Log homes may be less expensive than you think, there is more competition among the builders now ... of course they'll grind on to you about how dear is the timber, but i know from selling to them and then knowing their finished prices that log cost is a tiny fraction of the total -g- ..... i've wondered if i might build another personal house, would it be log construction, quite possibly, even likely .... very practical in a northern clime, and beautiful provided that the scale is kept optimum, i.e. if the logs are a big enough diameter for the size of the house ... no more than six per floor, imho, too many little ones takes away the aesthetics for me
House logs can be one paying product of a commercial thinning operation in douglas fir, if landowners thought that far ahead, which they don't very much ... few want to forego the immediate consumption of all value grown, once the logical thinnings are that size
Lots on the net on log homes - fraservalleyloghomes.com .... years ago in a book i saw fotos of russian construction in the Lake Ladoga [sp?] region, near St Petersburg, their builders would go into the woods with an axe only and make a cathedral entirely of logs ... seriously, some very large churches, spires and towers and all ... and they were still standing, in use hundreds of years later ... well that's a matter of keeping a good roof on it
Wouldn't make a dent in canadian forestry output though, a few thousand log homes ... no, we need the japanese to get their economy rolling again, and maybe the chinese to discover the miracle of frame construction -g- |
