A Mortgage-Free, Owner-Built Cordwood Castle

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With the design roughed out, I was able to start working up an accurate materials and tools list, hoping that costs would come within our budget. Unexpected price increases just weren't on the menu. If any did occur, we'd have to do our best to work around them ... since—without loans—we had no other choice.

ONE PIECE AT A TIME

Though almost any debarked and dried softwood is considered acceptable for stack wall construction, we chose to use red cedar for practical and aesthetic reasons. For one, it offers fine insulating qualities (with an R-value of about 1.25 per inch, or 6 times that of common brick) in addition to being naturally decay-resistant. Too, it has a light, pleasant appearance, a refreshing fragrance, and—most important to us—it is readily available at reasonable cost here in northern Wisconsin.

As it turned out, we had to get the equivalent of a 14-cord supply from four different sources that we located through a newspaper ad and the state Department of Natural Resources. The forest service folks generously provided the names of some timber cutters who'd applied for cedar permits. I bargained with them for most of the wood, and hauled it off myself for an average of $25 an uncut cord!

Fortunately, the entire supply was already dry, and, for the most part, debarked. I made a peeling spud to strip the stubborn trunks and rented a cutoff saw to trim the timbers down to uniform 12-1/2"-long rounds ... splitting the thickest of these to aid the drying process. The straightest and soundest logs were cut to 8' lengths and squared on two sides to become the post-and-beam framework of the cordwood walls.

With that out of the way, we were free to jump right into construction, starting at the bottom. Our foundation was a conventional 30' X 40' insulated concrete floating slab, poured by a local contractor and finished with an anchorbolted framework of pressure-treated 2 X 12's. The cedar posts—set wherever possible on 8' centers—rested on these sill plates and were tied together at their upper ends with doubled 2 X 10 top plates. Door and window openings were, likewise, framed with treated dimensional lumber. Erecting our home's structural skeleton was actually easier than we thought it'd be and demanded only the most basic of carpentry tools and skills. We had the entire frame up in no time and were eager to start "mudding up" the walls.

Choosing the correct mortar mix is perhaps the most critical aspect of cordwood construction. I discovered in my reading (and through some personal experimentation) that the proper combination of ingredients is crucial for success. One author-builder, Rob Roy, suggested using sawdust to improve the insulating qualities of the wall and make the mortar set better, so I included it in my recipe ... which consisted of 3 parts fine sand, 1 part portland cement, 1 part hydrated lime, 3 parts damp sawdust, and enough water to make a thick, workable mud. This timetested ratio looks nice (it has an off-white color), sets up applies to the financing, not to the owner-builder's spirit! slowly (a masonry plus), holds a tight bond to the wood rounds, and, in theory, provides a better insulative barrier against the cold than a wood-free mortar blend.

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