Tar River Log Homes Several Methods Involved In Log Home Restoration

Tar River Log Homes professional service provider. From concept to style and design to actual building, each log home will have its very own set of factors and unique challenges. A single significant procedure is caulking. Probably at least one half of the log homes are improperly caulked or not caulked fully. Meaning the house is weather tight or not caulked at all. In general, many log houses possess some amount of caulking. Normally it's found around doors and windows. At times the corners have either been caulked or some type of expanding foam might have been used.

In order to caulk a log home properly only requires a couple of days depending on the size. In case it is a log home restoration, there may be some old caulk that will have to be taken out first yet, after that, the new application is very easily applied, tooled and cleaned to leave a nice weather-proof joint that would last for several years. Given that logs are always moving, changing, checks or cracks are opening up, and these have to be caulked and sealed promptly or they're an avenue for water as well as pests right to the middle of the log. Chinking is a way to not merely seal in between logs, but likewise change the whole look of a log house. There are different colors available, and a one to three band of chinking applied between logs could change the appearance of a log property, and add marvelous aesthetic charm.

Log properties are the toughest properties to keep sealed correctly. With utility costs rising, it's essential to keep tight seals in between logs and around windows and doors. This is merely the nature of the beast. They get smaller as the moisture leaves them and they crack or check. They lose size and dimension both longitudinally as well as latitudinally. The logs take on moisture and then discharge it again. This is why it is very significant that the stain used on them lets air pass. The majority of sealants caulk as well as chinking, will not tolerate this amount of activity by the logs.

Pressure washing is likewise another method in log home restoration which is offered together with other services. Stripping is yet another method applied in log restoration. It will likewise remove mildew, however, it's recommended to follow up with a chlorine rinse to ensure all the mildew is not just removed, yet the mildew spores are killed deep into the pores of the wood. When not completely irradiated from the wood, mildew could regrow under the new stain leading to huge issues that can only be fixed by going through the whole stripping process yet again.

Log home restorations have to be done appropriately. Most certainly, you do not desire to spend time off working on second-rate products, make sure that the proper procedure for the particular situation will be used. If not, it is relatively simple to perform quite a bit damage in a short time to wood. Log home specialist should have the correct equipment and knowledge in order to aid you with your restoration necessities. Tar River Log Homes qualified service provider.

Tar River Log Homes the Essential Guide to Log Homes

Tar River Log Homes supreme service provider. So you've decided to escape the noise and business of the big cities and towns and retire to the woods and settle into a log home. Now you have a decision of what type of log cabin is the right one for you. They are no longer simple little things in the woods, a plume of smoke rising from the single stove in the middle of one room. Some of these log cabins can be considered mansions. Different factors will determine what kind of home is best for you.

How long are you going to be living there? Is this a seasonal home, maybe spending at most a few months, enjoying the summer and nature? Or do you plan to make it a fully seasonal second home, where you can enjoy the sounds of the summer as well as enjoy a nice Christmas in the winter? Also, you will have to ask is this going to be your primary residence? Do you plan on living in your log cabin all-year round?

As with any home, you'll want to find out what sort of look you are going for. Of course all log homes will be made of wood and have a somewhat similar appearance, but they do differ. Some of these homes are more traditional in design; others are quite modern in design, many straight and hard edges, and crisp functional looks.

You will also have to determine what price you want to spend. Price will vary depending on many factors, such as design, size, materials, insulation, and wood treatment. These are all things which need to be researched and explored. A log home is an exciting purchase, a way to get back out into nature. Take a look and see what kind of log home is best for you. Tar River Log Homes ultimate service provider

Tar River Log Homes Best Log Homes

Tar River Log Homes skilled service provider. Who would think that building a log home might have so many options? Build a basic log home in the traditional pioneering DIY way or have one completely custom designed, engineered, and built for you. You can even purchase a custom plan and materials and do some of the constructions work yourself.

The Kit

Kit homes are essentially that - a home in a really large box (a slight exaggeration). Your kit home is built off site at a construction yard, then disassembled and loaded onto a trailer. It is trucked to your property and rebuilt on your site. While fans of this option speak of lower costs and faster completion, critics argue that "a building that is easy to take apart is inherently weak."

The Package

Another option for the log home enthusiast is to work with an established company that specializes in designing and providing the materials for these homes. Unlike a kit, you work with the company to determine the plan and materials. You may also (depending on the company) choose to purchase plans and materials only, plans + materials + dry-in labor, or turnkey construction.

Once you select the plan and materials, the company takes care of preparing the materials customized to your order and shipping them to site for assembly. The house is not assembled, dismantled, and then reassembled as would happen with a kit home.

DIY

For those of you who want to fulfill a DIY dream, there are a number of online and in-print resources that can take you through the many steps of actually building a log home. The DIY plan means that you are responsible for sourcing all your materials (including the logs), laying the foundation and completing all the construction work from the ground on up.

