Building a Timber Frame Barn-The Foundation

We could put the chickens in one section and have enough room for the goats.  I told the girls that if they wanted goats they would have to help with the timber frame barn.  It would take a couple of years because I did not want to quickly build a pole barn.  I wanted to have fun and learn how to timber frame.  Not only did I want to timber frame, I wanted to also use all of the historically accurate tools.  I also wanted the girls to learn something practical as well as some history. Nelle has wanted to start teaching classes on canning, hearth cooking, homesteading etc.  This would be the perfect avenue to start teaching outdoor classes.  I even figured that I would have something to share about timber framing. 

 

The girls helped with trimming roots out of the trench for the drain line, hauling gravel, moving concrete blocks, back filling dirt, and site clean up.  I tried to find tasks that they could physically handle, but would challenge their skills so that they would learn from the experience.  They also spent a great amount of time watching and asking questions.  I did make them lay at least one block using the trowel and level the block.  By the end of the foundation work, they said they were ready to start doing the wood work and never wanted to work with dirt again.

 

I began by promising the girls that I would have the foundation done by the fall of that year.  I thought about how to build the foundation through out the summer.  I came to the conclusion that the timber frame barn needed the advantages of a modern block foundation, but I wanted it to look historically accurate.  I decided to build a block foundation on concrete footers up to about ground level.  I would then have a sandstone foundation above ground level. It would give the strength of modern materials and the look of an old barn.  

 

 I started thinking about the wood for the timber frame barn and how we would acquire it.  I thought there were plenty of barns that were falling down where we could reuse the wood.  As I started looking, Nelle’s uncle, who runs a pig farm in West Milton Ohio, told us that he was going to take down an old barn, the pigs used, now that he had a more modern barn.  We took the opportunity to extract as much siding, beams, and supports as we could from the barn.  We brought it back home, but there was not enough good wood to complete the barn.  At that time, I bought a book detailing the timber framing process, Timber Frame Construction: All About Post-and-Beam Building by Jack A. Sobon and Roger Schroeder.  As I started to read, I realized that I could pull the wood I needed from the land we live on.  Unfortunately, the emerald ash borer has destroyed many trees on our property.  Lucky for the barn that they are still standing and have dried for about a year.  I decided to take down the trees and use them for the beams and supports for the barn.     

 

I decided that throughout the process we would be flexible on the design because I was not going to plan all the details ahead of time. We would take advantage of free or cheap materials where possible, but not sacrifice on a “cheap” barn in the end.  I wanted to focus on quality and historically accurate construction.  The process needed to be flexible with some planning to prevent major blunders,but needed to provide opportunities for improvement for quality and historic accuracy.  Throughout the process, I would need to acquire some timber framing tools and learn some some new skills.

 

I thought we could build a barn that would hold goats and chickens and maybe some rabbits in a 20′ x 24′ configuration.  I drew several configurations for the location of stalls in the building to make sure we would have room for everything we wanted. Nelle drew a few designs so she knew that she would get the features she was dreaming about.  In the end, we concluded it was the right size and could change the interior design after the barn was constructed.  We would have a central isle down the middle of the barn with the same orientation as the peak of the roof.  There would be stalls or coops on either side.  There would be a door at either end.  The roof would be a couple of feet higher than you would expect a single story barn  to be; so, there could be a loft to store hay and other equipment.  

 

I need a place to put the barn.  After talking with Nelle, we decided to place it near the garden barn where they could share the water line that we installed.  When the barn is finished, we will run a permanent electric line to both barns.  There is a path from the house to the garden barn that diverges in two directions and comes back together again in a circle to make the walk more interesting.  We decided to put the barn in the middle of the circle.  We measured and placed stakes to see what the placement of the barn would look like.  Nelle, the girls, and I came to the conclusion that this location would be perfect.  We could have a place for the chickens to free range while the goats cold eat all the poison ivy they wanted.  

