Inventive use of whole trees in these owner/designed/built structures.

[John Raabe]

A slide show of interesting work

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/04/garden/20091105-tree-slideshow_index.html

[MountainDon]

 

[FrankInWI]

I think many in thie group would appreciate this

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/04/garden/20091105-tree-slideshow_2.html

[MountainDon]

Great minds.... and all that Frank.    

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=7903.msg101162#msg101162


John beat you by 3 hours 1 minute.  

(I merged Frank's topic with John's for ease of following the though)

[Whitlock]

With that title I thought???the post was going to be more about buildings like this-


http://www.alamedainfo.com/redwood_trees_pg_2.htm

[Sassy]

Way cool!  I really like the ladder & railing for the loft   

[speedfunk]

damn cool that is. 

This is  one of my favourites! Reference link Simondale.net

[Don_P]

The reciprocal roofs are pretty neat. I was playing with some sticks the other day and mocked one up, then stood on it.


This is another earlier frame based on similar concepts, this is DaVinci's temporary bridge. I realized some purlins and common rafters formed an acceptable roof. This could be a bent constructed clearspan house frame of small diameter logs.

[poppy]

So Don, is the pic. before or after you stood on it? 

Gotta like DaVinci.  I have always wondered how one could incorporate a bridge design into a house structure.

Do you have too much time on your hands?

[Don_P]

Even better, no TV 

That roof held, but I could tell it was heavily overloaded. I  had mocked it up to try to understand how they work. There is one in speedfunk's post above. I then calculated the breaking load on the model roof system and realized it was mighty close. I stood on it and had my wife start handing me books. Low tech but this is what it looks like after failure, a bending and then horizontal shear failure. I did several more and had all bending failures.



I gotta admit, in the wintertime, kindling is coming in and it just doesn't seem right not to play with it one last time  .

This is another "hand in hand" frame. The floor system in Independence Hall is based on this beam arrangement.


The concept behind these is neat, they are self supporting. A reciprocal frame is a "closed circuit which is self supporting". In old floor designs it was a 2 dimensional structure often called "grillage". In more recent designs roofs are being framed in 3 dimensions.

At our snow load I figured up a small carport type structure out of logs on the DaVinci model. At ~24' wide x 16' deep it would take 3 bents using 6" minimum dia logs 10' long. 21 of those, 12 long purlin logs and rafter logs. Not a large pile, and of forest thinnings diameter.

[speedfunk]

Don, I find it impressive that it held you up, per scale thats alot of downward force.  I've always wanted a nice circular earthbag walled cabin (read 16' diameter) with a reciprocal roof of raw logs.  A nice, strong structure.  I wonder how deb feels about packing bags with earth