This is my second year with a SFG. My first year boxes were made of the plain 'ol cheapie 2x6 untreated wood, I don't remember exactly what they were... some kind of pine or fir surely. I followed the instructions in my Square Foot Gardening book fairly closely in terms of trying to do this on the cheap. I am replacing those beds this year because they've split, cracked and otherwise started to rot already. Not sure if that was because of the wood or because of the overly cold and wet summer we had last year. My husband and I are starting again, doing three 4x8 by 12" boxes this year, of cedar using some of those aluminum bed corners you can buy online. The corners are expensive and are certainly not a must-have, but we figure it will easier to replace one board if needs be or expand the beds. We hope that will last for several years as opposed to what we did last year. We both have rather limited free time. We did save money the first year...but if I had to put a price tag on the time we spent building the garden last year on top of the time we're having to spend rebuilding this year, I'd say we didn't save much. If its possible to spend some $$ on materials that will last a long time in your area...I'd recommend it.

I've never seen house wrap used. I think it's a north american thing because your construction techniques often require it, like your non-universal adaption of rainscreen instead using single layer paneling. We just built a house and here (Finland. Sweden, etc) and we put the moisture barrier (special type of plastic and special type of tape) on the inside. This ofcourse requires a good mechanical ventilation in a modern house. The biggest reason for the air barrier is that fiberglass/rockwool's hydroscopic, in older houses they use organic insulation like sawdust that can withstand moisture better and since there is no barrier, the moisture continually moves freely frominside out and it can dry out. This isn't possible using fiberglass or rockwool style insulation. Rain screen is probably the major reason you don't need house wrap. Commonly here the exterior is first paneling, which is wood, vinyl hasn't caught on here and hopefully won't. Then comes an air space to protect the exterior grade drywall (OSB and such hasn't caught on either). Then insulation which is usually plain rockwool or fiberglass wool, 250mm I think was used in our house, then the moisture barrier comes, then another air barrier of 45mm (can also be filled with rockwool, a little insulation inside the vapor barrier is OK, but no more than that), then interior drywall. The main purpose of this is to prevent the barrier from getting holes in it when putting up paintings and such. So anyway my point is housewrap isn't anything that is super neccessary, we don't ever use it here, but we also only build using rain screen which makes house wraps unneccesary. IMO rainscreen is a simpler and superior way to build. I must say in our arctic climate I don't see how an exterior grade wrap with all the insulation on the inside wouldn't lead to severe mold issues in a very short time span, perhaps it works where it's warmer but here it looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

I remember living in a house like that growing up. We cleaned and cleaned the bedroom and then found that the smell was comming from the headboard of the bed that was in contact with the exterior wall. Got rid of the headboard and kept all furniture 3" away from the walls. Now I know why it happens. insulating to the interior as described above or the foam injected into the blocks would be the only ways I would know to solve it. for climates where the vapor barrier is to the inside it would work, for climates where the vapor barrier is to the exterior..frame and insulate interior of walls. best of luck to you!

I should be able to have a photo or two up tomorrow, but until then, here are some details... First of all, I think the situation is a bit unique in that it was built by the same family who owned it until we bought it last December. The woman who lived there was 94 years old and went into a nursing home in the summer of 2004; she had moved into the house when she was 6 days old. Although the house has only minimal upgrades, it's been kept in pretty good structural shape, I believe mainly because it didn't cycle through owner after owner. Anyway, it has two main stories, plus a full (unfinished) basement and walk-up attic, tin roof (we think original, judging by what we can see from the attic), wrap-around porch on two full sides with "shipwheel" woodwork at the tops of the porch pillars. Upstairs are three bedrooms and what was originally a small covered balcony-type porch, which was converted to a half-bath in the 1920's or 1930's (judging by the newspapers we found under the floors). Downstairs in the back of the house is the kitchen with a large bathroom directly off of it, then a dining room, and in the front, a partially-divided living room/parlor-type area. The stairway going to the second floor comes directly in front of one of the two main entrances into the house, between the dining room and parlor. There aren't any particularly striking features inside, except for the interior doorways going into the kitchen, dining room, and between the living room/parlor-- all are arched, almost Spanish-style. The exterior siding is now vinyl but was originally tongue-and-groove wood, laid horizontally. The overall shape definitely isn't foursquare; the lower level is an "L," the upstairs covers the same footprint as downstairs except at the kitchen end of the house. The house now sits in a neighborhood that dates from about the 1940's-1950's, but it has a two-level outbuilding which has a lot of old stuff which suggest the land used to be a small farmstead of sorts-- butchering stuff, etc.