Building a house/temple/fort

[dumuzid]

When I played in a game and we needed to refurbish a large ruined settlement for a new community, at Sacred Time we ran the Wooing of Esrola heroquest.  In the finale of the quest we compelled Lodril/Veskarthan to build the Palace of Black Glass in the God Time, and when our questers returned to the Middle World the ruins were rebuilt in gleaming obsidian.  They still needed furnishings to be properly livable, of course.

[SJB]

The conversion from stone to wood may be the weakest part of the formula. There are various claims made about the speed advantages of building in wood - indeed the ‘wood revolution’ in building is a very modish topic - but I couldn’t find a decent comparative study. I do wonder if the one-day barn raising is based on significant preparatory work having been completed. Anyway, that’s the advantage of putting figures down on paper: they are subject to empirical debate.

[SJB]

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

or to round it off, for generic construction,

working in wood  13 lunars per cubic foot. 

working in stone:  22 l per cubic foot

But in the case of a clan building its own new longhouse and felling local lumber, not using any manufactured components, and doing no masonry,   money is negligible but man-days are the critical issue, and that would be 3 cubic feet per man-day in wood, 1,6 in stone.

So to raise a log cabin 20'x12'x12' high with 6" thick walls, that's 64 feet of perimeter x 12' high x.5 = 384 cubic feet /3 = 128 man-days? 

No,  I think it should be less, at least until you attempt  higher quality construction.. 

Why?  I understand from a book about Lincoln's life that a frontiersman would fell trees inside of one year and then before winter invite maybe 12-20 neighbors to a one day house raising -  and still manage to feed himself and family. 

Of course that's a frontiersman with an iron axe.  How much to allow for bronze or stone tools?  What's the nature of the real world historical data?

The conversion from stone to wood may be the weakest part of the formula. There are various claims made about the speed advantages of building in wood - indeed the ‘wood revolution’ in building is a very modish topic - but I couldn’t find a decent comparative study. I do wonder if the one-day barn raising is based on significant preparatory work having been completed. Anyway, that’s the advantage of putting figures down on paper: they are subject to empirical debate.

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said: