Thursday, May 26, 2005

Log cabin and log home - Ristiku LogHome - Estonia

Log cabin and log home - Ristiku LogHome - Estonia
Ristiku LogHome, OY. specializes in the design and manufacture of quality, energy efficient log home kits for sale. Our log home kits are available to ship anywhere in the World. You don’t have to be a professional contractor to construct our log home kits. Even builders with not so much experience will find our log home construction system easy to follow. Visit our web site to view our extensive collection of house plans for building log homes. If you don’t see a design that has the room solution you need, we will guide you in creating a custom design for your log home. For more information, or to order our log home catalogue and guide, call our company at +372 52 91 388.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

A must read on the difference between milled and handcrafted logs.
I also understood that you are willing to go for machine work only as well. I hope you don’t have anything against if I use the opportunity to explain some of the facts good and bad with the different techniques.
There is more about a log house or in fact about any type of house than just a good pricing and a known or seen name.
1. The machine cut logs are normally of thin walls 50 to 160 mm therefore suitable for warm and mild climate like Spain, France perhaps even Germany and England. While, yes, there are this type of log constructions also in Scandinavia they all should be fortified by means of extra insulation. Or by extra bills for heating materials. The wood it self has a good value regarding heat transfer/loss it is quite energy saving. However, what use is of the good value if there are leakages? Which brings me to the second point
2. The machine doesn’t know that every log is somewhat different but it has to make every log look basically the same as if it would be otherwise the house wouldn’t assemble afterwards. During the milling process 1 thing must happen and that is that the logs are made to fit requirements – regardless of its bumps on the surface or bending to one or the other side. (The milling process can leave gaps up to 0,63cm. Homes are not pre-built prior to shipping, therefore flaws would not be detected until erected on your site.) This brings us to the next point
3. The used wood is literally the heart of the wood - we all know that the wood grows quickly and much in its first years and slower as it grows older. The wider the year rings the softer the wood – the more likely the logs are going to play in the walls (and there is a lot of waste). Using metal screws to fix or prevent the problem isn’t going to help as even the steel poles bend with those forces when the house is settling, the best they can do is keep the logs from slipping out of the wall. This leads to heat leakages threw bent, warped or twisted wood. It isn’t hard to imagine what will happen if the logs do not connect completely. From inside you can use something to fill the spaces between the logs and from outside there is not much point of doing that as the small birds will carry it away anyhow.
4. A disadvantage with this technique is also the knot point system as with stronger winds and storms wind will infiltrate and water can penetrate the knots. You won’t be seeing this with the Norwegian knot.
5. Accordingly to my experience the normal life period of machine work is around 50-75years – however this is estimated as the technology it self isn’t that old. The hand crafted logs have a much longer life span about 200 years with proven techniques

To be honest – searching for problems with log houses I came across most of the log home manufactures describing their product as best and giving just advice that choose the best builder and not the best price. Well’ yes this is all and good but doesn’t give you any idea of what a handcrafted log manufacture could do wrong or what are the disadvantages over milled logs. Who likes to talk about problems? I do not! I will try to not to take any sides here and I will also try to put the questions in the order of their importance:
1. This is going under log houses in general.
What is the moisture content of your logs? Why is the moisture content important at all?
All log homes and log cabins will shift and settle, regardless of the species of wood chosen, or the construction methods used. Without proper construction, settling in a log home can cause problems as logs shrink as they dry out. Log walls are also subject to compression from the weight of the logs placed above them. This is another key factor in choosing not necessarily the least expensive log home company to build your home, but rather one that produces the highest quality work. Our moisture content is 18% -2 – this is the moisture content all the logs will get no matter if they are dried to be 10% or left “green” with 24%. The final content is subject to average air moisture as they can not get any dryer than that. So basically the more water there is in the wood the more it will shrink.
2. What is so special about handcrafted logs? Problems that there might be?
The crafted logs are assumed to be more expensive than the milled logs. This is partially true – after all every log is inserted by someone living and working and they need food, clothes and at least some luxury, instead of electricity. On the other hand they cant be that much more expensive as there is amortization and cost of the machinery the office has to be fairly large to sell the houses as the capacity is definitely higher than by handcrafted logs. So the handcrafted logs do have an disadvantage – during the building it goes slowly and you can’t have the house within a week.
The problem with handcrafted logs is that if the craftsman isn’t skilled the finishing details are going to look not so god, the logs do not sit on each other (leaving heat leakages). The knots are wrongly made using simple circle method - there will blow some wind in and water if using Norwegian wind notch with V-cut logs this is rather impossible to happen.

So before going further I ask of you some questions:
1. Are you going to live in the house your self with your family? How many years?
2. Are the points described before of surprising nature i.e. Insulation, log quality, twisting, joining both logs and corners, moisture?
3. In case the manufacturer is assembling the house afterwards – how many years do they give you warrantee? 1,2,3,5 or 10 like it should be?
4. Can you visit them? And what will you see?
5. What you will get for your money?


Best regards,
Peep Mumm
Ristiku LogHome
www.ristiku.com

Sunday, December 28, 2003

Log homes & log cabins - Ristiku Log Home.

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Where to find Log homes of good quality and competitive price in Eastern Europe?

Anyone can go to a store and just pick an house he/she likes, pay the money and that's it, in few months there will be a house standing on the ground... But why pay more than necessary?

For instance Eastern European manufactures provide same houses at half the price asked for example in Norway, Spain, France or England.
The only problem is - trust. To speak the truth - many have been fooled. I am sure, anyone who would like to have a house is making some background searches and hears the stories of how someone got burned by Russians or from someone from other Baltic region or even Poland. Mainly the schema is simple -> the customer pays 50% as down-payment and never sees or hears about his house nor his money. The others rumor is that the quality is bad and the price difference is not worth it. Well that sounds to me more like a good lobby work of local suppliers and it just isn't true...

There are many trustworthy manufactures/dealers in Eastern Europe. Don't let make a fool of your self neighter by "offshore" builders nor by lobby workers. There are many ways to secure the quality of your future building and your money.

Some sample ways to more sequrity:
1. Bank warrantees
2. Smaller down-payment
3. Video materials
4. Refferers

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Bank warrantees are quite important in international business. Normally, the warrantees
For a company who has been in business and who is capable of producing your house it shouldn't be a problem to have a bankers warrantee for you as well.
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Small down-payment of 10% should be enough for any builder to start the building process. The rest money he can have accordingly to

means that the builder has to put more money into the building process. It is very uncommon (rare) that the manufacture
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Request that the manufacture or dealer sends you videos and photos of the progress. If he starts building