Son bought a underground house

The cordwood should be fairly dry when you use it to build with. Most of those houses have wide/deep eves to help prevent rain from hitting the building and soaking the wood. Most of the wood is covered, so only the very ends are exposed to moisture. So maybe not as much movement as you may think.

Supposed to use soft wood like pine.

wyoDreamer said:

The cordwood should be fairly dry when you use it to build with. Most of those houses have wide/deep eves to help prevent rain from hitting the building and soaking the wood. Most of the wood is covered, so only the very ends are exposed to moisture. So maybe not as much movement as you may think.

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My experience tell me "real" wood moves around an aweful lot with the seasons especially hardwood. i
t srinks in the winter air and swells in the humid summer air. A full "log" irregardless of length, will most definitely move in diameter but not in length.

I'm with Bay on this one, a good rot resistant softwood that's not subject to much movement, like white pine or cedar would be the way to go for cordwood walls. The worst would be hardwoods that have very little rot resistance such as ash, cotton wood, hackberry, poplar.

I really only have experience with midwestern and right coast lumber though, so I'm excluding left coast lumber.

Never heard of right coast and left coast, lol. It took me a second read to get it, bean one of those days.
I am upper-mid-west. We only use cotton-wood and pople for carving or making model planes. Ash, cottonwood, hackberry, poplar, pine and birch are typically campfire wood - not even used for firewood in the house. Why use crap wood when we have oak and maple for firewood.
The couple of cordwood buildings I have seen were built by raiding the firewood pile - so mostly oak and maple, and mostly split logs. One had wine bottles added to the walls for sh_ts-and-giggles. They allow light in without having windows.
They seem to be holding up to the environment well. No wall failures yet.

DH & I built a cedar log cabin over 20 yrs ago. It's still standing well! The logs were fitted to one another & bolted together. If weather took that thing down there wasn't going to be much of anything, anywhere.... Sure was nice. I go by it maybe once a yr for the memories.

I bet that was a lot of work!

wyoDreamer said:

Never heard of right coast and left coast, lol. It took me a second read to get it, bean one of those days.
I am upper-mid-west. We only use cotton-wood and pople for carving or making model planes. Ash, cottonwood, hackberry, poplar, pine and birch are typically campfire wood - not even used for firewood in the house. Why use crap wood when we have oak and maple for firewood.
The couple of cordwood buildings I have seen were built by raiding the firewood pile - so mostly oak and maple, and mostly split logs. One had wine bottles added to the walls for sh_ts-and-giggles. They allow light in without having windows.
They seem to be holding up to the environment well. No wall failures yet.

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Left coast / right coast used to be more true but as of late the lines are more blurry since New York City is slowly becoming more and more like San Fransicko every day. San Fransicko used to be beatuful, its the subject of many a song/book/dreams but fast forward till today, now they got a cell phone app "snapcrap" to help you identify piles of human crap on its sidewalks and streets, I **** you not - no phun intended.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/amp/SnapCrap-app-San-Francisco-poop-feces-dirty-street-13281837.php


Maple and red oak has no rot resistance. The heart wood of white oak is highly rot resisant and stable but the sapwood is not rot resistant at all.

When i lived In North Carolina they would ring (cut shallow all the way around the bottom of the trunk also called girdling) white oaks and leave standing and let the bugs eat the sap wood over a few seasons. They then would harvest whats left the heart wood for fence posts that lasted many decades.

Thus article may help https://thecraftsmanblog.com/choosing-rot-resistant-wood/

Mini Horses said:

DH & I built a cedar log cabin over 20 yrs ago. It's still standing well! The logs were fitted to one another & bolted together. If weather took that thing down there wasn't going to be much of anything, anywhere.... Sure was nice. I go by it maybe once a yr for the memories.

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Peeled cedar is a great wood for that purpose. Highly rot resistant both Heartwood and sapwood but especially the heartwood. Also it's a natural insect repellent beside for carpenter Bess. Carpenter bees prefer to tunnel into cedar more so than any other wood for some reason. Maybe because other insects stay away and won't eat their eggs??? IDK, just a thought...

Linochka said:

I have a broken air conditioner, and I need to install new HVAC. Does anyone know a service that can do this?

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@Chic Rustler this is up your alley

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