Cedar Log Post Frame Firewood Shed

[JayRae]

Greetings fellow members and guests. I am working on a firewood shed that will be built out of cedar logs. The vertical poles will stand on sonotube piers, which are already placed. They each have a threaded bolt exposed an inch or so. My plan is to bend some steel into U-shaped anchors, which will then be secured to the exposed bolts and then bolted or lagged through the sides of the poles.

Question: would it be a bad or good idea to seal the bottom ends of the poles? I may or may not create a shallow hole in the post bases, to accommodate the 3/4 inch of bolt and nut protruding through the anchor base. (One thought is that doing so would allow the pole to rest flush on the anchor base. The other thought is that keeping the pole slightly standing off the base-and on top of the bolt & nut-will allow for better moisture evaporation and drainage. (Can't recall the term used to describe how water naturally gets drawn in between two mating surfaces)).

Would end-sealing just the bottom of the poles hold too much moisture in them?

Thanks!

John

[StressMan79]

Capillary action. I'd set the poles on top of the nuts, if only for simplicity. Seal or not, no big deal.

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[donjuedo]

Another term you might have in mind is "wicking".

I'd be inclined to seal. Code requires sill seal to block moisture from concrete up to wood. It seems like sealing the wood directly is pretty close to the same thing.

[panderson03]

JayRae! welcome back dude. where the HECK have you been??
congrats on the build. sounds like a fun project:)

[JayRae]

There it is! Capillary action is what I was thinking of. Thanks for the advice. The steel I have only allows for 3" up each side (most material I could find for the thickness I wanted) so I may bore a shallow hole to maximize vertical contact of the anchor. If I do that, I'd be more comfortable with some rubberized seal at least.

I know I've been AWOL for a while. Just busy with a now 2 year old girl and my monster list of other projects around our old house and property. We still plan to build when the time and cash are right. I sure do miss the loads of info and experience here!

I'll post some pics of the shed build for now.

[panderson03]

2 year olds sure do keep you busy for sure!
if you want build experience come up north and help on our build. got the tongue and groove on the cabin. will start working on sleepers next week:)

[Mosseyme]

Congratulations on the t&g. big step. At least I could cover with a tarp if we get that far before winter.

Jay, there are a lot of ways to do things and with code men you have to consider that.
In 1985 when we built this house we did a lot of things wrong by codes which we did not have back then.
We have a 8x35 porch on the front of the house. The porch post are 4x4 pt 16' long because the porch is 6' off the ground. I dug holes a foot deep and poured hand mixed concrete in I then added a 2 liter pop bottle with the bottom cut off and the top cut off with some curve left on the top. We poured that full while the footer was still wet and settled it down an inch into the concrete. This left about 8"s of concrete pillar. after it was cured we set the 4x4s on top and proceeded to build the porch around them and attached to the roof. It all still stands with no sign of rot or movement. Not what I would recommend but just goes to show a lot of things will work. I don't even remember if we did anything to attach the post to the pillar. I do not think we used any barrier between the pt and the concrete.
You guys can stop laughing now. It worked.http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj152/mossey_01/L1310373.jpg