John,
> I know of a century-old house in an Alabama town 
Sounds like, "I knew of a century-old house..."

This reminds me of one of my earliest interfaces w/ a young architect, 
when I was a young mason who built CMU foundations. The architect was 
fresh out of Cornell, and this gig was near to Ithaca. The client wanted 
to build a house in the woods and the contractor sent me out to dig a 
test pit to determine water level. I reported back, 2 inches, they said, 
two inches from the bottom (I can’t remember if it was 6 or 8 ft deep), 
I said, No, the water is two inches from the top. Regardless the 
architect wanted a passive heat sink in the basement that it would be 
filled with gravel but it had to be 100% waterproof, a fantasy that I 
have never been able to believe in no matter how well it is drawn. I 
came up with a plan to build a basement within a basement and when I 
told the client how much that would cost they freaked and fired the 
architect – who being a newly minted one was supposed to be a money 
saving bargain. I don’t know what happened after that but I would have 
built the house on stilts.

][<

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>