Post and Beam

[tim walker]

Love in the ouston aera and are going to build a home., WSe will need some roughly 6x12 and 4 x 8 beams of architecural quality. The y may need to be up 22 ft long. Was thinking douglas fir or cedar, but wheer in hoston arewa voucould I locate such.

Thanks

[Cecil Arnold]

Tim, is this for structure or finish? If it is structure you may want to consider an engineered laminate, which you can order locally. It is much stronger than any natural wood beam. Otherwise you may want to see about ordering from Houston Hardwoods on 5 1/2 st. in the Heights. I found a 3"X9"X14' hunk of mahogany there and they may have others available.

[Alan Turner]

Tim,
I have located a supplier of recovered factory beams in Brooklyn, NY. They have a lot of southern yellow pine, which I understand is stronger than either doug. fir or oak. I am having them prepare some 12/4 planks for me, but they are not in house yet, so can't comment on quality, but the pricing I found to be quite resonable. I know it will have some rust stains and holes from nails and bolts, but I also know it will not have metal in it as they are milling it for me, and thus cleaning it as they go.

I will report on the source when I see the quality.

[Kelly C. Hanna]

If supported correctly, Cedar will work fine, but Douglas Fir is the strongest of all the Western softwoods and is generally the lesser of the two in expense. Read this page before deciding on your beams.

http://www.softwood.org/Douglas%20Fir%20Web/eDougFir/EN/PGSA.htm

Having said that, Cedar will last longer than anything except White Oak around here. White Oak is much stronger than any softwood and is what some barns were constructed with in other regions (you find mostly Cedar barns down here cause the wood is as common to our area as the heat is:eek: ). Cedar has a natural resistance to rot and insects. The only drawback is it's softness and defelection rate. Cedar beams cannot span the distance DF or WO can under a floor and must be supported every few feet.

I think it's great you are considering a P&B system. It's alarming how many slabs they pour in this area and even worse, what it costs when plumbing problems or foundation shifting has to be repaired. You are smart to avoid those pitfalls.

PS...please keep us updated with pics as you go along...I'd love to see them.

[John Bush]

Hi Tim.
I built my shop here in Seattle using the pine beams I salvaged from our family barn in Illinois. As I was designing the shop I found that meeting code meant a lot of engineering and steel fasteners. M&t timberframing was my initial goal but would have been too time consuming and the city engineers said the beams would have to analyzed to determine strenght. I ended up using several as structural columns and stick framing with architectural application for the other post and beam effects. The final structure looks great and was easier to build initially planned.

I found a salvaged wood source locally that finds old fir beams and resaws them to your specs. I was at their yard one day and they were resawing 24" X 40" X~~30+' long old growth beams from a waterfront warehouse and that tight, straight grain was incredible. They had just recieved a load of hand hewn 12"X12" chestnut beams from a barn in Penn(?). This was during the dot com flurry and some amazing homes were built out here.
They are located in Edison-Bow, a small town 1.5hrs N. of Seattle as well as Minn and other spots around the US. Call Liz at the Duluth Timber Co. at 218-727-2145. Good luck, John.

[Jim Andrew]

If you have to have your building inspected, check with building inspection before you use anything that does not have a stamp or a sheet of paper
explaining and certifying it's strength. Or you will have yourself a bureaucratic
nightmare.

[Jamie Buxton]

Check out http://www.redsuspenderstf.com/. It is a cool web site. They are a timber-frame company in Nacogdoches. They harvest their own lumber, and might be a source for you. They also seem to be able to provide more than that, if that's what you want.