Nathaniel Bouman

I've got a line on decent pricing for 2" thick larch to use as the shoring in a planned Oehler build. I plan to put posts at no more than 6' on center. I do not have a cheap way of putting tongue and groove in or shiplap. How important do you think this is? The wood will be pretty green. I'm in Northeast PA. The soil is rocky and heavy with clay. Quite a steep angle of repose though.

Yeah, I guess my query is mostly about underground construction. Most of the structure would be below the frostline so I'm a bit confused why sinking posts into the soil is that necessary.

I'm looking to build an earthsheltered PSP style building. Perhaps a dumb question, but if I'm already below the frost line why sink posts at all? Couldn't one use sill beams instead? I'm guessing that in an Oehler building, sinking the posts helps to resist the pressure from the earth but if the sill beams are sufficiently squared and shored and the posts are tied into the sills very securely why would sinking posts be preferable? With sill beams I could almost eliminate direct ground contact.