It is a rare day in which we build a house that has a real attic, where the roof structure is hidden out of view with all those old boxes of stuff. With a timber frame and the complete exterior enclosure and insulation system of Structural Insulated Panels, “under the roof” is often the most architecturally exciting place in the house. In short, we like to flaunt our roofs. And we especially love building trusses.

Trusses are structural configurations of timbers that allow for large spans without the need of intermittent posts. As such, they allow for open floor plans and dramatic vaulted ceilings. Many of the trusses we have built over the years originated in the Middle Ages, and were used for great halls, churches, and bridges.

Here are some examples:
Raised cord king post trusses: This intimate living room with a fireplace at the end utilizes red oak timbers to do the real work of holding up the roof. The horizontal cross member that connects the two principle rafters of each truss is called the cord; the vertical center post of each truss is the king post, and the branch like curved elements going up to the principle rafters on the right and left are called struts. The raised cord gives the room a taller and more curved ceiling feel, but allowed us to keep the height of the side walls and ridge lower.

King posted trusses; one with a “live-edged” cord: For this “vehicle barn” that we built for our own family use, we wanted a garage-sized space with no internal supports. We wanted to create a building that was attractive and demonstrated our timber framing skill. We also wanted to use some of our left over timbers from our northeastern forests or timbers harvested from our land. As such, we have pine, hemlock, ash, red oak and white oak timber in this structure. The front king post truss has a curved red oak beam (often called a “Tyco Beam” in Japanese timber framing) that we sawed flat on 2 sides, which allows us to appreciate the interior grain of the log—something that does not happen when building with logs. The king post is also “live-edged”, and the “live-edged” struts are “book mated” by sawing from the same log and opening the faces to each other. The middle roof element is also a king post truss, but with a straight cord that is positioned at the eave height. Note that the kids’ barn swing that is attached to the ridge timber, is being enjoyed by my wife, Nan.

Hammer Beam Trusses: The trusses originated in the “Great Halls” of Medieval Europe. The utilize rigid triangular configurations of timbers that transfer the roof loads out to the walls. Dramatic and eye catching, they often crown modern great room spaces. These trusses are fabricated from old growth and very fine and dense Douglas Fir timbers salvaged from forest fire burned areas in Oregon. To see more photos of this beautiful home, check out the Ray Brook House in our Gallery section.

Burr Arch Trusses: This style of truss was designed for covered bridges that require large and strong spans. In such bridges there would be two trusses, flanking both sides of the road way, and the roof rafters would sit perpendicularly on top of the upper horizontal cords. The Burr Truss used an arching timber element to help transfer loads out to the end support walls or abutments. These trusses were designed for the roof system of a great room, and made of laminated red oak. We were able to fully fabricate and assemble each of the four trusses in our shop, load them on a truck, and transport them to the site and install them with a mobile crane.

The interior photo shows the Structural Insulated Panels on the walls prior to any interior wall finish. Note that the Sips are put on the exterior of the Timber Frame, so that the insulation entirely wraps the timber structure and maximizes insulation efficiency. On the ceiling, white washed pine tongue and groove boards were applied over the purlins prior to putting the roof SIPS. The loft area is being planked with structure tongue and groove boarding. A concrete slab win radiant tubing in it will be poured for the floor.

With its complete SIPS enclosure system, high energy efficient windows, and a radiant in floor heating slab, the Studio will be toasty and easy to heat.

Perhaps more importantly, the goats and chickens have already taken up residence. And I am informed that while picking up the windows, some baby bunnies came home to the barn as well….

Like the traditional timber frame barns of the Northeast, this one was sided with locally milled, rough-sawn pine planking, sheathed vertically, i.e. the way the lumber grew in the tree. Boards are gapped about an inch, and then vertical batten strips will be nailed over the gaps to make the barn more weather tight. It will weather to a nice dark grey without any stain or paint.

The second floor consists of 2 layers of the same rough sawn planking, with seams staggered, like the old timers did. This keeps the hay’s chaff and dust from sifting down to the lower lever. On the roof, the carpenters planked the rafters solid with local, rough-sawn boards, and then laid an agricultural metal roofing over them. The roof should last for many decades, and can be re-painted in the distant future when the galvanizing begins to show wear. Snow and ice shed nicely from this kind of roof, and with its ample overhangs, it will protect the barn for a long, long time.

