OT - Log Cabin Photo/Question

[deerwhacker444]

I was browsing a Remington 8/81 site and find a bunch of pictures like this.



Why did they dig out the floor of the cabin and have a "step down" arrangement?

Was it so they could use less wood and still have the same inside area. What was the practical reason for doing this?

[Chuck 100 yd]

Your guess is the same as mine.

[KirkD]

I can tell you for sure that the floor is a whole lot warmer in the winter when it is sunk down like that. I do wonder, however, what it's like in there come spring. Perhaps it is a winter cabin for trapping. By the time spring comes, the furs are no longer prime.

[JOHNNY WACKO]

Less logs needed..

[Modoc ED]

Well, if you use it like Charles Bronson did in the movie "Death Hunt", you can lay on the floor while the bad guys are shooting at you and not get shot -- then when they throw dynamite and dynamite the cabin you will survive if you lay low and cover yourself with a bear skin.

That was a great movie. It also featured Lee Marvin.

Neat picture.

[kimwcook]

I think it was built by Inuits and you know they're all rather short.

[Ysabel Kid]

Less logs, more heat.

[Gobblerforge]

I would think that the cabin would gain some geothermal heat back from the floor as long as it never freezes long term inside. It looks well built.
Gobbler

[RIHMFIRE]

Well, if you use it like Charles Bronson did in the movie "Death Hunt", you can lay on the floor while the bad guys are shooting at you and not get shot -- then when they throw dynamite and dynamite the cabin you will survive if you lay low and cover yourself with a bear skin.

That was a great movie. It also featured Lee Marvin.

Neat picture.

Thats the first thing I thought of.....Death hunt...
I think you guys all got it right...

[KCSO]

My partner has a log cabin bed and breakfast that is home built log cabins and a restored cabin from the 1870's. If you have ever got up in the morning and the floor is covered with frost you wouldn't ask why they recessed them. The dropped floor was really more common in the north country but once you see the difference it makes in keeping warm over night. By the way when the fire goes out and it's 20 below or more you can wake up with frost on the walls and floor!

[KirkD]

KCSO has expanded upon what I said earlier and I'm sure he's right. As for digging down to save logs, as one who has both did a fair amount of shoveling dirt and felling trees, I can tell you that it is way easier to cut another 4 or 8 logs, than to dig a huge 6' x 9' hole a foot deep or so, removing two cubic yards of soil in the process, especially if its poor rocky soil. As for digging down so you can take cover in a shoot-out, I'm sure the number of shootouts that took place from remote cabins in the woods was pretty slim, and in this case, there are no holes cut for shooting out of that I can see. If I was fortifying a log cabin for shootouts, I'd rather put an additional belt of logs around the first 3 or 4 feet of the cabin, maybe even fill the space between the belt and the cabin with sand or gravel from the nearby stream (you want to build your cabin near a water source). That way I could sit in a chair during the shootout, instead of having to lay on my belly. I always like to make myself comfy during a shootout ... 'a comfortable man is an accurate man', I always say. Come to think on it, I'd build a nice shooting shelf all around the inside walls, and get one of those nice adjustable office chairs with wheels on it, so I could just slide around from hole to hole without having to stand up. I'd like one with a cup holder so I could have my coffee handy during lulls. Yep, the more I think on it, the less inclined I am to get the shovel out to dig all that dirt, although some might be tempted to get the shovel out for something else after reading this post.

[Tycer]

...a comfortable man is an accurate man....

[hartman]

Dig the floor out to use less logs and use the dirt dug from the floor to cover the roof. All helps to keep warm.

Hartman

[1894cfan]

I just had a thought, suppose somebody broke INTO the cabin, that first step could get kinda nasty with a bear trap in the right place.

[Hillbilly]

The frost -economy of labor thing is probably why this cabin was "dug in"

A few years ago a museum currator what explaining log cabins to us. She figure that a log cabin was the "house trailer" of the era. You put one up with the idea that a board house would come later.

Maybe that's why so few cabins survived. Barking logs, sitting sill logs up on rocks... even how the saddles and notches were cut in lots of cabins were done or ignored to make things easy at the time. The 'easy' way of doing things usually makes an avenue for premature rotting... but who cares. If we "stick" were building a good house anyway.

In the Midwest and parts of the south were log buildings were popular... it is not uncommon to see a log house with a board house built around it ... as money came available to the owner.

[Leverdude]

In the Midwest and parts of the south were log buildings were popular... it is not uncommon to see a log house with a board house built around it ... as money came available to the owner.

