William Bailie

In case it begins to dilapidate and I'm no longer using it, or I sell it and the buyer wants it torn down.

It cost me a few hundred dollars to dispose of the vinyl siding and asphalt roofing on the collapsed garage that was here when I bought the house. Not to mention the mess. Would've been easier, faster, and way cheaper to just bury it lol.

Thanks Gerry. I got a very reasonable quote on metal roofing today, so I think I'll do that. I'm surprised, it's only about 20% more than what asphalt shingles would cost me.

Hey guys, thanks for all your help so far.

I'm thinking about the roof now. I hate heights but am pretty comfortable on the 4 on 12 slope on my back porch, so I'm thinking I'll do a simple 4 on 12 shed roof. This is a roof I'd be pretty comfortable getting on for installation, maintenance, etc.

But the roofing material is eluding me. Asphalt shingles are the cheap and obvious answer, but as I said I like the idea of just being able to tear the structure down and bury it.

A 4 on 12 is too shallow for straw thatch to work properly.

Cedar shakes aren't hard to find, but expensive. Could try to source logs and split my own, I do believe I've seen some Eastern red cedar around. But I've never done it before, not sure how tricky the technique is. Looked simple enough in a video. Also not sure what that long bladed axe I saw in the video I watched is called, or how much that would cost.

While thinking about this, I realized my porch floor has a mild slope. So do most of the Victorian to Edwardian era houses in the area, including the one I grew up in. Google confirms that this was once a standard practice, to allow draining of rain. The floor boards are just 1x4 tongue and groove pine, finished in oil based paint.
So any reason why cheaply sourced pine or eastern hemlock, brushed with a borax treatment and coated with a good oil based deck stain, couldn't be expected to hold up well as long as I take care to minimize areas that gunk can collect, sweep it off a couple times a year, and restain when the color begins to fade? Besides the solvents, is there anything in common deck stains that's particularly bad?

These aren't long posts, they're logs cut to around 2ft length. I'd say that the biggest is nearly 3' in diameter. I only have a couple near that size, because the tree split into three main branches at about 5ft up. I might just use the biggest log as a foundation for my anvil, and set the second biggest aside for carving a chair. Most of the rest weigh under 80lbs and I should be able to set them down gently. I'd really like to avoid pouring new concrete for a structure that might well only stand for another decade anyway, so I guess I can just hunt down some fallen branches to make up for the loss of those huge space-taking logs.

Thanks for the link Gerry, I've read a bit of that so far but am not done.

Daniel, some of the Willow logs I have are quite massive - the tree was over a century old and was actually mentioned as denoting the SW corner of my property on the 19th century deed. How will earthbags hold up to having about 200lb dropped right on them? And how big of a drainage area do you recommend for a 2' wide, 4' deep, and 60' long trench (the area I'm planning to build is quite flat near the bottom of a hill, and I was planning to berm the area around the shed). Are those drainage bags essentially just gravel in a sandbag?

Thanks for the information, Gerry.

I watched some videos demonstrating deadmen and think I have a pretty good idea of what to do there. Most of them mentioned using nails, spikes, or wire to hold into the cob; could I just use fastened perpendicular boards instead?

I'm trying to keep the cost low as possible (I've only saved a few hundred towards this project, and any cost savings means buying blacksmithing tools sooner), so I'm hesitant to buy these books - are there any good online resources you can point me towards?

(Hi guys, I'm new here.)

I live in CNY, about 20mi south of Lake Ontario. It's very windy and wet here, with heavy snowfall, and it seems like a lot of other Earth building resources focus on building in warm, arid regions. My soil has very poor drainage, so I'm thinking I likely have a clay-rich subsoil. I'll do a jar test when it warms up a little.

I'm building the shed mostly for a place to build a forge in to experiment with metalworking (although I'll also be storing the lawnmower in there to get it out from under my porch), so I've been looking at options for low-cost fire-resistant walls and arrived at cobwood, which interested me for two reasons:
1) I intend to sell this property if I can ever afford a better one, so that it can be demolished and buried on-site is good.
2) I'm interested in cobwood specifically because I'd like to start building in the spring, which might make sourcing straw difficult, and also because I have a nature-felled Willow I need something to do with anyway.

My main question is the foundation - it seems like a concrete foundation is just simply my best option given the wetness, poor drainage, etc. Are there any other better options besides stone (there's a gravel pit nearby, but I have no idea where to source larger stone locally. I'm also looking to do this cheaply, and have no clue how much stone costs, but I do know how much concrete costs).

I already have a fairly large pile of waste concrete (I've only kept it around because a neighbor was picking off it to build a retaining wall). I don't think it will be enough to do the entire foundation if I just stack it, though. So can I break this up into small pieces, wet it, and use it to stretch new concrete mix? Or am I best off just pouring all new concrete? Or maybe pouring new concrete to ground level, and stacking this with mortar for a stone-like appearance?
(I can always use this concrete for the floor, so I'm fine with not using it for the foundation, but I'd rather use it there if I can)

Also, what's the best way to affix a wood-framed roof to a cobwood structure? Just set a 2x6 or something in the top to fasten to, and drive some spikes into the wood? Or cob around a frame mounted to the foundation (and does this frame need standard stud spacing, or is a wider spacing acceptable)?