# Self Sufficiency/Living off the Land or Off the Grid > General Homesteading >  Building pièce-en-pièce

## wildWoman

This is basically a post and beam style of log building. It's great for remote locations because you're working with short log sections that one or two people can lift. The uprights are the load bearing logs, and the fillers basically just that - fillers. The uprights are grooved on two sides and the fillers notched accordingly, to fit into the groove of the uprights.
The fillers could be scribed. We milled them two-sided with an Alaskan mill.

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## Rick

I'm not a log cabin builder but when I was up there a couple of different folks told me that cabins had to settle for a year. I recall that if paneling was used inside that it had to overlap because the logs would settle and crack the paneling. Can anyone respond to that?

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## Camp10

Logs move quite a bit as they are aging.  I dont know if it is settling as much as it is drying and shrinking but there is quite a bit of movement the first year.  I helped my FIL build a log home for one of his customers about 15 years ago.  He has never build another and I dont think you could pay him enough to take one on.

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## BENESSE

WW, it's really good to know that there's something only one or two people can build that's of any substance.
What do you set the vertical load-bearing logs in & how deep?
Do you use anything (insulation?) between the horizontal logs?

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## randyt

that's a awesome looking building method.

here's a quickie storage shed I built using that method. it's rough but keeps my stuff dry.
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## rwc1969

That's my vision of a dream home in the woods WW.

Rick, I've never built anything like this, but I did design one once and had read to leave gaps above doors and windows for settling/ shrinkage. I have no idea if that's accurate or not.

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## wildWoman

> I'm not a log cabin builder but when I was up there a couple of different folks told me that cabins had to settle for a year. I recall that if paneling was used inside that it had to overlap because the logs would settle and crack the paneling. Can anyone respond to that?


Oh, just summer people or fancy lodge owners would bother with inside panelling  :Smile:  I don't know anybody who has panelled walls here. The reality for locals or anybody slapping together their own cabin is that you put up your walltent, build the cabin small enough out of green logs to be done before the snow flies, move in and the logs do their thing as you heat over the winter.
With this method, you'll end up with some gaps between the fillers themselves because they are so short and as a result, not heavy. A cabin built in this style will probably settle more unevenly (lean a bit out to the side or have more gaps in one wall than another) because basically, each wall section of fillers does their own thing.

Benesse, building on your own is absolutely doable, no matter if you're male or female and no matter if you've built anything before or not. It's not very complicated, just a lot of hard work. But you grow with the demands. 
The vertical logs are toe-nailed to the sill logs, which are three-sided 7"x7" logs. There are not many large trees up where we are. Underneath the sill logs, in the spots where the vertical logs are, stumps carry the load down to cement foundation pads (the stumps are necessary because the cabin sits on a slope). These are pretty small, about 2'x2'x1' deep, and the ground underneath is a mixture of rock and gravelly soil - so frost heaves/drainage is not an issue at our site.
We originally put spaghnum moss and wool between the logs. By now, the walls are permachinked on the outside. A cheaper way to keep out drafts is actually to mix up fine sawdust with carpenter's glue and linseed oil, chink with that, let it dry, and just apply a thin coating of log jam or perma chink over that - saves hugely on the (excellent but terribly expensive) commercial stuff and works just as well. But we only figured that one out by the time we built the addition...

Randy, that looks beautiful! Great job on the rafters, too! Are you going to build a cabin too?

rwc, with this building method you don't have to leave much extra room for settling because the filler logs above the windows and door are resting in the notch of the uprights. We only cut a groove into the uprights by the windows and doors as far as we wanted the fillers to settle - so basically, all the way alongside the window and door frames, there is no groove in the uprights, it only starts above the frames, where the top fillers get slotted in.
For regular log buildings built with horizontal logs only, the settling space is necessary, though, because there are no posts to keep the horizontal logs from settling down.

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## rwc1969

Cool, I like that design.

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## gryffynklm

I'm not sure about Log building but Timber framers recommend that you ether age your timbers 8 to 12 weeks if i remember correctly before building or if you build in green timbers (very heavy) the frame should stand for a season to allow the timbers to shrink and dry before you close in the building. Major problems with checking can occur if you close in too soon and then heat the building. Like mentioned above the shrinkage will cause gaps resulting in drafts and leaks.

