Log Home cost was $50 thousand more for Hand Scribed, Why?
The Home You Choose Can Have Hidden Costs.
So how do you find them before you buy your home?
By asking questions and keeping track of different log home costs and how they are put together.
Simply put you need to do your home work and never take someone’s word for something without checking and using common sense. The alternative is higher costs and a low quality log home. (There is another alternative, you can hire a technical adviser.)
So let’s go on and learn about why the costs vary so much.
Different log home companies have different ways to set up their homes which are: cutting every log to fit in its place at the site instead of at the factory, some have to use cranes to lift logs into place but others do not, some have to be drilled as each log is stacked into place then lag bolted or spiked and some drill at the factory, some log homes have to have caulking between the logs and later chinked but a good well dried log system does not, some log homes have to have the windows and doors cut out after stacking but many are pre cut at the factory, and some logs which are high in moisture content have to have extensive settling slots and cutouts so they will not break the windows but dried logs to 15% moisture content do not. These things are very expensive to do at the site which causes other problems when contractors have to shave costs they will not put enough fasteners in when building or put the foam sealer in. When the cutting is not done at the factory many things can happen like the logs are not scribed into each other properly, the lag screws are not drilled properly or enough put in, and many other things causing expenses down the road. The difference in construction costs between a log home which is drilled and lagged at the site and a pre-drilled all thread log home can be quite different. For example, the difference between a Lodge Loge home which is pre-drilled at the factory for all thread bolts that go all the way up to the top of the log wall and a lag screwed home was $20,000.00. The time difference was 3 weeks and this was for a 2000 sq. ft. home. I have seen over a $100,000.00 dollar difference in costs due to only labor costs in some homes.
In another blog I noted that you should not buy windows from a log home manufacturer. The reason is that most of the time the windows are produced in another state and hauled to the log manufacturer’s warehouse at the mill then hauled to your site, which means that they are handled many times by people that handle logs not windows. These windows which are usually insulated glass will have a tendency to have problems with steaming between the glass sometimes within a year or two and it is very hard to get the log home factory to do anything about it. When you buy from a dealer which is in your area you have more control and the windows are usually handled only once by professionals.
Cutting drying slots and preparing the log walls for settling is quite expensive and is a very poor way to build a log home. Some of the problems down the road are settling up to 13” in wall height (the first hand scribed green stick log home I built did this.) The manufacturer stated that it would only shrink about 6”. Ha! Ha! The joke was on me. I changed the windows once and the trim 3 times. But worse yet we spiked the logs together and when they dried 4 years later the spikes helped to split one log in the middle of the log wall and it simply failed. We had to go back and repair that home. It cost about $20,000.00 to rebuild that wall. The moral of the story is you should do your home work before you buy your log home. I should have but instead I worked for days for 5 years and still there were problems.
One day I was called on the phone by a screaming lady, my home is flooded. Water is spouting everywhere. She was right. When I got there it was raining and the wind was blowing hard. I went inside and saw quite a site. There was water spouting out of the log wall like small fountains.
Why?
The log home was only dried to 19% moisture content before stacking and it was a full round log milled with a Swedish cope but the logs were full length of the log wall. What had happened was they had slowly dried in the log wall and split but what was worse was that several of the logs had bad spiral grain which allowed the split to go from the outside of the home and spiral into the inside of the log home. This allowed the water to flow from the outside to the inside of the home. Then when the wind blew just right it would push the water out like a fountain. I caulked and chinked but could never get it all stopped and then a few years later the chinking caused rot when the water was trapped behind it. If they had done their home work they may have discovered that one company puts a saw cut in the top of each log which stops most of this cracking.
One couple complained that they have to refinish their home every year. I thought wow that is pretty bad because the homes I have been building last from 9 to 12 years between each coat. So I went to take a look and try to see what was happening and give them some advice. What I found was a sad state of affairs. The log home was what I call a flat on flat log wall system with a butt and pass corner system. The water simply ran down to the seam between the logs and soaked in or ran in from the ends which were out in the weather. Their log walls already had some rot starting and there were massive cracking caused from the logs not being dried before they were put into the log wall along with the logs being cants which means that the heart of the tree is not in the center of the log. This caused more twisting which opened up places for more water penetration. To top it all off the original finish was put on 2 days after the painter pressure washed the home. When you pressure wash logs the water is forced into them and it takes months to come out. But when it is painted over within a day or two that traps the water behind the finish and the finish will not stay on very long and sometimes will just turn black and come off. Once this starts you need to completely sand the old finish off and start fresh. They were just putting some more finish on over what was already in bad shape. I will say this only once, NEVER PRESSURE WASH A LOG HOME!!!!!!!! You will be paying for it for many years to come.
The final thing that I want to talk about is why do some log homes need to have all the trim re-applied and chinked every few years. When the logs are not dried to 15% they will shrink twist crack move and generally cause a lot of problems. When the logs have 17% moisture content one inch in, which is the industry standard, they will settle (a fancy name for shrinking.) approximately 5 to 6 inches in wall height and also shrink end wise around ½ “ per 20 ft of log length. This will take up to 5 years to do because finishes slow down the drying process. This is why you will have extra costs in re-applying the trim and chinking and calking. At this time there is only one or two log home companies in the US that dry their logs to 15% to the center of the log.
Drying of the logs is one of the most important things to consider because you do not know what will happen with the logs until they are completely dried to stable moisture content. This is my biggest complaint with the log home counsel and the industry.
Hope this has given you some knowledge to use.
Log Man Dan
PS: If you have a question just give me a call: 541-999-5477
