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stone pillars for bones of undergroundhouses/wofatis?

 
Ben Skiba
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What our your thoughts on Masonry stone pillars for posts of underground house?I am experimenting with different bones for the undergroundhouses/wofatis in my head.

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I think that would be a brilliant solution to the issue of having wood posts in the ground in a wofati!  I'd still use logs for the beams and shoring...

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hell yeh that's what i was thinking.So the post isn't rotting in the ground.I think it would take minimum concrete or lime mortar.I agree with you on the shoring.wood is best.Cedar if possible but i've used pine.

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From what I've read about the wofati principle, beams that are "under the umbrella" should not be exposed to much moisture if the grading is done well. So if rocks/time are limited, I'd concentrate on the locations near doors or where there's less overhang/coverage.

I suspect rock will be a slower build than wood, but wood is not always plentiful, and I grow rocks *really* well, so I'd love to be better at building with them.

Up at Our Eco Village on Vancouver Isl., one of the buildings was made with rock for the whole front wall, facing south for solar heating and because in their weather pattern, the winter storms tended to blow from the east, that side was well protected in other ways. So looking at your specific climate and direction of storms as well as sun, may guide your eventual plans.

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Stone pillars or other main supports might be durable, though they would need to be built well to hold up. They could not be built straight like wood posts; they would need to be circularish arches to resist the sideways pressure of the earth. If the stone resources are abundant and reasonably shaped for building with, and especially in a damp climate, it would be worth trying.
 
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I'm guessing that for short pillars like we're using in wofatis, they wouldn't need to be curved, just fat enough to handle the load.  For instance, if a 12" pine log works currently, I'd propose a wild guess that a 12-16" stone pillar would also do the job.  

I'd also be interested in other ways to keep wood out of the soil. What if you set a large rock (small boulder) as the footing for a wood post.  Bury it 95% of the way so it can't push sideways.  Then hammer drill a big hole in the top for a 1-2" pin.  Then set your wooden post on top with a hole to receive the pin.  Then the side force of the wall will be resisted by the rock and pin.  The only problem is that that top of the post won't be prevented from tipping.  But I think some of the wofati design is that the walls counteract each other so the side forces are somewhat equal.  If that is the case then this concern wouldn't be a concern...

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Glenn Herbert
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Any stone pillar that has side loading (like from a dirt bank) needs to be built with arch construction. At the least, the bedding joints need to be arranged in arch form (all leading to a center point inside the space).

The best way to set a stone pillar base (mostly buried) would be with the top surface angled back toward the wall, so the side load would have to push the post uphill to dislodge it. The weight of the roof on the post will resist that sideways push.
 
Mike Haasl
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Oh, I was picturing a solid piece of stone without joints...  My bad

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Glenn Herbert
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If you had 8' long rocks to work with, they would work great. That is pretty rare though... The local shale bedrock with occasional layers of stronger mudstone actually gives me a few 6 to 7 foot long by a foot thick rocks... hardly enough to frame a wofati even if I dug out all the ones in the creekbed, though.
 
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