Ruin and structure sketch [Roundwood tiny house over ruin]

This is the little water mill ruin we want to build on, this picture is from last summer, when we took down the old broken cement plates roof and started thinking about rebuilding with an extra floor...

and a sketch on the structure we thought of...

after reading the book roundwood timber framing i started to think if an A frame would be better, but i see it impossible to raise with the space we have...

we thought on building the frame structure first, add the roof (metal - because of weight, although we have plenty of clay tiles available for free but are way to heavy to trust to put them without walls first) and then continue framing it (with door and windows - reclaimed from waste field - so framing depends on type of windows we have/get) and filling wall with Ligth-Straw-Clay mixture and botles to let more light in (and out)

what are your first comments?

we are now working on the foundation beams, using tongue and fork with post through conections... all tongues are done, forks take a bit longer with hand powered auger bits.... it's our first time using chisels and timberframing so we are taking time to learn and perfect them....probably too much as they will twist if we don't hurry as well...

J Tabordiy : Interesting use of materials, Actually historically significant in that a certain type of landowner in the say 1300s would build his 1st floor out of Stone,
this would be a grain and tools area, and likely the kitchen area, with a wattle and daub exterior chimney to be pulled down in case of a chimney or Kitchen fire
The living quarters were constructed above usually with a timber frame core !

A poor farmer, or a desperate one might move livestock into the space below to contain all his poses ions and have the benefit of his animals heat during cold
weather - this would have been common in periods of civil unrest also

I think your ridge line needs a weight carrier, but you may be fine over such a short distance - which begs the question what is your location ! Big AL

Historically, this was a small water mill to make flour, all the "machinery" is long rotten and gone except for the mill stone that someone carried some meters away from it and lays there untouchable for many years against a garden wall... i think it was solely one floor, i may be wrong...

J Tabordiy : Interesting use of materials, Actually historically significant in that a certain type of landowner in the say 1300s would build his 1st floor out of Stone,
this would be a grain and tools area, and likely the kitchen area, with a wattle and daub exterior chimney to be pulled down in case of a chimney or Kitchen fire
The living quarters were constructed above usually with a timber frame core !

the river that historically could be diverged to power this mill changed it's course (humans abandoned these structures many decades ago and the river sides went wild and with rain other water lines formed and changed it's course... so there is not much water flowing under the house (except when it rain very heavilly) but there is a almost always a very small almost constant flow from drainage of the terrains

the bottom level i guess will always be very moisty and we thought on using it as beer/compotes/jams/fridge place, the top floor (the roundwood part) will be the living room/small kitchen with a high bed/bedroom under the roof, this would be where we live, and we need to think wise on how to isolate it from the ground floor cold/moisture... any ideas? (we have plenty of reclaimed advertising plastic material that could be use on the roof or under the floor)

the ruin measures (from the outside) 4,07x3,66cm...the wall is 45cm wide...

we think on posing the wood structure on top of the stone wall, not sure if/how it need to be "hold" together with it or gravity would make most of it...

the first foundation beams, form a closed square that would serve also as a casing to straighten the ruin (an civil engineer advice, friend of mine - he sugested to make it on hardened cement with steel.... when i sugested a less "industrialized" solution - he works on big companies - he thought and told me "that would mostly work too")

I think your ridge line needs a weight carrier, but you may be fine over such a short distance -

when you talk about ridge line is the roof higher beam, right?...i'm not satisfied by that sketch of the roof, it certainly need at least some bracing... but i really can't think on how to raise an A-bent
will upload other pictures from other angles soon

which begs the question what is your location !

we live in a small community north coast of Portugal, so we know we have the main facilities (big kitchen, compost toilet, shower, etc) separate from our cabin....

here's a better sketch with terrain as welll

what do you think of strenght of the ruin?...

it's not in it's best state but it's clearly not in risk of falling.... i imagine it rained on it for quite some time (some decades) and the rocks are not the most solid type (the main house is also built with this kind of soft easy to break stone with clay and river sand (it's just next to a small river)

our plan is to restaure the wall till it reaches a leveled height to lay the wood structure on top.... we would do that using stone and clay/sand (maybe straw?) mix, and cover all the holes with the same mixture as deep as we can...

PS: maybe move this post to stone forum as well?

Awesome project!

I couldn't tell if there was clay/sand mortar in the hole before you put the stones in. I usually fill with mortar and then install stone on copper buttons(folded scrap) to maintain placement while curing. Then trowel off squeeze out.