 

With a plan in place, we started in late August by digging the trench needed for the foundation.  In this case, I went back on my promise of historically accurate tools and opted for the excavator.  I just couldn’t see digging that large of a trench by hand.  We spent a few evenings measuring and marking the location of the walls.  We have a lot of trees in the area and did not want to get into the roots killing the tree or complicating the dig.  I still had to remove several trees.  One because it was dead and two because they were leaning over where the barn was to be located.  One was a maple and the other a hickory.  They should be large enough at least to make good support beams.  I cut them in 10 foot sections and dragged them away to stack them.  It took one day to dig for the footers.  It was 40 inches deep to stay below the frost line and 16 inches wide.  The foundation wall is 8 inches wide which is half as wide as the footers.  We used the walls of the trench as the forms for the footers.  Because we have heavy clay as a sub soil, it was easy for the walls to keep their form in late August with no rain.  We used about half of the dirt from the foundation to help direct water in other areas of the property and seeded it in early September.

 

We measured, leveled and laid out stakes in the trench to show the depth of the footers.  We used 4 stakes per side so we could easily see to level the concrete.  The footers are 6 inches thick which should be more than enough for the walls and roof.  There will be nothing supported except the walls and roof on the foundation.  Because we could not get a concrete truck back into the woods, we would need to hand mix all of the concrete.  I decided to use a wheel barrow and a hoe.  I divided the continuous footer of a total length of 90 feet (20.5′ x 24.5′) into 8 pours connected by two runs of re-bar through the whole footer.  The corner pours were larger and about 18 bags of concrete while the straight sections were about 10 bags of concrete.  It took a weekend and a week of evenings to finish the footers.  The dimensions of the barn ended up being a little larger than expected because when I dug the trench, it was not perfect.  I needed to increase the dimensions to get the wall into the middle of the trench and make it perfectly square.

 

When the footers were dug, we dug a trench from the barn past the pond to empty into the creek for a total of about 200 feet.  We used the current path that leads to the pond to dig the drainage trench.  We first scraped off as much gravel as possible to save it to put back on top when we were done.  We laid solid drain tile from the creek to the barn footer.  We then laid slotted drain tile around the barn to drain any water away from the foundation.  We also put a silt filter around the drain so dirt particles would not clog the drain.  We dug a small trench about 8 inches deep down the center of the barn for two drains in the barn.  Each one will be about 1/3 of the way from the end of the barn.  We will tie the barn drains into the foundation drain when the wall is finished before we finish the back fill.  I back filled the dirt in the drainage trench after installing the drain tile.  I compacted it as much as I could with the excavator, but we still had a couple of sink holes after a couple of heavy rains.  We will use some of the extra dirt from the foundation to fill the holes before we cover the path with gravel.

 

With the footers set, we started on the block wall.   I originally planned on three courses of block, but needed four courses as the surrounding landscape had a slight slope.  The block needed to be slightly higher than the floor in the inside.  The dirt back fill on the outside could cover the block and slope away from the foundation.  We also plan to pour a concrete floor for the ease of cleaning for the animals.  The first course of 8″ x 8″ x 16″ block was laid directly following the plane of the footers.  The second course of blocks were the most difficult as I needed to make sure any mistakes in the leveling of the footers were corrected.  It took a weekend and a week of evenings for the second course.  The third and fourth courses went quickly.  It took about a week to complete.  We added vertical re-bar about every other block filled with mortar to help with the horizontal pressures on the wall.  As we built the wall, we back filled on either side of the wall with gravel (57’s) to help the drainage.  The top of the wall is covered with 4″ x 8″ x 16″ solid block to help support the timber sills.  As we built the wall, I would buy block and deliver it with our pick-up truck.  I could get about 30 blocks and 10 cap blocks in one load at a time because of the weight.  The wall blocks weigh 36 pounds each and the cap blocks weigh 33 pounds for a total load of 1410 pounds.  Each course would take 66 blocks; so, I made about 8 trips for all of the block.  I would buy mortar in 80 pound bags on the way home from work when we needed it.

 

Once the foundation was complete, we completed the center drain in the barn and finished the back fill of gravel around the foundation wall.  We spread the remainder of the foundation dirt up to the edge of the solid block and sloped it away from the barn.  We used the 411 gravel in the barn as a base for the poured concrete floor as it compacts nicely with the rock dust in the mix.  We used the excess gravel to help pave the paths to the barn doors.

 

I first cut the drain pipe with a hack saw at the concrete level.  I made sure the pipe was level with the concrete even if the pipe was not exactly vertical.  I used a razor blade knife to trim the excess plastic from the pipe.  I then inserted the drain covers without cementing them in place so that I could remove and unclog the drain if necessary.  I then used an exterior caulk to fill any spaces around the drain so there will not be any place to catch dirt or water.