I was wondering which trees to cut down for lumber....

[Runningalucas]

I'm planning on building a new home on my land this Spring.  I'm still playing with the details in sketchup, well, and learning the program.  I've got several areas cleared out, and have been debating when, and what trees to fell for sawmill food. 

Well, I guess God made my decision for me!  We had a windstorm up here a few days back, knocked over the largest hemlocks I've got; around 10 of them, lol.  The winds were real scary, especially in the forest with gusts upwards of 65mph.  The hemlock, right behind my rv shed, rv, and me, 32" at the butt, got knocked down as well, ended up thank god, parallel to the place, lol. 

"Wind scares me", lol

[mike_belben]

There is no magic formula on your own land.  Youve got to weigh out all aspects.  The location of trees you want to keep for shade and winter wind break, and for athetitics, vs the onesyou want to remove for safety from blowdowns.  


Then youve got to weigh out your tree stock vs bank account.  If youve got more than enough timber for the house but not enough money for the slab or utility or septic stuff then sell your best grade logs to fund your needs.   

The answer will be unique for everyone i think. 

[Mike W]

X2 on that, what you are describing is a small part of the overall picture, aside what Mike already elaborated on, if this is for your home and not some 'outbuilding' you might want to start with your local building department to see if your own processed lumber will fly for occupancy permit to be issued.  Think insurance coverage down the road as well if one of your own timbers fails and you are looking to get the failure and damage covered.  Good luck

[Runningalucas]

There is no magic formula on your own land.  Youve got to weigh out all aspects.  The location of trees you want to keep for shade and winter wind break, and for athetitics, vs the onesyou want to remove for safety from blowdowns.  


Then youve got to weigh out your tree stock vs bank account.  If youve got more than enough timber for the house but not enough money for the slab or utility or septic stuff then sell your best grade logs to fund your needs.  

The answer will be unique for everyone i think.

Good advice!  My brother, and I have owned our land for a couple decades.  We're up in the mountains 60 miles south of Canada; I think part of the Boreal Forest.  Being originally from Texas, the climate here feels extreme; more so because our little spot is at 2,900ft, and is located smack dab in the wettest part of the state, and I believe 2nd, or 3rd wettest in the country.  I had a state forester out, who was telling me this, and more so, he claimed that all old stadium cedars from across the nation came out of this wet mountain valley.  
Over the last few years, I've been digging stumps out, at first, I was burning them, figured it would be good for the soil, but then the local fire dept told me it was illegal to burn them.  So now I've started building stump walls on the property lines.  It may sound odd, but I've got to do something with them, and it has an okay look.  Besides that, people up here love to shoot, and I love that they love to do it.  The problem is though, I've got a few old vehicles lined up, and a number of them have bullet holes, from different angles, and directions through the years.  I think people are shooting in a way they consider safe, but there's a lot of rock to ricochet off of.  Hence the stump wall, which I think I've got enough stumps for, lol. 
Due to having dug up all those stumps, I kept a mental record of the ground material all over.  I almost feel like a geologist, or archeologist; working grid patterns of discovery.  I know that the side of our property nearest the large creek is sand, and rock; further back in the flat section, extremely fertile, but iron rich sandy loam; from there, the land elevates upwards actually on up the mountain, but on our area only 20' worth of rise, high in clay.
In the winter, the Sun is always to the South, and by wide margin; daylight is around 8 hours; Summer is reversed. 
I've had a great time to process the land, and better layouts. I've got a long term plan, and a short term plan.  My plan for now, is to build a South facing rectangular 'building'.  I can have more homes on my property, but those are at a later date, and to be rentals.  However, I'm keeping that in mind now as to how this home I'll be building will be laid out. 
We own our land outright, and won't be selling; so as far as worry about resale, or meeting many standards other than our own, well, it's not in our plans.  We're building for us, the way we want it, and how we want it.  It helps that in this county, you only need a site location permit, and septic permit.

The building/structure is somewhat straight forward. We're using 2 hi-cube cargo containers; spaced 20' apart as the basis point for the build.  The bottom interior between the containers will be 2 fold, the first 20'x30' will be a 2 car shop with a door opening to the Northeast.  The other 20'x10' area will extend 10' past the end of the containers towards the Southwest.  The portion extending out from the structure, we're planning on fabricating out of steel with inset double pain windows we got for free; a commercial glass company abandoned their lease, and the building owner wanted them gone.  We loaded 4 truck loads, and over a 100 double pain windows; no frames.

The two containers on either side, will be as follows, container 1 will hold tool/parts storage area, metal shop, wood shop, and maybe some weights.  Container 2 will for now be a small shop bathroom(most likely a composting system with wash station), freezer, and possibly an enclosed area to grow mushrooms, and possibly used in conjunction with aquaponic equipment, but mainly as a green house section for plant starts, tools, xyz. 

Container 2, will have the front door at the corner, it will consist of a small mudroom, followed by stairs to the upstairs living area.  I may leave enough space in C2 for a small genie lift elevator for old dogs, and such, not sure.  The ground floor foot print will be basically 36'x40' +rock slip form+ green house.  Upstairs, the living area will be 30'x30'.  This will leave an area on each container exposed to the green house air, basically 8'x7'ish; which will each have a patio out of steel, and I'm thinking about fabricating out of steel something that would connect the two side patios into the middle(not sure yet). I've got enough glass to do the entire south end; greenhouse, and on the south sides second floor. 

As far as the actual layout upstairs, I come, and go with it, but besides the enclosed porches at the southend, there will be I think 2'ish walking space left down each side of the container.  The containers will get 4" foam all the way around the outside.  The exterior of the containers will have slip form masonry all the way up to the height of the second story patio railing, but I've not quite designed what or how regarding attaching, since I'm considering the necessity of thermal breaks.  I'm planning on about a foot thick, as most of my rocks, which I have many of, seem to average out to be about a foot in any given direction.

The roof will have a 6/12 pitch, just a gable, but with large overhands all the way around; I'm thinking 3' to 4'.  It'll be steel, and a rain water collection system; don't need it, but why not, lol.   As far as the upstairs framing, I'm batting that around as well, but am liking the Swiss stuff featured on Matt Risinger's 'build show'.  Floors were solid 2'x6's, 2x8's, and walls were similar.  'maybe'.

I know this is long, and probably tmi, so I'll get to the end, and back to the trees. I've long debated about which trees to fell, which to leave, and what not.  And as I said in the beginning, god made my choice, lol!  I've got over a dozen large hemlocks down, all around 25" at the butt, 5 cedars around 12" at the butt, and today, I discovered a 3 white pine of good size.  I never planned on having a deck of wood sitting ready to go, but I guess I do, and my project is on.  

I'm thinking I may take out all the hemlocks; too many with issues, and all the ones that blew down seemed healthy, strange stuff. 

[Don P]

Without a location I'm not sure which hemlocks and pines we're talking about, just be aware when looking at span tables and calcs.

Slipform falls under "rubblestone". I know you are free from inspections but it is specified at 16" or more thick for good reason. Coursed stonework can go down to 12" because it is laid and woven. I personally prefer a back form and an open face and 16" thick. I keep mortar and concrete handy and lay the face fast but as coursed and neat as possible with raked joints and fill to the back form with concrete getting some rebar in there whenever possible. It looks pretty good and is strong. It sounds like your containers wrapped in tarpaper could be your back form. I do a lot of geology at the end of a shovel too  :D.  This is a pretty good map I ran across recently;
Macrostrat