Inside, the clients have built stalls for goats and pens for chickens and rabbits. And as their needs evolve—i.e. the potential of having horses in the future—such internal structures can also evolve. The sliding front doors are hung on track hardware, and this keeps the doors under the roof eave where they are protected from the weather. Cars, trucks, tractors, wagons and horses and cows can easily enter through the large front doors. A transom light of windows will go over the sliding doors, letting in light. A human sized door on hinges is in the corner of the barn closer to the house, also close to the stairs that go up to the second floor of the barn.

The clients certainly have an appreciation for the historical agrarian architecture of the area, and their barn reflects this. Perhaps more interesting though is that this very traditional style barn nicely fits their needs in the 21st century, and it also nicely utilizes local materials and labor. Not all things become ‘out dated’…

In era when building materials frequently come from oversea or the other side of the country, I am proud to note that all lumber and timbers in this barn came within a 100 mile radius of the barn’s site.

It utilizes curved laminated timbers (glulams) that transition from the posts to the principle rafters, and in turn are held together with custom steel bands that are tightened with oak wedges. It was a unique, challenging and enjoyable project for us, with a great collaborative effort between us, the general contractor and the engineers.

The timber frame just barely fit on the truck, but boy were we glad we pre-assembled the post to rafter with curve with all its hardware components here at our full shop. It took close to 3 days to assemble the 12 sections…We had the engineers model a truck loading plan of the assemblies and other timbers and it just fit on the 48’ long semi.

The raising was honestly easier than anticipated. We raised with staging, as per photo, and accessed all purlins up to and including the 4th purlin up from the bottom. We then put 16’ aluminum picks across from 4th purlin to 4th purlin, and thus accessed the 5th purlins, ridges, and cupola jack rafters. A hard frame to climb on, even with full harness rigging and static lines, etc…. Not comfortable.

Inside timber frame finish view….the client loves it! He is a great guy….

Not surprising that a while back they decided they needed a good-sized barn. When we first met, I questioned them about they wanted to use of the barn for, and discovered that their needs are diverse. They want a home for livestock: chickens, goats, turkeys, and possibly cows and sheep. They want dry storage for hay and grain. They want cover for a tractor and other farm machinery and possibly a roof over their car. And there is a desire to have a horse or two, at least by the female members of the family. So, of course they want the barn to adaptable.

Because their needs and the character of their small farm more closely resemble the traditional family farms of our ancestors, it is also not surprising that a very traditional Timber Frame barn is the right structure for their homestead.

This Timber Frame is a 4 bent and queen posted English style barn frame, and at 30’ x 42’, the floor plan is divided by the post placements into 12 – 10’ x 14’ quadrants. A large pair of sliding doors will allow access to the center bay from the eave side of the barn (there are 3 bays between the 4 Timber Frame bents), so machinery and animals can be brought in, and a traditional style transom window will sit above the sliding barn doors. The adjacent bays of the Timber Frame can be divided into livestock stalls or other functional spaces, and partition walls can be built and evolve as necessary. For easy human access, a hinged 3’0” wide door will face the house, which is about 80’ away. This barn will have a second floor for hay and general storage, and a walk up stair from the ground level. At both gable ends there will be second floor doors, so bailed hay can be elevatored up. The two young daughters also expect to get a hay mow swing! This barn will be a very adaptable structure, just as the vintage Timber Frame barns of rural America were and often still are.

As you travel through the rural northeast and mid west, you will see an abundance of old Timber Frame barns that are in disrepair or worse. Fact is, many of these structures have suffered from the demise of small family farming and from the shifting face of American agriculture. Clearly traditional barns don’t fit the needs of large agribusinesses with huge tractors and equipment and large-scale dairy operations, so one sees new style “barns” and agricultural pole barn type structures. And, if not of use as farms have shut down or ceased to be productive enterprises, traditional barns are often ignored and then fall into dis-repair. I know of at least 3 barns in our area of the Adirondacks that came down this winter due to dis-repair, bad roofs, and heavy snowfall. If you don’t have a need for it, you generally don’t maintain it—and then you lose it.

It is always a pleasure for us to build Timber Frames that are going to be working agricultural barns. With proper care– especially a well-maintained roof–this barn should be functional for a few hundred years. When we raise a Timber Frame like this one, we feel like we are doing our small part to replace the vanishing “Cathedrals of rural America.”

There is a long tradition of magnificent and architecturally significant boathouses on the lakes of the Adirondacks. Most of the traditional Great Camps were built on lakes, and boats were important for transport and access as well as recreation. We have had the privileged of building a number of timber-framed boathouses in the last 15 years, and most have been built on sites that are inaccessible by road. Which, aside from presenting some construction challenges, means that boats are vital to the clients gaining access to their properties, and our boathouses serve a very real function of sheltering these boats. Some of these boathouses are elaborate Adirondack structures with beautiful enclosed spaces, while others are and graceful “car ports” for boats. In the winter when the lakes ice over, the boats are lifted and hung out of the water within the protection of the timber frame boathouses.

Traditionally barns in the North East were timber framed. One architectural historian has referred to them as the “Cathedrals of rural America.” And although the last decades have seen a dramatic loss of many of these historic structures, we are proud that the timber framed barns that we have built in NY and VT are enhancing the traditional agriculture landscape.

As long time instructors of timber framing classes at the Yestermorrow Design Build School in VT, our classes have built many timber frames for garden sheds, picnic table and sand box shelters, wood sheds, of course cabins, and even sign posts. One of the cabin timber frames cut by our class is now the home office for a local writer—just far enough from his house to allow him uninterrupted attention.

We also recently built a timber and log cabin high on the side of a mountain, which is only accessible by vehicle seasonally. In the winter, the owners ski or snow shoe into their cozy retreat, which features a photovoltaic electric system and a composting toilet.

On a different note, we are negotiating building a timber frame band shell for a local Adirondack town. As you can see, size, shape, form and function can be infinite in the world of timber framing.

The conference features professionals in sustainability and whole system thinking and included daily sessions and presentations and an impressive trade show of building materials, mechanicals, etc. The sessions were organized around 9 thematic tracks such as Renewable Energy Technologies, Germany and Upper Austria, Regional Models for Sustainability (because these folks are way ahead of us), and the one I focused on: Residential Buildings Retrofit and New.

Integral to the presentations in the residential track was Net Zero buildings. Nationally, our residential buildings consume a very large portion of our energy usage, and as energy costs continue to rise and the availability of oil and gas, which are after all limited resources decreases, we need to couple new technologies with sound building practices to build more efficient structures. I saw presentations on dozens of houses that have been built in the last years in the Northeast that meet this specification. Our timber frame homes have always been better insulated than standard stick framed homes, but this is new territory.

Achieving net zero in a home requires excellent design and engineering modeling and an interesting mix of building techniques and mechanical systems. Firstly, size matters {like to modest-sized homes post}, so reducing the size of homes to what is really needed is the first order of business. Secondly, getting a handle on the energy consumption habits of the homeowners and reducing that load is very important. Next, and probably to my eye, most important, is the insulation of the envelope. It is not uncommon for designers and builders to craft homes with R 50 in the walls and R 80-100 in the roofs. These R values (i.e. measure of resistance to heat loss in a wall or roof or window) may seem excessive compared to our New York State energy code of R 26 in walls and R 40 in the roof, but pushing the envelope to this degree of insulation dramatically reduces the heating system needs. Integral to this envelope is also the absolute reduction of air infiltration and thermal bridging (which refers to structural components of the house, such as wood framing members bridging through the insulated envelope from the inside warm wall to the outside cold wall, and as such transferring heat from inside to outside). In short, with proper design and construction, superb envelopes can be built, and heating needs become very, very low indeed.

Most of the houses presented had their own net-metered solar photovoltaic system for producing electricity. In the ìnet meteredî system, a photovoltaic array is designed to produce of the kilowatt hour needs of the house for an annual cycle. Rather than use storage batteries, electricity produced in excess of the house’s need in the more solar summer months is banked in the electrical grid and considered as a producer credit to be used in the darker winter months. We have had such a system since 2004.

With heating needs substantially reduced, one presenter noted that his house could be heated with 2 hair dryers and an 80 watt bulb–which was hardly fictitious. Some homes also utilized ground source heat pumps, i.e. systems in which the heat from water in a well or in underground tubes is harvested and warmed further through a reverse refrigeration process (i.e., a heat pump) to heat the home. And integral to such tight homes is the use of heating recovery ventilators (HRVs) that ventilate these homes but avoid heat loss in the air exchange.

The resulting homes were well crafted and attractive structures that elevated the concept of energy efficiency to amazing heights.

