Posted on 03/15/2016 3:27:45 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp
The sort of thing that makes you yearn for a simpler time. Take a moment to relax and admire this man's work. You're Welcome.
The floor of that cabin will be dry rotted before the guy gets a roof on.
“It was probably harder and more expensive to get nails back in those days”
That was part of it, the other being that nails and other metal items were unnecessary. This is in a part of eastern Mississippi that had been opened up for white settlement after the Choctaw signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.
The log house was built in breezeway style with the kitchen separate from the main structure, so that if the kitchen caught fire the main house was safe.
“It certainly appears more sturdy built than would a regular sawed board and nailed structure.”
Interlocking timber frame is incredibly strong. These buildings are so strong you can’t knock them down with a Caterpillar tractor. You have to dismantle them piece by piece.
That's one of the things that makes me a little uneasy about wooden houses. I've experienced enough fires to prefer stuff that doesn't burn easily, even though wood looks nice and has incredible strength. I would certainly want a lot of windows if I lived in a very strong built wooden house. You would only have moments to get out of it before it killed you.
So how does the breezeway idea work? Are you supposed to knock it down if the Kitchen catches on fire? Or is it just a smaller area where the fire can be fought more effectively before it's hot enough to ignite the main part of the house?
Interlocking timber frame is incredibly strong. These buildings are so strong you can’t knock them down with a Caterpillar tractor. You have to dismantle them piece by piece.
That's really grand so long as you don't need to go through a wall in a hurry yourself.
A breezeway or dogtrot house is constructed with an open hallway through the center of the house with the rooms attached on both sides. It is designed to cool the house naturally.
A log house is pretty fire resistant compared to a modern stick built house. Logs are hard to ignite. Building the kitchen away from the house had two advantages in 1840s Mississippi, it reduced the possibility of a house fire and kept the kitchen from heating up the house in that hot climate.
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