BeGreen said:
None of the old houses had an exterior wind barrier like tar paper. Most often the boards were locally hand milled and therefore were not of the tightest fit. If they were in a hurry, the boards would be still green and shrinkage was common. Some places leaked like sieves. This might be barely tolerable in England or Holland where the winters were milder, but downright miserable when these folks moved to New England. The well to do could afford to use seasoned wood and better practices like caulking joints with horse hair or building with stone. Some of the old houses even had sawdust in their walls for insulation.
This is a fascinating discussion, I think. Glad somebody started it.
Lord knows there are a lot of old, drafty, uninsulated farmhouses in VT, but some folks did know how to build them, and also how to site them. Mine built around 1850 has two of its walls a foot thick (not sure what's in there, or was in there since the previous owners did put some insulation in the walls) and well-fitted clearly original oak siding in fine condition. It sits on the SE side of a low ridge, so it's got considerable protection from the prevailing N and W winds of winter and gets that low winter sun all day (when there is sun!). It was one of those four square room deals, though the interior walls have been opened up and modified a lot. It had at least two chimneys, though it's a small house. There's a cistern under one of the front rooms, far enough down that the water that's still in it doesn't freeze even in the worst sub-zero winter stretches. I assume that's where the kitchen was originally.
Around 1900, a small extension was put onto the house on the west side, which now houses the kitchen. In back of that is an unheated (but now at least insulated and semi-finished) large storeroom, and in back of that is a large attached woodshed. Those two things put two good spaces between those cold west winds and the living space in winter, and between the living space and the hot afternoon sun in summer.
My neighbors up the road, by contrast, have a big, rambling, much more handsome house built in the 1790s, sited quite elegantly right on the very top of the ridge, where it gets beaten to death by the wind in winter and the sun in summer.
Kinda funny. My very modest little farmhouse was clearly built and sited by long-time Vermonters, or at least denizens of the north, who knew what they were doing. The elegant place on top of the ridge not so much. In my imagination, I can see the then locals watching the house on the ridge going up and shaking their heads.