What was exciting for me as a timber framer was to learn how we could quite easily boost the R value of our envelopes and to establish contacts with design and engineering professions who could make the net zero Timber Frame home a reality. Now, we just need to find some interested clients..

In her well-articulated book, “The Not So Big House”, Sarah Susanka discusses the trends that have grown our houses so large, and makes a very compelling case for smaller homes. At the heart of her story is the notion that one can design a house that has no wasted space (including getting rid of rooms that are generally unused), and therefore can be smaller. She makes a point of prioritizing quality over quantity – a fine recipe for very unique and personal homes.

Timber frames make wonderful smaller homes -the enduring character of a timber frame is equally as pleasing in a small home as it is in a large. And, when it comes to use of resources to build a house and use of energy to operate that house, size clearly matters.

We just erected a small timber frame for a couple of teachers who are getting close to retirement. The beautiful rural property they purchased came with a covenant that specified a maximum footprint for the house of 800 square feet. They loved the property and wanted a small home anyway: a house that was easy too heat, easy to maintain, reasonably priced, easy to build, and gentle in is consumption of resources. What might have seemed restrictive at first became a very workable design parameter. In the end, their very ample and lovely 1300 square foot story-and-a-half home with 2 shed dormers will have 1 1/2 baths, 2 bedrooms, an entry/mud room, an open floor plan living room and dining room, a well apportioned kitchen, a screen porch, and a full basement with exterior entry.

Our timber frame homes have always been among the most energy efficient homes constructed. In 1993, when we built a turn-key timber frame home in northern NY, we ran its design specifications through the Canadian R2000 energy analysis program. We passed with flying colors. With the advent of whole house energy analysis in NY over the last few years, we find that our timber frame homes easily beat the NYS energy code by 25% to 40%.

We hope to be building a lot more modest sized timber frame homes in the years to come.

Ernie saws on a Woodmizer Bandsaw Mill with a 29 foot long bed, which is a portable unit, but in his case he has made it stationary and houses it in a mill building that we helped a bit to build. That way his saw mill stays accurate and avoids road salt and transportation wear and tear. (On a Woodmizer, the log stays put on the “bed” and the bandsaw blade does the traveling). Although Ernie buys a lot of logs, he also owns a good sized wood lot, and because he is a long time Adirondacker, he also has access to other family properties for selective logging. We frequently get our largest timbers from him, he doesn’t drop a big pine tree until he has a specific use for it.

Ernie knows the true meaning of the words “service” and “custom”. It is quite simply a real pleasure to do business with him, on every level. And real custom sawing is his forte–any variety of wood species, any dimension, and any possible variation from normal. Case in point, somewhere around 2001 I had a project that needed some live edged Japanese style oak tico beams (that is timber sawn from curved logs that are sawn 2 sides flat sawn, and 2 sides still live edge). So I went up to his mill armed with some books and photos and asked if he had any big, bent oaks up on his hill. He gave me one of those “you silly flatlander” looks, and then offered me his extra ATV so I could tootle over the hills with him searching for crooked oaks. We flagged about a half dozen oaks, and he ultimately cut me two beauties.

As a small business owner, Ernie brings a comprehensive skill set to his enterprise: good forester, good logger, good mechanic, good welder, and not to mention a good sawyer with a lot of good business sense. Plus, he is cheery and fun to be around. Me, I always look forward to having to drive 20 miles up to his place and pick up some timbers….

One of the great joys of timber framing is working with real (and frequently large) pieces of wood, rather than many of the building materials in the construction industry that bear little resemblance to trees. Like any business, procuring materials for timber framing is a challenging mix of cost, availability, and quality. And of course, finding good suppliers who say what they are going to do, and then do what they say.

Over the years, we have developed relationships with many fine timber suppliers. (We have also been burned by some less than reputable folks, and we vote with our dollars and don’t bring them repeat business). Much to our delight, we have an excellent network of very local folks who harvest, saw, plane, kiln dry, and mill a variety of wood materials for us. †And while the construction industry is all a buzz with the concept of ‘Green’, (and lengthy examination on the ‘greeness’ of a product or practice is an important exercise), it is my belief that a key component of being ‘green’ is buying locally and conducting business locally. That way we use less energy transporting our timber, we help keep our neighbors employed, and we know what the forestry practices are that produce our logs.

In a series of blogs, I will highlight a number of local businesses that help Amstutz Woodworking practice the craft of timber framing.

image credit: http://ian.umces.edu