Who says you can't build on stilts?

[OlJarhead]

Not sure if this pic will show up but if it does it pretty much says it all



I lived in Ocean Falls from 1977 (school year 77-78) through 1979 (78/79 year) and never once gave thought the pier foundations but sure thought the wooden roads were cool   Still do.

This suggests to me that maybe a little extra work on a post and pier and it ought to be just fine   After all, these houses were built on a hill side in a place that could get 20 FEET of rain a year!

[OlJarhead]

Come to think of it, our house had a basement.  I believe, if memory serves, that it was only partly cement with some rock outcroppings and some dirt then the walls off the house were built on top of that.  The front was VERY tall but the back you could easily jump out or climb in a window -- it was that steep.  I'll look for a pic of our house.

[OlJarhead]

For those interested the town is called 'Ocean Falls' and is mostly gone now   You can see a LOT of pics on the Ocean Falls...Where's That? page on Facebook.

[speedfunk]

Cool!!  Thanks for sharing those  pics!

[John Raabe]

Here's a more modern pic of questionable structural integrity...



This place has recently had some bracing and pier work done but the deck is still closed to the public.
That's a big deck. It might hold 100 people (at least for awhile!)

[OlJarhead]

Wow!

In the case of Ocean Falls their foundations seemed pretty sturdy and lasted a LONG LONG time   Today most is gone now though because the town was shut down.

Our roads were even made of wood and on post and pier type foundations -- and yes trucks drove on them!

[John Raabe]

Here's a picture of some of the unstable slopes we have here on Whidbey Island, WA



Soil saturation of glacial till. Of course, with this kind of movement in the soil it doesn't make much difference what type of foundation you have... you're surfing a BIG wave all the way to the beach.

[OlJarhead]

Yikes!  In the case of Ocean Falls it was all pretty much Granite.

[Don_P]

Doubtful they were "post and pier". "To a hammer everything is a nail", there are many different types of foundations that appear to the layman to be a pier, thus the admonition to hire an engineer when considering these foundations.

Fully loaded moving trains drive across elevated piles... The first generation of those bridges failed miserably. Without understanding the forces and methods of restraint a person has better than average odds of building that type of structure.

[MountainDon]

Fully loaded moving trains ....

...an opening for thread drift!     The first roadways and even wood trestle bridges for the first railroads across the prairies and the western mountains were intentionally built "on the cheap" in order to get the track down, the freight and passenger business moving and the cash rolling in. Then with the cash flow they went back and rebuilt most everything. Sort of a strange way of doing things but it did get the tracks in place quickly. This intentional method of temporary followed by the permanent is not the standard practice in cabin building as there is no expected cash flow other than the type than simply drains the owner builders wallet/checkbook. At least there is no point to doing a cabin or a home in that manner.

[OlJarhead]

...an opening for thread drift!     The first roadways and even wood trestle bridges for the first railroads across the prairies and the western mountains were intentionally built "on the cheap" in order to get the track down, the freight and passenger business moving and the cash rolling in. Then with the cash flow they went back and rebuilt most everything. Sort of a strange way of doing things but it did get the tracks in place quickly. This intentional method of temporary followed by the permanent is not the standard practice in cabin building as there is no expected cash flow other than the type than simply drains the owner builders wallet/checkbook. At least there is no point to doing a cabin or a home in that manner.

Government interference.  The Government offered to pay an amount per mile of track laid to certain builders so they laid track like mad.  It's skewed the typical business model and resulted in things that would not normally be done.

[John Raabe]

I don't think we need to be too judgemental about choices that were made in earlier times. The values were totally different then and we would have made different choices then as well. In fact, if you remember back, we did too! I remember sliding around the car on plastic seat covers with no seat belt and a solid metal dash. That was not anything that was considered risky then. We never had helmets when riding a bike, and you can think of many other things we did then that are no longer considered safe. We weren't stupid or reckless or uncaring then - it was a different physical and social environment. We also all lived through it.

So, for instance, take the 1890's in Western Washington - timber (straight grain clear fir) was just big trees getting in the way of opening up the land. Look at this bridge. This would be a very costly way to build today.



Homesteads moving from temporary camps, to more permanent cabins, to a fully modern house is still a workable model of incrementalism. I recently pulled out a fine old book about cabin building by Time Life books A fun read. It's about first stage incremental building.

Incrementalism and constant upgrading is part of the nature of civilization. We can't really do it any other way.

No matter how up to date we build now it will soon be off spec, and a little later, in need of upgrading. In the meantime life goes on and we do what we can in the world we find ourselves in.

[MountainDon]

That's filling the gorge with whatever is handy. Amazing to see. Somewhat like dumping rock and dirt fill to make a road across. Or filling a series of ever rising forms with concrete to make a dam

[John Raabe]

Yep, the Elwha restoration project outside of Port Angeles is tearing down just such a dam. The hard working project engineers who put it up never could have foreseen a time when wild rivers were seen as more important than electricity and irrigation.

[Carla_M]

I boggy areas they used to cut trees and lay them across what was to be the roadway. Keep on adding trees as needed. It made for a rough wagon ride but I guess that was better then sinking into the bog.