The Construction of the Small House / A Simple and Useful Source of Information of the Methods of Building Small American Homes, for Anyone Planning to Build

by H. Vandervoort Walsh

This decay is called the natural depreciation of the house, but it is the architect’s duty to make this as insignificant as possible. It is essential to study the local conditions under which the house will have to stand. At the edge of the seashore, where the damp and salty winds are prevalent, one would be foolish to specify metal for screens, gutters, valleys, and leaders, which tended to go to pieces by corrosion. But in a dry locality the specifying of, say, galvanized iron for these parts would save money on the initial cost, and might not cause too great depreciation.

Likewise, the choice of the general materials of which the house is built should be influenced by the experience of the neighborhood. A wooden house in a seashore resort requires painting very often, and perhaps a brick house would in the end be more economical. A wood-shingle roof on a house, tucked away under the dense trees of a lake shore, would have a very short life, and the use of some more permanent material would justify the additional expense.

Indeed, on all hands, in every locality, we have lessons to learn concerning what happens to a house after it has been built, and how it might have been avoided. To stimulate the reader to observe more in this direction we will call attention to some of the most obvious ways in which a house depreciates.

Examine most houses which have stood for ten to twenty years, and it will be found that the foundations in nearly every case have settled unevenly, to a greater or less extent. This may be due to unforeseen causes, such as the action of underground water, frost, and disintegration of mortar, but generally it is the result of foundations built by the rule of the thumb. A wooden house seems so light that the average builder never bothers to consider the footings nor the loadings on them. Many walls are built without any footings at all, even though part of them rest on stone and other parts on earth. Now, of course, nothing serious as a rule comes of this slightly uneven settlement, but, add it to other things, and the depreciation of the property goes on rapidly.

Uneven Settlement

As an example of this, one house might be mentioned which was greatly marred by the settling of the footings under the porch columns. These columns supported the second floor, which projected over the porch. The amount of settlement was only about two inches, but this caused the windows to lose their rectangular shape, making the operation of the sash impossible, destroyed the drainage direction of the gutters, necessitating the relocation of the leaders and the repitching of the gutters, opened up the crack between the floor and the base-board, and made a large crack in the plaster wall and ceiling. The cause of it all was the building of the porch column footings upon filled-in earth, while the foundations of the rest of the house were upon rock. Uneven settlement was sure to take place under such conditions.

This same damaging effect of settlement is often noticeable in wooden frame houses, which have not been properly constructed to avoid uneven distribution of cross-section wood in the walls and partitions. Wherever there is a difference of cross-section of wood in two walls which support the same beams, there is sure to be uneven settling. The wall which has the greatest number of linear inches vertically of horizontally laid timbers will settle the most. This will cause sagging floors, sprung door frames, and open joints.

Many cracked stucco walls on the exterior have been caused by too much cross-section wood in their framing. A balloon-framed wall makes the best backing for an outside wall of stucco, because the studs extend from sill to plate without any horizontal timbers intervening.

But it can always be predicted that the masonry walls and parts of the house will settle before the wooden walls and partitions. The chimney will settle more rapidly than the surrounding partitions of wood, and should, for this reason alone, be built entirely independent of any other part of the structure. Where the wooden framed wall butts into a chimney and the plaster is continuous over the brick of the chimney and the studs of the wall, there is sure to develop a crack at the joint because of the unequal settlement, unless the plaster is reinforced at this point with metal lath. Likewise, it is bad to support any part of the wooden floor upon a girder which bears upon the chimney, not only on account of the excessive sinking of the chimney, but the subsequent danger of fire which it creates.