It's very interesting to see the level of lithification on such soft materials has made an enduring surface even without any protection.

Keep up the good work!

Your roof framing should be fine assuming the ridge and eave beams are big enough - if the sketch is near to scale, they look okay. You would want some angled braces similar to the lower floor framing for the ridge at least - the eaves will be supported by wall framing you add. The roof overhangs add to the strength of the internal spans, by helping to balance the load over the posts. The posts that hold up the ridgepole are close enough to the angle braces below that they will be supported well. Those angle braces need to be strong as they will hold dead load, not just stiffening.

Looking at the state of the stone walls, I would want to make the wood frame that sits on top securely fastened together so it can tolerate a weak spot in the support, but doing that, in a structure this size, should work fine.

we finally see some progress, our first tenons and mortises are done and we are almost ready to fit the foundation frame (actually probably a while still, we were very conservative on our chiseling... and i think there is a couple of hours of work on each corner still)

also played a bit more with sketchup.... still not sure how to brace the roof posts...

most of the beams and posts are cut now... although many started checking (a bit less since we started waxing the tops, but still happening)... we cut them with more than a meter play, so i hope they don't check so much till we start working with them...

It looks like the floor joists are hanging by the tenons. Not true, right?

With the thickness of the stone foundation, I suspect both the rim and cross beams can bear on stone, once the tenons are fitted into their mortises.
I would be cautious aout the cross beam at the end of the overhang, though, as that would have nothing but the horizontal tenon to support it. I would suggest a different joint there, more like half-lapped, so the stresses on the ends of the overhanging beams and the ends of the cross beams are equal.

thanks for the answers and tips, it's our first time working with wood... so we have much to learn and try out, error...

Bill Bradbury wrote:It looks like the floor joists are hanging by the tenons. Not true, right?

like Glenn said, they will stand on the ruin, and will still evolve, adding a through post... something similar to this (but in round wood :-s)

https://books.google.pt/books?id=6uxXorE4r-UC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=tongue+AND+fork+with+THROUGh+POST+TENON&source=bl&ots=k9oN_BeEYe&sig=8X0WUHOAFOxJswq3uipYnE2vqno&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=JlDPVMyfNIStUbqAhKAH&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=tongue%20AND%20fork%20with%20THROUGh%20POST%20TENON&f=false

Glenn Herbert wrote:I would be cautious aout the cross beam at the end of the overhang, though, as that would have nothing but the horizontal tenon to support it. I would suggest a different joint there, more like half-lapped, so the stresses on the ends of the overhanging beams and the ends of the cross beams are equal.

the overhanging beams will definatly be half-lapped... because we just though on that later, while doing the mortises already, i think we actually could have made them all half-lapped with through post instead of tenon and mortise....

also the overhanging part will not hold much weight, i think in the end will probably have a small roof to have an outside space to smoke and leave your shoes, etc...

not sure yet how long should/could that overhang be....

i'm also curious to understand the relation about wood size/diameter with length...

something like, how long can a 14cm diameter beam be without braces underneath? and with braces underneath?

"something like, how long can a 14cm diameter beam be without braces underneath? and with braces underneath? "

That depends on the kind of wood - it will be different for pine or oak. It also depends on how much total weight the beam has to carry. If you had a very strong hardwood (like oak), a 14 cm beam as ridgepole might carry your roof fine for decades, as long as it is protected from weather. In that case, I would add angle braces primarily for stability of the whole structure. The more joints are braced, the less the structure will flex and sway in storms or dance parties

To give a simplified example of how design can affect load capacity, imagine a roof beam that carries an even load, spanning between two posts. Then imagine the same beam and loads, with the beam extending (overhanging) beyond the posts on both ends. The overhangs act like levers, pulling down on the outer ends while pushing up on the inner span. If you cut the beam at the post and put a hinge in it, the overhang would fall down. If you cut & hinged the beam a little inside the post, the weight of the main span would balance the weight of the overhang and the whole beam would stay in place. This would make the center part of the beam act as if it was shorter, and a shorter beam of the same size can carry more load per foot/meter. You have made the beam stronger by adding overhangs. There are calculations you can find in structural design textbooks to put actual numbers to this concept.

we are definitely very slow timber framers :-/ as we are trying to learn mostly by doing....

i'm now working on the first posts but actually starting doubting on our first plan of connecting a through post on this joints as they are splitting a bit...

how would a metal connection needed to be to hold the posts? would a threaded rod through the post and joint be enough?

following

Hi J. T.,

How is the project going? Anymore questions?

