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Barn floor wood

R

ryanwheelock

Member
My hay/cow barn that was built in 1895 by my great great grandpa has an area for the cows and horses and has a wood floor. Its starting to get rotted and wondered what kind of wood they used when they built the floor. I'm up in northern michigan, so I'm guessing it a type of wood that was around my farm. I want to mill the boards, neighbor has mill, and use untreated boards, the boards in the barn floor are thick, and want to replace them with the same, been there a LONG time and want them to last a LONG time without going to lumber yard. Any ideas?? I clean the poop out everyday when I do chores but I think the years that my grandpa was old and didnt clean the barn until spring took its toll.
Thanks for the input
Ryan
 
Years ago they used Cypress for floors and outside gates and whatever took a lot of abuse and weathering. Bad thing is you can't get it as far as I know. We found a gate when mowing years ago on a new place we had bought that was almost buried in the ground, dug it up and it was still in good shape, still use it today.

Jim
 
Cypress is still available in my neck of the woods (west TN) and is fairly cheap. We bought some last month for $0.40 per sawed board foot.
 
My guess would be hemlock...Just make sure you nail it down when it's green because when it dries it becomes hard as a rock.
 
We built out of seasoned white oak, so hard you had to drill a hole in it to drive a 20 penny nail dipped in motor oil. Hard, but when finished you have a good structure.
 
They used to use Elm because it held up well to urine and manure. It's not the easiest wood to work with.It has twisty grain and hard to nail into.
 
You can"t get the kind of wood they had back in 1895. They had access to old trees with 100 or more growth rings per inch. The dense wood that results from competition with surrounding trees and the resulting slow growth is much stronger and more rot resistant than what you"ll be able to find today, even selecting and milling it yourself.

I own an "old" gambrel barn (built in 1941) here in Oregon. It would never pencil out to modern building codes, and yet it has held up fine for 70 years. The rough-cut rafters are old-growth Douglas fir, free of knots and hard as oak. The wood in this barn makes the modern, genetically engineered, 35 year rotation Doug fir lumber look like balsa wood by comparison.
 
As others have suggested, maybe cypress. I have some 2 X 6 cypress lumber that came from an old wood stave silo. Still pretty good shape. I wonder how old they are. 100 years ago sawn into lumber? and a 100 years before that, started growing as a young cypress tree? If I could find any more of it, I"d sure take it!
 
(quoted from post at 06:47:52 11/12/10) My hay/cow barn that was built in 1895 by my great great grandpa has an area for the cows and horses and has a wood floor. Its starting to get rotted and wondered what kind of wood they used when they built the floor. I'm up in northern michigan, so I'm guessing it a type of wood that was around my farm. I want to mill the boards, neighbor has mill, and use untreated boards, the boards in the barn floor are thick, and want to replace them with the same, been there a LONG time and want them to last a LONG time without going to lumber yard. Any ideas?? I clean the poop out everyday when I do chores but I think the years that my grandpa was old and didnt clean the barn until spring took its toll.
Thanks for the input
Ryan
Click to expand...

I will guess that the wood is cypress. It is nearly indestructable.
 
Elm was the tough wood of the north.
Not much Cyprus grown in Northern Michigan then or now!LOL!
Not much elm left these days either with Dutch Elm disease nearly wiping it out. i remember having to drill holes in elm boards to drive nails as a boy.
 
Exactly what my Dad told me years ago. Not only is elm resistant to urine but the natural "twisty" grain stands up well to the horsehoes.
Now, where can we find elm big enuf to saw out any substantial sized planks. I think white oak would stand up pretty well?
 
If not the elm mentioned often here probably American chestnut, the wood of choice for all kinds of barn work here in the north, (except for hemlock siding) There is an effort to bring the chestnut back. It's probably even more scarce than elm. Oak is probably your best bet. If I were doing it, I might try it with the abundance of hickory I have, if I could get anyone to saw it, it's really miserable twisty stuff!
 
I have mine done in 3x12 spruce been there for 15 years and looks like new. New addition will get the same
 
Elm would be wood of choice, but nearly extinct. The company I work for sells wood pellets for horse bedding, But hard woods such as oak have acids in them that are harmful to animal hoofs, Our mfgr. in Masina NY produces soft wood pellets, non harmfull to hoofs, These softwood pellets also produce more heat than hardwood pellet mixes such as "Bearfoot" in pellet stoves but require more maintainance ( ash removal.)
 
Like David in Oregon said: They used trees the likes of which don't exist today. Certainly not in Michigan. My guess is they used heart pine. This stuff is so valuable today that they are now salvaging sunken logs from the great lakes.

You might try to get some white oak. Just make sure it's white oak and not red oak. Red oak will quickly rot in typical barn floor conditions.
 
What kind of wood did the use to build plank roads? Back in the fifties, I can remember every country road had plank in the name, I assumed they used planks, before gravel roads.
Led
 
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