Robert Schmitt

I’m planning on building a roundwood/pole barn house on sloping ground. I wanted to hear y’all’s thoughts on using wood piers to create a floor/level building platform versus having the poles extend from the footings all the way up the height of the structure, and hanging the floor from that with either timber frame joinery or metal fasteners (sorry if I’m not making sense; I mean hanging it the way you might hang a loft floor off your posts in a pole barn).

On the one hand, most everyone seems to first build a platform foundation and then put the timber frame structure on that. I imagine this is because the measurements and anssembly are much easier once you have a level building surface.

My concern, though, is that I’m in hurricane/high wind country, and doesn’t making a floor/platform structure separate from the main walls and roof create an additional hinge point? Or is the danger of this/advantage of having a single post span footer-to-roof negligible when you properly secure the structure to your platform?  

I live in the Deep South (Florida-Alabama border), and I’m trying to decide what species of timber to use for lath in a lath and plaster building… we don’t have chestnut or white oak down here (except live oak and post oak, neither of which really split into laths because they’re so twisted). I probably don’t have access to enough cedar.  I have access to everything in the southern red oak group (water oak, laurel oak, southern red oak, etc), which are generally considered not very rot resistant, and tulip poplar which is likewise not very rot resistant. I have unlimited access to any southern yellow pine species.  

Does the species used for lath matter much, or is it the anti-microbial action of the lime plaster that gives lath and plaster its durability? I’m terribly worried about rot since it’s so warm and humid here, but if the line effectively counteracts that and the wood species isn’t really important, maybe I’m overthinking it?