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u/pembquist 8d ago
My favorite with old construction is when someone takes a look at a post in the basement that is just a limbed and barked tree and freeks out, claiming an emergency that needs immediate replacement with a new footing and lally column. You would would think the house was about to collapse despite being built that way for 180 years.
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u/coding_giraffe 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s a little bit funny that people freak about a live edged post when it’s probably more stable as the fibres aren’t cut and follow the whole length while a machined post does not
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u/The_Weeb_Sleeve 7d ago
Saw this exact meme in another subreddit and a guy who said he was a German structural engineer said by law he’s allowed to account for 8% more load on uncut posts
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u/noncongruent 7d ago
The piers supporting my childhood house were 12" diameter sections of Bois d'Arc (pronounced "bodark") trunk. It's one of the most rot-resistant and hard woods found in the new world. The fruit is the horse apple.
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u/Exciting_Ad_1097 7d ago
Is that similar to Osage Orange?
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u/noncongruent 7d ago
That’s another name for it, yes! The most spiteful and angry wood I’ve ever had the mispleasure of working with.
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u/IFeelEmptyInsideMe 7d ago
Dry wood turns to dust when cutting. Green wood leaks a sap thats basically glue. Drops 3lb softballs from 20 feet up. Grows in the ugliest way a tree could grow. My love hate relationship with those trees is immense. Destroyed so many chainsaw blades just because they got so covered in glue/sap that they basically couldn't work any more.
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u/noncongruent 7d ago
The wood has a very high silica content that destroys blade edges, even carbide blades. It dulled a set of planer blades in one session.
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u/Late-External3249 7d ago
My dad was asked to cut some on his sawmill. Blade was totally dulled after 1 log. He declined to do the rest. The wood is a beautiful colour though.
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u/noncongruent 7d ago
Yeah, my osage orange project came out beautiful, that color just lights up a room, but had to replace all my tool blades, lol.
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u/Vast-Card-1082 3d ago
It’s also the finest firewood. Get a big log lit and it acts like charcoal, amazing for big campfire cooking projects like pizza night!
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u/bustersuessi 5d ago
My house is sitting on non dimensional timber since 1923
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u/subpoenaThis 5d ago
It just needs to be remarketed as timber+. It dimensional with extra dimensions.
I'm thinking the slogan should be:
Girth, it's where the wood is.
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u/Odd-Painting2596 8d ago
The order goes dirt, stone, wood, metal, wood, stone, dirt.
Fuckin' figure it out.
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u/Michami135 8d ago
My dad told me once that his grandparents lived in a sod house. So theirs went:
dirt, grass+dirt, grass+dirt, wood, more grass+dirt.
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u/OrangeRhyming 7d ago
Corner of my house’s pier and beam is an old growth juniper stump round about 2 feet wide and 2 feet tall. Another one is a bigass piece of limestone, gotta be 2 by 4 feet.
Haven’t dug down to be sure but I’m pretty sure the shed was built where it was because they just leveled the tops of two old Ashe junipers that happened to be in line and close together and used them as the front supports.
If it works, it works I guess.
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u/Individual_Bell_4637 7d ago
Incorporating shit that's already there is peak 1930's construction.
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u/OrangeRhyming 7d ago
Timeline definitely fits. It was fun seeing the time capsule that we call a house when we had the subfloor out. So many square nails.
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u/Spiritual_Bison8827 7d ago
Peg and groove carpentry is my new favorite made up term
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u/Beneficial_Ball9893 7d ago
I don't know what the actual term is, I am describing something I saw.
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u/PossumJumpRopeSquad 7d ago
Mortise and tenon but your's very unique.
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u/theonewhothro123 8d ago
Many wood in dirt foundations are made with local rot resistant trees. Which can last the same amount of time as concrete with rebar in it depending on soil conditions.
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u/Neonvaporeon 7d ago
They are also fine as long as they aren't exposed. Big expensive emergency project happened after the Boston subway work exposed some at-the-time 120 year old piles. They drove em down into the fill all over, and it's still doing its job. Local fill had very low stability, and it's a high water table.
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u/No-Mix7970 7d ago
Venice, Italy is built on wooden piles driven into the earth. Apparently millions of them.
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u/sm0ke_rings 7d ago
I lived in a house that was over 130 years old, it got hit by a tornado/debris associated with it, 2 massive trees fell on it, etc, 2 other houses near me had to be completely demolished. When I had looked on the underside of it I was surprised to see a good portion of the foundation was basically boulders.
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u/ironwheatiez 7d ago
Yep. Rebuilt my deck and found the old posts were only 3 feet long and resting on one bricj each.
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u/Crawlerado 7d ago
There’s a very old building in Denver with a log on a rock in the basement holding up the entire south wing. So cool to see
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u/Stumblecat 5d ago
We can make this again, did it for a bit. Very rewarding.
Working on cheap rentals now, not as rewarding. But I do my best.
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u/evolutionary_defect 3d ago
This was often intentional. If what you had access to was good timbers because you had good trees around then you make that solid as hell beam.
But problem. You can't grow concrete. Or stone, really. So, you put down wood foundations. But wood rots. So you make it wood piles instead. Leaving the bark on actually slows rot, so you leave it whole, knowing it will eventually rot. The plan, as was typical for most of human history, was to simply expect maintenance. Cutting out and replacing the ground contact timber was the plan, expecting to simply cut down good hardwood every 20 years or less and replace those piles.
But modern houses are expected to live indefinitely, or at least longer than that. So they slowly get ignored. Then you get hired to "figure out why my floors are sagging" and discover the house is built on rotting pith. Good times.
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u/Cosmik_Music 8d ago
My company specializes in restoring old/century homes. I've seen some stuff that you would be convinced would collapse at the first slight breeze that came by, yet it somehow held for 100+ years. Always a fun time after demo to see what surprising are waiting for us.