Timber Pole Construction: An Introduction Review

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(More customer reviews)I served some time as a Collection Development Bibliographer for Agriculture at a university library prior to my retirement. Most of the time this amounted to suggesting worthy library materials to support the university's's ever-changing curriculum. Other times I received related reference questions regarding a variety of things. And not a few of these questions regarded the cheapest and most effective way to build both barns and outbuildings. From the early 1970s to the 1990s I continued to search and came up with the same conclusion. Timber pole construction remained the best choice. Some books presented it in a straight forward manner; others featured an array of joinery that only an Einstein could follow. But none of them had done it as well as this book on hand.
In keeping with the best in Intermediate Technology principles, the use of what you have on hand to accomplish the purpose, the authors provide diagrams and related text from cutting and preparing lumber to getting the job done. The best parts of this book are the basic methods of joinery, the use of wire, bolts and iron and basic pole construction methods from foundation construction to protect the pole for bean and roof construction. Some woodworking fanatics will respond that the resulting building may not look "pretty," or the book's presentation is too "simple." My only response to such people is that the authors' purpose was to present the most economical ways to get the job done. And to heck with aesthetics!
Included as well is a presentation on the use of pole construction for fences, retaining walls and bridges. There is a also a concluding presentation of low housing and buildings in Sri Lanka, a Malawi school building as well as a Zimbabwe pole roof being part of a rammed earth structure. The appendix is a chronological listing of library materials for further research.

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The book offers a general introduction to timber poles as a construction material. Timber poles have served throughout history as a low-cost, environmentally friendly and structurally efficient building resource. As a result of the establishment of both commercial plantations and community forestry programs worldwide, the availability of forestry thinnings for poles is rapidly increasing and the potential for their use has never been greater.The book covers the processes of harvesting and protecting the poles through to specific applications in the construction of domestic and industrial buildings, and other types of construction such as bridges and retaining walls. Key areas of preservation and jointing are addressed in detail and there are illustrations throughout. This manual intends to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, providing ideas that can be developed into solutions depending on specific circumstances and a number of case studies show some ideas put into action.This new edition will be a useful guide not only to field practitioners in housing and construction projects, but will also be of interest to the non-specialist.

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