My wife and I bought a house a few months ago. Last week I ventured (deep) into the crawlspace for the first time with a light and a video camera, looking for evidence of termites. I didn’t find any, but I did find something substantially weirder.
All around down there are concrete piers holding up the beams, but one of them is not concrete. It’s a tree stump. I can’t tell what species it was as the bark is long gone, but it’s not a situation where somebody cut a section out of a tree trunk and used it to support a low spot. This is what remains of a tree that was growing at that spot on the homesite, roots and all. I guess they just cut it off at the appropriate level and laid the beam right across it.
Was this a common construction technique in the 1920’s? I’ve never heard of anything like this.
That’s not unusual,though it isn’t good practice.If it is a support “I guess they just cut it off at the appropriate level and laid the beam right across it” breakdown is far faster than concrete,depending on species and local conditions.
Prior to hydraulic excavators,removing a stump was either agonisingly slow via burning or exhausting via shovel or team with a Mormon board.They could also be blasted.
Whether it is a problem in your location I can’t say,not knowing locale.Removal of bark is a good thing since it eliminates an easy food source for insects (actually the layer under the bark).
The house my father currently lives in was built in 1890. It’s center beam rests on a large boulder under the house in the crawlspace. When he puchased the home he had a concrete basement put in and left the boulder where it was. Now a boulder is not a stump, but I’d think they were having the same idea.
Winging it was common. Not common now with codes and inspections, but it still happens. Look up ‘Home Inspection Nightmares’ at This Old House website. They have a tree stump as a main support in one photo, and in another someone used a concrete dog statue.
Many older homes are constructed out of anything the builder could collect. My dad was a carpenter and working on a house built before the 1960’s he had a good chance of finding a patchwork construction. I have pictures from around WWII of cross cut sawing of lumber for construction being done on his father’s farm. That gives you an idea of why patchwork construction occurred. My great grandma’s house never had a completed second floor. It was built during WWII also. They couldn’t get materials to finish it at the time. There was a little market in the Caledonia bluffs that was made almost entirely from pallets and crates. Baraboo had an extreme housing shortage, because of the Badger Ammunition Planet being built and run there. Families were lucky to find a garage or porch they could live in during the wartime production.
My house is almost 160 years old, and was laid on stumps. It’s still as solid as it was then. The main framing was done out of cedar that I’m sure they cut down on the property when they cleared it - they’re still rough.
My folks was built in 1851 by a survivor of the battle at San Jacinto. When you go up into the attic, you’re confronted with the trunk of a massive Juniper tree used as the main vertical support. Amazingly, it’s still covered in bark. The stories these old houses could tell…