Regards,

j

sorry for delay on updates, but as i said, we are very lazy (and incredibly slow) workers...

in the mean while we improvised a hoist tripod and alreday have the four posts ready... woking on the beams for the second floor...

also realized many beams i cut before have checked and cracked...even with bee wax on the tops...i'm pretty sure i could have done a better job waxing it. but was still breaks very easialy)

but i think they are stiill usable (althouh i had to shorten them a lot, so now i lack some long beams again....and the ones i'm going to cur will be heavier :-/...

some pics attached

Here yo, the comrade of tabordiy also working on this project... Finally i found the way to this forum... we are still continuing the project and would like to share more pictures as finally the construction is growing... (soon adding the pictures)
In the last month we renovated the ruin and added in some parts up to 1 meter of stones with a clay mortar.

This week we mounted the wood structure, the base square of the house on top of the ruin with help of friends. To position this square with the right angles we started putting already 1 pilar into place and we will soon add the other 3.

First we had to adjust the mortises we made in bent nr. II, as we made the calculations wrong, not realizing how to measure the knee-braces correctly at first (shoulder to shoulder).
As the ruin is about 2 meter high now and not easily accessible (having a deep ditch, former river) under it, we decided that we will not put the bents together and than mount the frame. We think to put the pilars at the 4 corners and then mount the beams on top on the spot.

To elevate the pilars we used a simple construction with a DIY hoist connected with a rope to a tree.

finally lets upload some pics

working on the stone/mud ruin reconstruction

Very nice project you got going overthere. If you ever come down to Porto, Portugal, feel free to drop in and share the learning path on that timber framing over a beer.

had some problems uploading, now resized images

most of the beams got mildew, as shown on 2nd picture, we took it out and treated them with terpentine+linseed oil...
besides being ugly, what are the biggest problems with mildew on the beams? we also found a couple of wood-eating bugs holes on one of the beams...

and some frankenstein adjustments, on 2 beams that cracked

That wood... it seems acacia, is that correct?

It is acacia, just bumped to your thread https://permies.com/t/43442/timber/Acacia-Dealbata-Silver-watle-roundwood .

I cut a dozen of great logs on my back yard four years ago, was planning to use them to build some structures, but the wood cracked from end to end and so they finished feeding the fireplace(except a few poles that i used on the chicken run). I should have studied the timber better like you did to properly season it before cutting.

Very nice touch recovering the wax from the cemitery candles, our people has a long tradition of burning way too many candles to honor dead people. The result... free parafin... lol.

Keep those pictures comming

more pictures... diy solutions

we calculated the kneebraces wrong and had to adjust them....
and made more frankenstein solutions....

pausing the beams on the ruin and adding a middle beam as floor support (dovetail connection)

fixing the floor (1rst floor)

the father of a friend that is professional welder helped by making a special long bit, so we could secure the beams with nails.

after we leveled and screwed the floor on top.

Is the roof built now? I hope you can beat the winter rain.

We slowly continue... still trying to get the roof done for rainy season comes... Here you never know when it will start....
We are still quite lucky

With the tripod used as A-frame or “shears”, tied down with an anchor point, we could easily elevate the beams up the structure. Every beam needs still a bit of work, so it was an easy technique to be able to move the beam up and down, while working on the last cm/mm.

If you are looking for inspiring examples of DIY scaffolding and cranes: https://riversonghousewright.wordpress.com/about/17-improvised-scaffolding-cranes/

Wow! This is great to see your project coming to life! Keep posting pics, cant wait to see this finished!

we continue, trying to use the last sunny days of november to finish the roof...
some pics from last weeks

some more pics from a while ago

forgot to resize the pics on the first post, it took ages...
here some more

we acually changed the plan for the roof a while ago, but i just have sketchup on the other computer, can't upload it now, so the next pictures don't fit with the previous sketchup plan

trying a different type of bracing with halflaps instead of tenon/mortises, faster to make, probably not as resistant...

the roof will be single sloped facing sun rise and away from the tree next to it

Looking good, can't wait to see it finished!

I got to the other computer to get the sketchup updated plan

connectiuons for the middle bents,

we got a good deal for square 6x8cm beams for the roof, so the plan had to change again because instead of one middle bent we needed two

2 middle roof bents ready

preparing the rafters

rafters conected