Wilbursan
Member
I don't know anything about old home construction so this may be way off base, but isn't it possible those homes didn't leak as much back then as they do now? It's been over 200 years - I'd expect some "shrinkage" in the wood.
The Philosophy of Heating Large or Drafty Homes
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Interesting thought. I'm no expert, either, but I do know that the wood they used back then was much, much denser than the lumber used nowadays because it was cut from old, slow-growing native trees in virgin forests. You can't, for instance, build a covered bridge these days without metal reinforcement because lumber comes primarily from fast-growing non-native trees. Or so I've repeatedly been told.
My house (which was not built here, actually, but hauled in from somewhere else around 1900 by horse teams!) is held up over the foundation by four or five huge intact, unprocessed tree trunks, species unknown, but seems to be some sort of softwood. The siding on my house is the original oak, still in great condition, and the floors are the typical wide-board pine of the era. It's a post-and-beam construction. So I don't know how much shrinkage there could have been from any of that.
The house isn't exactly air-tight, but it's not bad. Actually, most of the air leakage comes through the stone foundation, which has cracked and lost bits here and there and needs to be filled in. So my guess is, no, there wouldn't be much shrinkage unless the builder cheated and used less appropriate lumber. But again, I'm notnotnot an expert on any of this stuff.
Wilbursan
Member
Off topic a bit but I was watching a show some years back about a company that was making a bunch of money retrieving logs that sank in the Great Lakes centuries ago when the area was first heavily logged. Seems what was considered expendable waste back then was worth a fortune now because the wood was slow-growth trees and very dense which is extremely rare now.
Interesting! Yes, there's very little old-growth forest left in the country, certainly almost none in places loggers can get to. Vermont is the Green Mountain state, but it was nearly denuded 150 years ago or so, and although a lot has been allowed to grow back since then, it's still mostly fairly young forest except on the steeper mountain slopes. But I have a pair of maybe 200 yo sugar maples on other side of the foot of my drive, and they are totally awesome.
ailanthus
Feeling the Heat
. That's some beatiful country. I often run out to Lumberville when we're staying with my inlaws in D-town. I can't get enough of all the stone houses and barns.
I think you're very foolishly turning an observation of a few individual situations into a very broad generalization. Bottom line, the larger homes were typically built for people who had the option to buy the best materials, and the whim to build it where they chose. The smaller homes were typically built for less affluent, who used what they could afford. Again, a generalization surely wrong in some cases, but also surely more correct than assuming smaller houses and cheaper houses might be for some reason built better.
My house, as well as two very substantially larger pre-Revolutionary houses my family has owned, were built on the southern slope of a hill, nestled down where there is very little wind. When you have 500 acres to play with, you have more options on house location. When I say my house is drafty, it's really a comment on volume of air exchange per size of house, versus a new home with urethane weatherstripping and cellulose insulation out the whazoo. I'm sure it's worse than a modern 6000 sq.ft. McMansion. But, aside from three old doors which have gotten pretty bad, due almost entirely to age, it's actually a pretty tight house for 1773. How many people even have original 240 year old doors on their old houses?
Do note, I named the thread "large or drafty," not "large and drafty."
The leaks have just moved, I suspect, but I'd guess most are tighter overall today than they were back then. Structural timber set in a stone wall srinks, but doesn't leak now more than it did then, because the wall has been undoubtedly re-pointed or poridged many times since. What leaks now is old doors that have cupped, or forced out of fitting properly by sloppy repairs and paint build-up, or windows loose and worn. Hopefully storms have been added to those windows, which would have originally had none, and it's exceedingly rare to find an original door of this age on the exterior. Most now have insulated attics, sealed off eaves, and improved other areas originally left loose. Heck, we have a roof you can't see light thru now, which was not a case with the cedar shake roof kept on this house until 20 years ago!
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Are you familiar with the word "often"? Hint. It doesn't mean "all" or "always."
As an example, my family home was a *very* large old home. It had its issues, but draftiness wasn't one of them. Etc.
eclecticcottage
Minister of Fire
We get that on the kitchen window when it's really cold and we've been cooking a lot (it's right over the sink too, so it gets the moisture from doing dishes). It's one of the windows I believe is older than the Cottage. It's kind of like a reverse casement-two pieces divided in the middle that open in, but they fit together when closed unlike a casement that is more like two separate windows.
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