I have to admit that I really enjoy the various discussions on timber frame engineering and design on this forum. As one who has been learning the craft strictly for the purpose of building a couple of my own barns, I've been soaking up the information. From the arguments and analysis that make sense, I extract lots of useful information to refine the sketches I have on the table. (The first barn is complete.)

Then, as I look out the window above the table, I see the old Frye Barn (Frye was the landowner who originally farmed my land). Despite the engineering analysis that says, "It can't be so!", there it stands - still.

The Frye barn was built as a 26'x36' hay barn back in the early 20th century. The foundation was hastily dry-laid field stone placed at grade on extremely wet soils. (A wetland spring on the hill above feeds the stream that flows alongside) Given the period it was built in, it's a hybrid of sorts. The posts, plates, and ties are M&T, but the braces are just spiked in place. The posts are 6x6 (hemlock). Dropped ties were used, nearly 2 feet below the plates. The scarf joints are completely unsupported half-laps, located midway between posts. The rafters are 2x6 on 3' centers, seated on the plates with tails extending to form the eaves. At the ridge, they are simply butted together with a short piece of 1x just below the peak. Over the years the foundation has completely come apart and the sills rest on earth for much of their span today. The ties that once spanned the middle of the barn have been gone for a long, long time, yet there it stands.

An engineering analysis would have undoubtedly given this building a very short life-span, but, here outside my window, where we get well over 100" of snow a winter and windstorms that regularly bring 30-40+ mph gusts and where ten to twenty below zero is a common January temperature (with deep frost), the old Frye Barn still stands.

I am watching some in my neighborhood in similar construction and shape. Some have really gone down hill over the past few years of observation. Some joints pulled fully apart, the boarding holding things together, maybe even the weathered shingle doing their part. Spider webs are strong, too.

Thanks for the post. I think it says a lot.

Hi,
Yea, I think a factor is, not to think of a building in terms that imply stasis. For example. "when it's done," or "there it stands". That is to say, when you are thinking of how it will last over time. Buildings are to be used and lived with, or in, which means they will always be worked on, changed, modified if not consciously than in and of themselves. Here in this climate it is said a typical old house will fluctuate in size, in mass between 2 cm in the cycle of the year responding to the conditions and forces in the environment. I see engineering, or at least over engineering as the antithesis of these good understandings and something stemming from a certain degree of equivocation and specialization and hyperactivity. In other words a sort of social/cultural problem, you see...

The hindus of India say that building a house is like removing Draupadi's sari - it's a never ending process.
And we know from Bruce Cockburn that, "...it's a sin to make things to last forever. Everything that exists in time runs out of time someday."