Little off topic but I'v found mid 1700 homes buried in later construction. Never a log cabin but the floor joists are usually just split logs setting on a few flat rocks, ceiling joists & rafters are split logs too or logs with one side hacked flat.

We found one in Westport CT once that looked like a 1950's salt box except it had a huge stone chimney in the center. We found a 19th century farm house first with newspapers from the 1850's in it. After the walls were taken down we took up the floor & found the 1700 subfloor framing. They stopped us & brought in colonial type archeologists who unearthed all sorts of things from not only under the original house but mostly from around it inside the 1950's structure. The old house was about 15' X 20' & the newer shell maybe 30' square. It was pretty interesting for us & them since usually the area around a house that old has been dug up & messed with alot.

[brno602]

The frost -economy of labor thing is probably why this cabin was "dug in"

A few years ago a museum currator what explaining log cabins to us. She figure that a log cabin was the "house trailer" of the era. You put one up with the idea that a board house would come later.

Maybe that's why so few cabins survived. Barking logs, sitting sill logs up on rocks... even how the saddles and notches were cut in lots of cabins were done or ignored to make things easy at the time. The 'easy' way of doing things usually makes an avenue for premature rotting... but who cares. If we "stick" were building a good house anyway.

In the Midwest and parts of the south were log buildings were popular... it is not uncommon to see a log house with a board house built around it ... as money came available to the owner.

I would have thought the sod house would be the starter home?, then move up to a log cabin then a board house?Log cabin if in the mountains as no grass here, or how about up North in the forrest just Moose and muskage lol.

[vancelw]

I was wondering why he built his dugout so shallow.

My sister's place has an old dugout on it. It's about an 8 by 8 room sunk 6 feet into the sandstone/dirt with a cedar bough and sod roof. You could light a candle in there and make a sweat lodge out of it. Right beside it are some flat rocks laid out in the shape of a foundation for a cabin that was never built. They obviously never proved up on it, as it is BLM land now.

[Hillbilly]

My Great Grandmother lived in a soddy out in Western Minnestota when she was a girl... about 1903-1906 or so.

Sod houses are great if you have no or very little native standing lumber near. A few sod houses were build in Northern Oklahoma (there is still one standing in a park out by Watonga OK).

On the Plains.. I guess a sod house would be around a while... shipping lumber out from the east or North west made a board house quite the investment back then.

[Kansas Ed]

When we moved to the farm in Knob Noster, Mo in 1970 the place had been unlived since the '40's or so. Maybe the 30's even. There was an old house on the place that was in dire condition. The added rooms collapsed one by one, and dad pulled them down with the 520 JD one at a time and burned them. Eventually there was only the main room of the house standing, and it was log. Years later, probably in the mid 80's the roof collapsed on that, and he fearing that it would one day collapse on a snooping neighbor kid or something decided to finish it off. So he manages to get a cable strung through one of the existing log walls...we're talking a half inch steel cable here...and makes a short run at it with the JD. The cable snapped...so figuring that the cable had a bad spot in it, splices and tries again...the cable snapped again. So he splices and gets the chain saw out....cuts a couple of the logs through the middle and pulls...breaks the cable again...finally he cuts down through the whole wall on that side and barely gets the wall to fall. Said he always regretted doing that but was sure that the thing was ready to cave on it's own before. Now the interesting part is that we later found out the cabin was originally built in the mid 1800's in Ohio IIRC, and was disassembled and carted by wagon to the nearest river...bound into rafts and was eventually floated to the nearest point on the MO river where it was wagoned to the farm at Knob Noster, and then rebuilt. Sounds like a lot of work to me, but I suppose someone thought it was worth the effort.

[L_Kilkenny]

I wouldn't be surprised the back wall was solid dirt built into a hillside. Many dugouts were done this way. If the hill wasn't steep enough to get the back wall to standing height they dug the floor down to get the required headroom. Very efficient way of building a shelter.

If you watch the movie "The Unforgiven" with Burt Lancaster their sod house was also done this way which is why the indians in the movie were able to drive a bunch of cattle onto the roof. Also in John Wayne's "Fort Apache" the trading post was also dug down in.

LK

[Doc Hudson]

When I was a kid, Big mama and Big Daddy lived in an old house that grew out of a split log cabin originally built before the War Between the States. The main room of the house was about 20' square and two leantos had been added on the back and one end of the cabin. The back room was kitchen/dining room, and the other was two bedrooms and a loft.