Here is a link of the building I was going to build, Yep the goof is me. http://www.kfhume.freeserve.co.uk/pa...tshopframe.htm

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## your_comforting_company

you are one amazing gal. Nice work, and thanks for the info!!

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## Rick

Thanks, WW. Maybe it was windows and doors like Camp said. Been a while. Anyway, great job and very nice view. A couple of more questions. 

1. Is the ladder on the roof for snow removal? 

2. At the peak it appears there is a metal pole extending up and beyond the picture. On the far side of cabin beyond the pole there appears to be another one. I'm having some trouble with depth on that one. I can't tell if it's out beyond the cabin or next to it. Just curious what they are.

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## crashdive123

I'm guessing that a satellite dish sits atop the pole on the near side of the cabin.

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## wildWoman

> I'm not sure about Log building but Timber framers recommend that you ether age your timbers 8 to 12 weeks if i remember correctly before building or if you build in green timbers (very heavy) the frame should stand for a season to allow the timbers to shrink and dry before you close in the building. Major problems with checking can occur if you close in too soon and then heat the building. Like mentioned above the shrinkage will cause gaps resulting in drafts and leaks.


That's true, I've heard it's best to either build with green logs because then at least they'll settle and dry into the spots they're meant to go or else use logs aged for a year. 
If you log your trees in the winter (recommended up north anyway because you can skid them out with a snowmoblie to the building site), they end up sitting around for a few months but don't do much drying even if you skin a few strips out of the bark. We peeled and milled the logs for the upper storey and the roof first and so they ended up drying some until we were far enough along to put them in, but they still do a bit of checking.
In a lot of cases, the ideal scenario just isn't doable. The less ideal one works fine, too  :Smile: 

ycc, anyone who wants to can do it. It's just a matter of wanting things bad enough, nothing special about it.

Rick, the ladder continues down the other side of the roof where the second stove pipe comes through. It's mounted there to clean the chimney.
The smaller pole by the ladder holds up the HF radio antenna and the long pole has the VHF radio antenna mounted to it.

Crash, our satellite internet dish will go on the roof one day since every year, it's facing these wildlife encounters:

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## wildWoman

When we built the cabin, there wasn't much information out there about the actual details of this building method. The descriptions we could find all said to set up the uprights first and then slot the fillers in from the top, using a sledgehammer to drive them down. This seemed overly complicated to us because you'd have to brace the uprights to not push them out of plumb as you're whacking the fillers down, and what do you do if one gets hung up crooked midway?

What worked for us was starting with one corner upright, as seen in the picture of the first post, and slotting the fillers in on both sides. We carved 2"x2" nobs out of the centre butt ends of the fillers to fit into the 2"x2" groove of the uprights. Using a level and a mark on the sill logs where the centre of the fillers should be, we stacked up the filler logs keeping them plumb by the nobs of their butt ends, nailing them down as we went. Every three, four fillers or so we'd heave the next upright into poistion and check that the groove fit the nobs of the fillers. Once all the fillers of one section were in pace, we'd toenail the upright to the sill logs and continue on the other side of it with the next fillers. In this manner, we completed one wall section after the other.
In the places where because of doors and windows the fillers would have been only 2' long or less, we used only uprights instead - a lot faster than cutting twelve little fillers.

The uprights are connected on top by tie beams. Because of the groove cut into the uprights, the uprights should be the biggest, sturdiest logs you have. Our 2"x2" groove was just our best guess at what would work, we also couldn't find info on what other people had done. Basically, go by the diametre of your logs and use common sense.

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## Rick

10-4 on the radio antennas.




> by the nobs of their butt


Nothing fancy. I just thought it was funny takin' it out of context.

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## LowKey

Some of the prefab cabins I've been looking at use wall panels built similar to this method.
I'm wondering, if you don't have logs big enough to slot grooves into, would it be just as effective to use two uprights at each end of the wall and stack the logs between them? Seems like less fitting, though you would have to securely fasten the tops of the uprights together with metal straps or cables to keep them from splaying when settling.

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## crashdive123

Goodness knows that we NEVER take anything out of context around here. :Creepy:

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## wildWoman

> Nothing fancy. I just thought it was funny takin' it out of context.


 :Thumbup1:  I think the correct lingo for the nobs is tenons, but nobs, butts and grooves provides a better mental picture...

