.  I used white oak for mine so I learned first hand.

You are starting on a fairly large project for your first TF DIY.  That's huge house by any reasonable standard and you may be at it for a while so make that metal shop comfortable ;D

The first thing you will need is a good drawing and joinery layout.  From this you can develop a cut sheet and determine the size and length of your timbers needed.  Once you have this, you can specify the quality of timbers you need milled.  Make sure the sawyer is informed you will not accept twist, grain run out, or knots in locations where the joinery must go.

Make sure the sawyer is set up to produce the length timbers you need.  Tall posts are not bad for bent style construction but they will likely make it necessary to have a crane on site for the erection of the frame because of size and weight.

Building it with shorter posts in a more traditional style can help eliminate some of the erection weight and complexity but requires slightly more joinery work.

Don't be intimidated about asking questions here.  We all started somewhere and we are all still learning! 8)

[Truefire]

Following.  Am I the only one that can't see the pictures posted?

[mometal77]

 
2014 old post most links are broken. Why i signed up on a russian fb site my photos uploaded to here or there never broken.

Following.  Am I the only one that can't see the pictures posted?

[Truefire]

 
2014 old post most links are broken. Why i signed up on a russian fb site my photos uploaded to here or there never broken.

Following.  Am I the only one that can't see the pictures posted?

Oh shucks, I hadn't even noticed it was a 2014 post.  Wonder if the couple has their house built by now then? 

[Brad_bb]

Reading through her posts via her profile, they decided to do ICF and tRimberframe inside the house.  She never posted since Sept 2014.  Too bad.