The most amazing part of this construction is the asthetic beauty of the houses. If you're picturing a pile of firewood slathered in cement and a pole roof with room for just one cot, the Colman, and the dog, outhouse close by, think again. These houses are as sophisticated as you care to make them with a unique, personnal "fingerprint" to each one.

This is an excellent read, extremely informative, and you can successfully build your house using this book.

46 of 47 found the following review helpful:


Very practical manual for owner builders  Feb 25, 1999
Rob and Jaki Roy have done a nice job of organizing their cordwood manual into useful chapters for the differnet stages of owner built cordwood house construction. The included photos of other cordwood houses was both exciting and informative. The best part of the book is how they tell you what products and methods they recommend highly, those they don't, and those others have tried. A must have practical manual for anyone considering building their own cordwood house!

29 of 29 found the following review helpful:


The final word on this building method  Jan 08, 1999
This book is a great read on an excellent method of alternative house building.The author has written a series of books on cordwood construction and in doing so has arived at what could be called the final word on this method.The book is well laid out and illustrated but watch out for important tidbits of info. that are sometimes buried in the text . When read cover to cover , the reader gains both valuable information and confidence and I highly reccomend this one to owner/builders everywhere.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:


An authoritative guide on Cordwood  Dec 01, 2006 By Gary Edmonds "Gary E."
I have read this book front to back and really enjoyed the multitude of information contained within. Parts of it are so detailed that you can get a complete picture of the entire home building process.

I have come to the conclusion that cordwood is one of the most underrated construction techniques in America today. While Strawbale has gotten a lot of attention in the media, Cordwood is still a buider's secret weapon when it comes to cost and ease of construction.

One of the biggest downfalls of traditional Cordwood masonry is radial shrinkage. This can easily be fixed by plastering one side of the wall. But of course this will cover up some of the beauty of the log ends...

Rob Roy is one of the authorities of this construction method and this book is a must read if you are interested in alternative building methods. The traditional frame construction method is an ecological desaster when you look at the whole picture. Yes, it is fast... But, you are building a home that was stored piece by piece in a warehouse, instead of organically built from the land!

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:


A real positive- you can do it book  Aug 02, 2005 By Jacque A. Dunn
This is a wonderful, inspiring book for the alternative minded owner builder. Lots of useful information.

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