Traditional Framing:

If you ever have a chance to walk around an old barn or see the bones of a really old homestead shelter you’ll notice that those massive posts and beams don’t land straight on the foundation but on even larger timbers, the sills. Our forebearers built this way based on centuries of practical experience. Those sills lock in the box, as we say, making the entire frame ridged and allowed the frame to ride like a boat on top of the foundation. Today’s timber frame industry has done away with timbered sills and we feel that this is a great loss and will generally shorten the life span of the frames.

This four over four timber frame incorporates fully timbered sills and has the main floor braces in a traditional inverted position. The main frame has a foot print measuring twenty eight feet square with the lean-to taking up fourteen feet square. The total square footage  is 1, 764 square feet.

There are many benefits to this design:

• Increased overall rigidity of the frame.
• Increases the reliance on the dynamic nature of wood rather than forcing reliance on the foundation. The structure supports itself.
• Self supporting structures do not rely on engineered materials to meet building code.
  
• You can do away with toxic plywood, Structural Insulated Panel systems and highly manufactured nominal lumber.
  
• Inverted lower braces improve passive solar options and view lines on main floor.
• A timbered floor system does not need toxic plywood to make it structural.
• Cellars and basements will benefit from a beautiful ceiling.
  
• Our timbers are locally grown and milled, and we replant two trees for every sixteen foot timber we use.

On top of these points we can cut this frame as modeled for significantly less than others can cut the posts and main beams and for nearly what it costs to frame in a conventional house. If you are considering straw baling, cob, slip straw or rammed earth then a traditional timber frame will provide you with an heirloom skeleton that allows these natural walls to do what they do best – insulate you from the elements.

As with all our models full plans are available to the ambitious DIY, plans include full joinery details, construction specifics and permit necessary stuff like wall sections.

To enquire about this or any other frame either comment on this post, (this is the slow response way), or drop us an email — follow the leads on the contact page.

For an explanation of listed costs, click!

Preview: Look before you buy a plan. We suggest you request a preview of the model(s) you are interested in. You will need to download, for free, Google’s SketchUp Viewer. This program is available for both MacIntosh and Windows users and is very easy to use. Email us a request for the preview files of the models you are interested in and we will send them off just as soon as we are next at the computer.

What’s Included: PDF’s of all necessary wall sections for permitting. One, fully authorized copy of original 3-D rendered files — these include scaled, highly detailed joinery in digital format (multiple formats are available), augmented by files containing timber by timber visual specifications. Multiple wall sections covering a variety of potential external membranes, from conventional through straw bale.  We also have compiled statistics and documentation relevant to the integrity of heavy timber construction, information that is often useful in educating your local housing authority and building inspector on the viability, craft and integrity of heavy timber construction.

Structural Engineering: Your local building authority may require you to have a licensed engineer, review and approve of the structures design. If this is so and alterations are required, we will work with you to facilitate reasonable modification to the frame design should this be required. Up to 4 hours of redesign and file alteration is provided free of charge, additional hours are prorated at a reduced hourly design rate of $25/hr, down from our normal $30/hr.

Accessory Drawings: To receive a building permit in most North American municipalities the builder must submit a wall section relevant to the method of construction. Given the diverse options for enclosing timber frames — from stud wall infill, through straw bale, we have provided each model with PDF images covering most potential scenarios. If by chance your project is not covered we will generate a wall section that will serve your specific application. No charge.

Consider: We are builders and students of timeless building techniques by profession, it’s what we do. We have a good grasp and understanding of applied physical engineering and building trigonometry, we have learned out of desire and need. No person, institution, committee or group of the learned has bestowed on us a certification or degree stating that we have studied and understood any of the above. We are competent humans, building healthy and sustainable shelters using the intellectual tools available to us and the skills we have honed. We live in and work in shelters built using all of the methods and tools listed. We are also honest and concerned for you and yours’ safety, health and happiness. Given this we would not and do not build, design or sell anything that we, ourselves would not work or live in with our loved ones. If you need our designs certified by a licensed professional we can secure a reputable engineer or architect that is proficient with heavy timber construction  — oddly, most are not.

By making a deal!

The deal is this: that we build healthy shelters using natural resources that nature can replenish in less time than the service life of these shelters and that we do this without regard for any factor other than that every human has the basic right to shelter. We can do the first two right now, it’s rather simple. It’s that equitably part that I have not figured out yet. Hence the ’s in, Let’s Make A Deal!

Shelter, like food and water, is a necessity for human life. The requirements for shelter in a northern climate, such as we build in, here in Ontario, Canada, consume vast resources in order to function in both extreme cold and hot. But they don’t have to. The building industry in North America continues, by and large, to pursue conventional approaches to the construction, material sourcing and financing of this, one of our most basic needs, shelter. There is a lot to be said about where and how we get our food, water and clothing – the remaining basics – but I am going to try to stick with my area of expertise.

There is no intention here other than to open a dialogue between myself and anyone who is building a home/shelter. I can’t promise that we can find a workable situation. I am not in a position to act as a shelter philanthropist, though I dream of such a thing, I’m not wealthy. I am willing to be straight forward with my clients about why I build and what mine and my families needs are, (which is why I get paid to build, to support our needs), and what the needs of those I work with are. I want to talk over other ways to finance shelter building. I want to be a part of forwarding the equitably built home.

As the owner of a company that builds using mostly raw materials, close to their natural state, I have seen first hand that our effects on the planet are immense. I’ve personally worked timbers that where cut out of virgin forests over 250 years ago, trees that began growing 450 years ago and can tell you that oak or pine or any species of tree that remains today is a pale shadow of what our ancestors had to work with. The maddening pace at which we plant trees for economic harvesting to build inferior toxic shelters is not thought out from a sustainable approach, but for economic profit. I know that in order to pass over a functional ecosystem to our children and grandchildren, an ecosystem that we have put in peril, that we will need to establish a new model for doing business. Today more than at any other point in human history there is a need to reinvent our personal and collective goals. We will always need shelter. And now, after decades of warning, we are becoming conscious of the impact that 120 years of fast, cheap construction is having on our planets health, on our personal health and on our general enjoyment of life.

I am not an economist. As a business owner I have operated my company only from a sustaining perspective. Meaning that though we take money for our services I do not spend my time paying employees, working estimates, reselling materials all with the end goal of banking money for the company, a.k.a. profit. An accountant might say that all our profit is reinvested in the company, I would say we manage to have the tools we need when we need them and keep the lights on. This will be how I always operate my business. Until we can find a better, dare I say, more natural way to finance our shelters.

And now comes the pitch: I want there to be a different way. I want to be able to build efficient, healthy, long lasting (and I mean hundreds of years, real heirloom structures, not this building code bulls__t that relies on manufactured pieces being stuck together like so many Lego blocks), beautiful shelters not just for those who have flourished in our economic system but for any who make the choice to build well, to build for keeps, to build a better footprint.

So come at me with any and all ideas.

If all this sounds Hippy-Dippy then so be it. I know that not everyone can build their own home. I know that I can build and well. So what I have to work with and offer is that knowledge and skill set. What I want to do with what I have is, at the very least stop hurting the environment, become neutral — my three boys deserve it. You and yours deserve it. At best, we can, together, lay the ground work of a system of building that means that everyone can have healthy, sustainable shelter that is unconstrained by economics.

I am trying to forward the chance for us to come up with the answer to the third question — How can we build equitably? Follow future posts under this portion of the Timber Wall for philosophical, practical and attempted solutions to the question of building economically neutral shelter.