Built for the ages (December 2005)

Post-and-beam construction uses heavy beams, usually 6x6 inches or larger, for the vertical supports. Horizontal support beams, floor joists, and cathedral-ceiling rafters are made of 6x8-inch, or larger, timbers.

Early American settlers used this type of construction not only for their homes, but also for barns, grain-storage buildings, churches, commercial structures, and other buildings.

Today, many of these buildings still stand. Some are used for their originally intended purposes while others have been converted to other uses. Barns, for example, have become homes, with the beautiful handcrafted joinery left visible for all to enjoy. Others are now community theaters and other public buildings, all standing tall, straight and beautiful, because of the precise craftsmanship used in their original construction.

Bill and Julie Yeo were intrigued by this construction technique and took the concept one step further. No precut kit for these folks; they did it all themselves.

“Several years ago I was a single guy and tired of paying rent,” says Bill Yeo. “So I purchased a 30-acre piece of land outside Durham, Maine.” Here he pitched a tent and lived for nearly a year, with no running water and plumbing of the type that you might remember from visits to grandmother’s farm. He then built a small, solar-heated cabin and lived there, still without running water or indoor plumbing.

After marrying in 2001, Bill moved his new wife Julie into the tiny cabin where they began planning their new post-and-beam home. It was to be 20x36 feet. A friend skilled in computer-aided design turned their sketches into blueprints. “We searched our property for 13 straight, tall white pines,” explains Julie. “We chopped them down and hauled them to a clearing near where the house would sit. Then we brought in a portable mill and sawed the trees into the sizes that we would need to build the house.”

After two months of intense work, all of the joints were cut and the pieces ready for assembly. The Yeo’s design required four bents, the large, assembled pieces that establish the building’s height and width. These were laid out, one on top of the next as they were assembled, to ensure that each was exactly like the previous. Each bent included the vertical pieces; bent ties, the horizontal pieces that establish the floor level; and knee braces, diagonal pieces that join the post and beam and add lateral support to the frame.

The Yeos recruited dozens of friends to help raise the building when bents were complete. “We also called in a crane to speed things along,” says Bill. As each bent was raised into place, bent ties were inserted into the precision-crafted mortise joints to tie each together. Pieces were locked with hardwood pegs. No nails in this frame. Assembled, the frame was left to season over the winter. When spring came the Yeos went about the job of completing their house. Their goal was to make the house as energy efficient and environmentally friendly as possible, while using materials that were available locally. They installed stress-skinned polystyrene wall panels on the outside walls which provided insulation value of R-19 and allowed the joinery to be seen from inside the house. They used similar, but thicker, panels with a higher R-value on the roof. Bricks used for the wood-stove’s chimney were salvaged, cleaned, and put in place by a family friend with masonry skills. Interior doors came from an architectural salvage company.

Julie is a very accomplished woodworker and took on the challenge of building all of the home’s cabinets. She made them from reclaimed wood, found for sale in a local newspaper, and from wood retrieved from a Brunswick, Maine, lumberyard’s burn pile. “We wanted to use high-quality materials,” relates Julie, “and we definitely wanted to stay away from plywood. Using the salvaged lumber allowed us to accomplish this goal.”

The home builders purchased slate floors for the living room, dining room, and kitchen from a nearby quarry, and they bought cedar shingles from a family-run sawmill in northern Maine. They purchased double-insulated, argon-filled, low-E windows from a company in nearby Portland, Maine.

While the Yeos were creative in managing the building costs of their post-and-beam house, they were just as eager to economize on living costs. To that end, they installed a 10-panel solar collector on the roof, which is wired through an inverter that changes the electricity so it can be used by conventional household appliances. Eight batteries in the basement store enough energy to supply the home with electricity for up to five days if the sun doesn’t shine.

The couple installed more than 25,000 feet of radiant tubing under the floors. Hot water from their high-capacity, ultra-efficient, solar-powered boiler circulates the heated water, providing a comfortable heat. A wood-burning stove in the center of the home’s living room supplements the floor’s radiant heat. Energy-efficient appliances are used throughout the home. “We looked for appliances with Energy Star ratings,” says Julie, referring to products that meet energy-efficiency guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.