I am interested in building a log home from a kit. Does anyone have any experience with this? I would like to know if anyone can give me some pros or cons concerning log homes and more conventional forms of construction.

One of the common problems with log homes is the roof rests on the log walls. As the years go by, the logs will shrink in diameter. This shrinking must be compensated for by cutting grooves in the logs i.e. the doors remain at a constant height yet the walls settle.

My retirement home will be a log home. My research leads me toward the post and beam construction. The roof sets on corner posts, thus reducing the load on the walls, reducing the shrinkage.

Here is a site that compares post and beam, with other log home construction techniques.

Cedar-log-homes, post and beam construction

[This message was edited by Walks On Water on 08-22-02 at 07:18 AM.]

Log homes are romantic and beautiful, but very expensive to build, if built right. If not built right, they're not worth building.

The cheapest type of log building (it uses a post-and-beam frame) is the stackwall.

http://www.life.ca/nl/57/cordwood.html

http://www.cordwoodmasonry.com/Cordwood.html

It has an additional advantage - it's very energy efficient in cold weather, and cool in hot weather.

Before building our house, I looked into log homes built from a kit, and visited quite a few. There is a certain uniformity to the log shapes -- they are, after all, precision cut so that untrained workers can erect them - that I did not like. We ended up building a frame house with 2x6's instead of 2x4's for framing material, and covered with 2-inch-thick red cedar tongue-and-groove. The ceilings are red cedar, too - a token gesture to my original dream of a log home. I like it very much. And it smells great.

[This message was edited by babthrower on 09-12-02 at 03:57 AM.]