Later, when I was in high school, I was hired to help dismantle an old dog-run house. Everything came apart easy until we got to the two original rooms of the house. Those original rooms were built of 8" logs notched and pegged together with 1 1/2" diameter "tree nails" carved from heart pine. We had a heck of a time getting those old log walls down.

[KCSO]

Our House in N/E Nebraska was built in 1902 and was set on 4 large boulders with piled rocks for the rest of the foundation. It stood till 2004 when we dozed the lot. Most of the cabins here are peeled logs with cottonwood prevelant. Some few are flattened and dovetialed but these are rare. In the cabin we restored we found a hidden compartment in the logs with the owners train tickets to the area and his personal papers. All were dated between 1877 and 1885. They were donated to the local museum.

[GonnePhishin]

KirkD said

and get one of those nice adjustable office chairs with wheels on it, so I could just slide around from hole to hole without having to stand up. I'd like one with a cup holder so I could have my coffee handy during lulls. Yep,

Hey KirkD, you could take the chair idea one step further and instead of an office chair, get a bed side commode chair with wheels and be able to do yer business as you fire and wheel around the room

[Hillbilly]

"Hey KirkD, you could take the chair idea one step further and instead of an office chair, get a bed side commode chair with wheels and be able to do yer business as you fire and wheel around the room "

So if we take Kirk's logic about a "comfortable man is an accurate" man and expand the concept...

"An "evacuted' man is very accurate"

[GonnePhishin]

HillBilly,

And VERY SATISFIED

[Lawyer Daggit]

I also thought of the Bronson movie, but could not think of the name of it. Thanks for that.

Interesting, most Australian log cabins and also slab huts (where the slabs are upright) are built without excavation and with a dirt floor.

[KirkD]

KirkD said

and get one of those nice adjustable office chairs with wheels on it, so I could just slide around from hole to hole without having to stand up. I'd like one with a cup holder so I could have my coffee handy during lulls. Yep,

Hey KirkD, you could take the chair idea one step further and instead of an office chair, get a bed side commode chair with wheels and be able to do yer business as you fire and wheel around the room

Hey! I don't think wheeling around on a sloshing commode is my idea being comfortable. Besides, I don't ever want to get shot with my pants down.
Kirk's general rule of combat #23: Never put off 'takin' care of business' when y'gots the opp'tunity; when the shootin' starts,'business' time is over and y'never knows how long t'will be 'till the next opp'tunity.

[Doc Hudson]

Remember Rule #25!

You can run faster with your kilt up than you can with your pant down.

LOL

[KirkD]

Doc, that is a good one!

[Old Time Hunter]

Way back, back in 1842 or 44 going back 'bout seven-eight generations our long lost decendents started building their home just a hundred yards from where today stands my Father's hunting shack. They had dug down around three feet in the front and but it was around five and a half feet at the back, then built the walls of rough hew'd popular (debarked and squared) to a height that allowed nine feet of headroom. The building was twenty feet wide and sixteen feet deep that allowed two ten by eight rooms on one side and a single large room taking up the rest. As Kirk said, the main reason handed down from generation to generation was heat conservation in the winter (get under the frost line), but also to keep cool in summer (even in Northern Wisconsin the temps would get over 90F with humidity approaching 90% day in, day out). In the back of the main room there was a door cut into the logs along the floor line with a cedar lined "cave" going back into the earth (remember that the wall was down five and a half feet from ground level outside), this was my great-7 times removed, grandparents refridgerator. As the clan grew, they first added another story, and then another, with eventually the primary building becoming the basement. Back in the late 'teens there was a forest fire and the upper two levels of the home were destroyed. But by then the only one living there was 80+ years old and they moved her to the big city of Marinette where the majority of the clan had relocated. Thank God, nobody sold the land as it is now my Fathers...all 640 acres of wild forest land as it was timber, not wheat that my clan raised. That original "basement" lasted up until around the mid '60's when finally the forest over grew it...the hole is still there, but has large trees growing in it.

[Lawyer Daggit]

I'm curious, if you come across a cabin built into a house, are you allowed to pull it down or are there heritage laws that protect it.

[Old Time Hunter]

I'm curious, if you come across a cabin built into a house, are you allowed to pull it down or are there heritage laws that protect it.

None around here that I know of.

[Mutt]

After searching the web some , it seems that a lot of areas did not have many trees available was one reason. Then the heat and cold problem answer was that the ground was about 55 degrees most seasons . That is if i read it correctly . Less wood and cooler indoors as needed. ,,,,,,,,,,,Mutt