Meet Richard Flatau of Merrill, Wisconsin
The
following selection is my personal narrative, written for THE MOTHER EARTH
NEWS, that recaptures the construction of my own cordwood abode.
The notorious winter of '79 left me with an empty oil tank, a barren pocket book, wood choppers back and a mind whirling with fresh fantasies of building my own home.
One -20 below zero night in January, while burning the midnight oil and pouring over a growing pile of how-to-build books, I happened upon an article describing cordwood masonry construction. The crisp, beautiful color photos enticed me and the ensuing narrative whetted my imagination with its low cost, owner built, sweat equity appeal, Cordwood construction was, most definitely worthy of further serious investigation.
I quickly
got hold of three books on the construction technique and learned that it's
been used for centuries. After reading and rereading each text and working
out some seat-of-the-pants calculations, I was convinced that cordwood was
-- considering our self-imposed financial restrictions -- our only choice.
My wife, Rebecca, and I spent the next weeks with a tape measure, graph paper,
pencil, protractor, and a big eraser experimenting with a floor plan and overall
design that'd be acceptable to us as well as to the plumbing and electrical
contractors. After no fewer than 30 revisions, we finally settled on a 1,200
square foot rectangular structure (1,064 feet of inside area) with a peaked
8/12 pitch roof and an extra 560 square feet of "second story" living
space built into the pre-engineered trusses.
Though almost any debarked and dried softwood is considered acceptable for stack wall construction, we chose to use red cedar for practical and aesthetic reasons. For one, if offers fine insulating qualities (with an R value of about 1.25 per inch, or 6 times that of common brick) in addition to being naturally decay-resistant.
Our foundation
was a conventional 30' x 40' insulated concrete floating slab, poured by a
local contractor and finished with an anchor-bolted framework of pressure
treated 2 x 12's. The cedar posts -- set wherever possible on 8' centers --
rested on these sill plates and were tied together at their upper ends with
doubled 2 x 10 top plates. Door and window openings were, likewise, framed
with treated dimensional lumber. Erecting our home's structural skeleton was
actually easier than we thought it'd be and demanded only the most basic of
carpentry tools and skills. We had the entire frame up in no time and were
eager to start "mudding up" the walls.
We set the cedar logs into the frame one row at a time, spreading mortar over the top of each row to a thickness of about 3/4" and covering only 3" of the outer and inner edges of each round. The hollows created in the center could then be filled with an insulating mix of 3 parts dry sawdust to 1 part hydrated lime. Though we all tried the traditional troweling method of applying our mud, I soon preferred to scoop the mortar up in my rubber-gloved hands and plop it in place. This shortcut technique yielded a near professional look.
After
not quite three months of spare-time building, we'd reached the point where
we were ready to begin work on our home's roof and upper story. The upstairs
isn't a true second level, but a living space designed into the center of
our roof trusses that now boasts two bedrooms, a play area, a half-bath, and
ample closet storage. The job went more slowly than expected, though, as late
summer rainstorms hampered our efforts to sheathe and shingle the roof. By
mid-August the house was finally securely covered...and, after breathing a
deep sigh of relief, we mounted the windows and doors in their previously
framed openings. Our cordwood home was after five months of on-again, off-again
work, dried in and protected from the winter.
The snows of Wisconsin's worst season saw us finishing the upstairs floor and the stairway, and furring our selected walls on the main level in preparation for nailing up local Norway pine panel boards. By spring we were ready to sell our house in town, use the equity to finish our new home, and make our move to the country.
On a personal note: Richard is the father of a 25 year old daughter (a
graduate of the University of Minnesota, who now works in Atlanta) and a 21 year old
son (who attends the University of St. Cloud). His wife of 31 years is an
elementary school teacher. He has taught children with Learning Disabilities at
the elementary level for the past 27 years. Richard recently retired from
teaching, but still works one day a week as a Learning Disabilities consultant.
An avid reader and tinker, he gardens, plays guitar, travels, builds things,
cuts wood and writes articles for publication. His book is currently in its 8th
printing and is revised and updated as of 2002.