The Sustainability Review:
Rough Sawn Wood

I’m sitting in the unfinished house this morning next to the masonry heater while I burn one of the several “curing” fires, enjoying its warmth as I write this. I was trying to think of my topic this month and it dawned on me to write about the wood in the house. Lahde and I have pretty strong feelings about wood and where it comes from so we tried as hard as we could to source our wood from what we felt were appropriate sources. Our desires were the following:

1. Locally milled from sustainably harvested trees
2. FSC certified (Forest Stewardship Council, www.fsc.org, generally speaking this is an independent group that certifies lumber products as sustainable; see the Buyer Be Fair movie at the Moscow Library)
3. Purchased from a small company or individual
4. Salvaged if possible from old buildings
5. Good quality and suitable to the Building Code

We were able to meet many of these desires in the house specifically with the siding, roof rafters and most of the structural beams and posts. I’ll talk more about the finish wood in an upcoming article.

First off we’ll talk about the structural wood. We talked with a friend of ours, Jack Carpenter, about milling the wood for our house last fall from trees from his 160 acres on Moscow Mountain. Jack has a bandsaw mill and wants to produce lumber for a living. His forests are managed in a sustainable manner and are located 3 drainages over from our place. He was happy to do this for us and we set to work with Kurt of 3 Little Pigs Design-Build on figuring out what we needed.

Kurt did the structural calculations for the house and presented us with a timber list that Jack worked from. The timbers are all sizes including 6x6, 4x10, 6x12, etc. All of the timbers are Douglas Fir, specified to meet a #2 or better structural rating for code compliance. In order for the building department to view wood as acceptable it must either be graded (by a licensed timber grader) or deemed acceptable by a licensed engineer. We went the local route since graders aren’t readily available.

Working with the wood was definitely different then working with kiln dried wood from the local building supply. Since much of the wood was green or had been downed for several months we knew it was going to shrink so this had to be taken into account. Twisting and checking were also going to happen as well as sap dripping and staining of the wood. None of this posed a huge problem although we spent more time working with the wood than you would have with an engineered wood product.

The siding of the house is from Jack as well and is made from blued ponderosa pine. The boards have the same color as your typical pine but contain streaks of blue through them from a fungus the trees get. Many larger mills view this is as undesirable and don’t sell this wood. Jack views this wood as beautiful and wants to market it specifically.

Lahde and I have always liked this wood and to have the opportunity to side our house with it was a dream come true. We chose to go with a board and batten style with boards ranging from 1x8" to 1x14" with a smaller 2-1/4” batten. As of this writing Kurt and Steve are almost done with the siding.

We don’t intend to treat the wood with anything other than time and the elements. We enjoy the silvery patina of weathered pine and like the idea of not re-treating our house periodically with toxic products to keep it looking new. The weathered wood also blends into its surroundings better in our opinion.

Mike and family are enjoying the winter in the yurt but are looking forward to the less fluctuating temperature of a well-built house.

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