Cordwood Construction: Best Practices
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Cordwood Construction: Best Practices By Richard Flatau, 2012 One of the most comprehensive references available on cordwood construction. Everything you need to know about building with cordwood and maintaining code compliance along the way. Covers foundations, framing, mortar mixes, special effects, utility interfaces, and best-practice techniques. Loaded with illustrations and color photos. Large-format paper, 196 pages. Review: Richard Flatau’s new Cordwood Construction: Best Practices is a visual feast and a celebration of cordwood masonry. That’s why it’s so much fun to browse through—and be inspired by—its 196 large pages, almost all of which are in full color. But that’s just the beginning. True to his book’s subtitle, friend Richard has gathered together a great deal of “best practices” information from projects he has worked on as well as from colleagues who have presented authoritative papers at the two most recent Continental Cordwood Conferences: 2005 in Wisconsin (which the author cohosted with his wife, Becky) and 2011 in Manitoba, where, again, Richard was a major player and organizer. The building of the cordwood walls themselves, of course, is covered in detail, and includes various mortar options (portland mixes, lime putty mortar, cob and paper–enhanced mortar—just to name a few) and insulation choices (sawdust and lime, cellulose, various foams, and more). But the text also tells how cordwood masonry relates to other ancillary building systems, such as foundation options, timber framing, window and door installation, electric, and plumbing. Always, Richard is careful to show time-tested methods that will meet code. His more than 30 years of experience in building, writing about, and teaching cordwood masonry quietly permeates the entire book. With regard to best practices, two instructional and inspirational sections stand out. The author details two recent highly successful—and code approved—structures with which he and Becky have been personally involved in recent years: the Cordwood Education Center in Merrill, Wisconsin, and the White Earth Reservation Cordwood Home in Naytahwaush, Minnesota. In these comprehensive addendums, we see the projects progress from conceptualization to—beautiful!—actualization and learn how the best practices described earlier are integrated for structural integrity, longevity, energy-efficiency, design creativity, and compliance. The Education Center Addendum has a thorough two-page checklist of how to organize a group to work together to complete a building project. If you have a community project in mind, these two pages alone are worth the price of the book.