Frontier Sod Roof

The sod house or soddy was an often used alternative to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the great plains of canada and the united states primarily used at first for animal shelters corrals and fences if the prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone or the poverty of the settlers precluded purchasing standard building materials sod from thickly rooted.

Frontier sod roof.

Roof g curb. Over this was carefully fitted a double layer of the sod building blocks. The grass almost concealed the roof but did not affect its insulating or protective properties. One sod house settler lamented that in the afternoons every afternoon the rattlesnakes would come out of their hidden dens in the walls and roof and sun themselves on the western window sill.

The sod house. On the straightaway visibility was good on the left side of the road and fair on the right side. Other stories in frontier history destination. Southwest wisconsin a 170 mile loop winds past lead mines a famous grotto and a brewery town.

Shallow roofs that don t shed water quickly added to sod that soaks up water means many roofs leaked. Life on the grand portage once a corner of northeast minnesota was the center of the fur trade universe. Many of the roofs were covered with sod cut somewhat thinner than that used in the side walls. A better roof could be made with sawed lumber but that increased the cost of the soddy.

Tar paper in between the sheathing and the sod helped cut down the number of leaks. The first good rain started this sod to growing and soon the dugout roof was covered with waving grass. Some frontier families found that their cows grazed on their roof and occasionally had them fall through. Also a steeper roof required longer timbers which were hard to come by.

Allowing for snow loads and your family gathering for summer breakfast on top of the house figure that the beams and rafters under a sod roof will have to carry 100 pounds per square foot. When railroads reached the frontier as they did in montana in 1880 materials such as lumber tar paper and shingles were immediately available to newly arrived homesteaders. Lumber roofs had rafters with wood sheathing nailed over the rafters. Mackinaw city on the south shore of the mackinac straits the year is 1775.

Rain helped the sod to grow and soon the dugout roof was covered with waving grass. 4 162 lbs 5 16 times 21 460 lbs hrs g headlights p. So builders tended to keep sod roofs shallow.