Chord wood or Stack Wood masonary homes

[bewarner]

Does anyone have any experience with chordwood or stackwood masonary homes?? My wife and I are harvesting hardwood logs as of current to build one, we have access to a HUGE amount. our plans are for a 100 X 40 house

[Backwoods_Bob]

My wife and I were goning to build a cordwood cottage untill we discoverd load bearing straw bale, and built that way instead.

We did build ourselves a big wood shed out of cordwood though.

I experimented with all kinds of morta mixes while doing it, and came to the conclution that an ordianry mix of portland, lime and sand was best and to skip all the sawdust additions and what-not.

For a framework we set 4x6 treated timbers where the corners would be, laid a treated 2x6 right on the ground between them and started laying up the cordwood.

We hammerd nails into the posts about halfway in. The bit sticking out keyed the mortar to the upright posts well.

We did get plenty of cracking of the mortar. I expect that was because we were building on a newly filled site without a proper foundation so it all settled a bit.

For wood we used a mix of cedar and tamarac and so forth.
Some of the wood shrunk, despite that it was all well seasoned to start with.

I reckon that for an air tight home you'd have to plaster the inside with gypsum plaster.

Because this was a shed and not a home we used nine inch long logs and a single seven inch ( or so ) wide mortar bed.

Look at my post about our ferro-cement tool shed and you can see our cordwood woodshed!