Lowkey, you could simply skip the whole groove-nob business and nail the fillers into the (ungrooved) uprights. That also works but seems to create way bigger gaps, at least with green lumber, because the fillers can't settle downward. They also seem to twist more because nails don't provide as much rigidity as a mortise and tenon joint, if the groove-nob thing can be called that.
The main comparison I have is between our cabin and those of friends who simply nailed everything together. They average 1" gaps and bigger between the logs. Our gaps are nil to 1/2".
Either way, the uprights definitely need to be nailed to tie beams on top. If an upper floor goes on top, the floor joists would sit in the tie beams and provide more rigidity, otherwise the rafters should be set so that a snowload pushing down on the roof will not spread or push the uprights out of plumb. Using crossbracing for the rafters underneath your ridge pole would help with that.

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## randyt

I first seen this method on a bar we rebuilt on mackinac island. the bar was over 200 years old. I though it was cool so when I needed a little shed I gave it a try. I was building my cabin and when it came time to finish the floor I needed a place to store my tools and what not. my method is really really rough compared to yours. 

the cabins I have built have been notched corners. most of them has chinking of lime mortar, thin wood chinking or small pole chinking. I've worked on a few full scribe homes but that method seemed to time consuming. 

I find all log building very interesting.

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## your_comforting_company

thank you for bringing this information. I do have a question tho, about using earth as the roofing material. I've heard tales of a man who lived in a cabin with a goat staked to the roof lol.

You milled all this lumber with a chainsaw? 
Can you give approximate dimensions of the living space? cabins were meant to be small, and your's looks kinda roomy.. like you might have room for one more??  :Wink:

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## Rick

Her boy friend is with the Canadian Rangers. He's tough as nails and knows how to brain tan, YCC. Be very careful lest you wind up a lamp shade.

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## your_comforting_company

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It's too cold up there for me anyway. yeah. cold. brrr.

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## wildWoman

:Lol:  I'll keep you in mind in case my sweetie bites the dust prematurely!

The cabin is 16'X26' but we built it in two installments: the righthand part with the upper storey first, and a couple of years later we put the addition on. It was all planned differently originally, so the set-up is actually stupid now because it's hard to heat the two rooms in the winter. We were going to build another cabin but scratched that idea now (getting old and lazy, I guess); we'll take more of the dividing wall out instead so we have one large room downstairs and then put a bigger stove in the middle. One day. Eventually.

We did mill everything with the chainsaw (Husky 365), plus the lumber for a sauna, shed, greenhouse, walltent frame and boat dock. The smaller Huskies seem to be crap but this one has been holding up really good. In retrospective, we should have bought a small portable mill, I think they're better on gas and waste less wood, so you don't end up with quite as much sawdust. But hindsight is always 20-20...

Sod roofs are possible but I don't know if I'd put it on this kind of building because the load is incredibly heavy, especially with snow and water. You'd have to have really beefy purlins and rafters.

Randy, your shed sure doesn't look crude to me! You just slotted the fillers in differently and left the logs round, right? I know people who live in cabins much, much worse than your shed.

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## crashdive123

WW - do you save all of the saw dust from milling to use as insulation and chinking?

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## wildWoman

We used some of it for chinking the addition and I used it as insulation for the duckhouse (oh yeah, milled the lumber for that too), but there is still an awful lot of it around. I'm also using a bit as litter for the ducks but it takes ages to compost and makes the compost more acidic, so we do that sparingly. We still have mounds of it lying around.
Using it as insulation is tricky because it settles so much - you'd have to be able to refill it somehow. Also I don't know about the fire danger; although with a log building, I don't know if that would make a big difference. I guess once it burns, it burns.
But it's neat - years ago, I helped renovate an old firehall in the closest village. It was a frame building insulated with sawdust and when we jacked it up, the hundred-year old sawdust came pouring out: not a mouse dropping in it! They can't tunnel into it, obviously. That was really neat to see. It looked like brand spanking new.

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## randyt

> Randy, your shed sure doesn't look crude to me! You just slotted the fillers in differently and left the logs round, right? I know people who live in cabins much, much worse than your shed.


that's what I basically did was slot the beams with a chain saw and then cut the ends of the horizontals to a wedge shape. 

to live in would require some serious chinking and skirting and I mean serious. LOL

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