The Basics

Unless you opt for the complete DIY plan, there are some basic steps that most future home owners will take.

• Budget: your plan should include the land and development as well as the cost of the house itself (including materials, shipping, construction, and all finishing details.
• Pre-qualify for a Home Loan: this is the same kind of process as for financing any other home and you may find some lenders are more experienced in working with log home lending. Arrange your financing before you shop for designs and a production team.
• Pick a Site: unless you already own land for future home, working with a real estate agent or developer may be the most efficient way of acquiring suitable land for your log home.
• The Design: you may work with an independent designer or an established log home production company that offers a selection of (often modifiable) home designs.
• Permits: obtain the necessary local building permits before you begin construction. Be aware of the building codes that will apply to your log home.
• Quotes: obtain quotes from subcontractors who will do the actual construction work. (You will typically need this information in advance of seeking financing from a lender.)
• Finalize Plans: review and sign off on the final construction blueprints.
• Schedule a Closing Date with the Lender.
• Schedule Start Dates: start dates include the date you begin prepping your home site (laying the foundation, etc.), the date your logs and materials should be delivered, and the date construction begins on the house itself.

So what's your log home-building style: DIY, go with a kit, do some of the work, or let the pros do it all? Make a plan, get your finances worked out, secure the land and permits, and get started!

 Tar River Log Homes official service provider. To know more about Tar River Log Homes please visit here:-  http://www.tarriverloghomes.com/

Tar River Log Homes Heating and Cooling Your Log Home

Tar River Log Homes professional service provider. Needless to say, our forefathers didn't worry too much about heating their log cabins. Big fireplaces had no problem warming up the one or two rooms they lived in. Of course now that log homes are family-sized, people often have the impression that there is something different about how they are heated, and the good news is that a standard system will work as well in a log home as a traditional structure.

Almost all log homes are built with at least one fireplace. Initially, we thought that our beautiful soapstone woodstove would heat the whole house, and we would use our forced-air propane heat as a backup. Alas, we were all wrong. Because we have a cathedral ceiling with a big loft, the heat from the stove goes directly upstairs, requiring two ceiling fans to recirculate the warm air. We expected this, but we also thought the heat would expand sideways into the rest of the open floor space (dining room and kitchen). Not on your life! Even sitting on the couch about 15 feet from the stove, I need a coverlet. I'm uncomfortably chilly in the kitchen. I think that if we had a regular ceiling, the heat might have gone where we expected it, but the volume of the cathedral ceiling threw off our calculations. Also, the soapstone stove is designed to be run 24/7, and because we both work for a living, the stove doesn't get fired up until the evening. This woodstove needs to be heated up slowly at the risk of cracking the stone, so by the time it's really cooking we're ready for bed.

Old-fashioned fireplaces traditionally sucked all the warm air out of the room, but modern designs are more efficient at recirculating the heat. The most energy-efficient fireplace is built in the center of the house, so the stack heat is not lost to the outside. Outside stacks can create back drafts if the fire is extinguished, making a new fire more difficult to light. If you are planning multiple fireplaces, putting two of them back-to-back (facing adjoining rooms) will give you the opportunity to build one chimney with two flues. Or you could put a fireplace above your furnace, again allowing two flues in the same chimney. A direct-vent fireplace will eliminate the chimney, but you'll have to figure out how to hide the vent on the outside wall. Or, if you use a wood-stove, you could run the pipe through the wall and straight up the outside, building a box around the pipe to simulate a chimney. Depending on the look you want, you may want to leave the pipe inside the room and send it through the roof. This will give more heat.

It's a good idea to consider your heating and air-conditioning needs early in the design phase. Although log homes are naturally energy-efficient, it's not wise to skimp on your system. You may be able to heat your whole house with a huge fireplace or wood stove, but the township will probably have minimum standards to meet before they issue a building permit. Also, you need to consider resale value. I know of one person who tried to sell a million-dollar handcrafted log home without a furnace, and as you might suspect, the buyer never came along. The house was listed as unfinished, and installing the heating system after the fact was too daunting a task. A similar problem exists if you try to get away without central air conditioning. Yes, log homes do stay cooler in the summer, but those "dog days" of August can give you a perfectly miserable night's sleep, and a potential buyer will probably not be as tolerant as the original owner. Indeed, our mortgage company would not consider granting a construction loan if we didn't include central air conditioning.

If you want to preserve ductwork space, you can use forced air heat, with the same ductwork serving the air conditioner. Propane or oil are usually the fuels of choice in rural areas. If your interior wall space is limited, there are companies that specialize in very small, high-pressure duct systems that fit into tight angles; these systems usually require a much higher initial installation cost. When using traditional ductwork, you want to keep the angles at a minimum, so it helps to design first floor walls that will conveniently carry the air straight up to the second floor. An open floor plan offers a challenge, because you must bear in mind that the upstairs rooms need to be heated somehow, and you will need both supply and return vents to create an efficient air flow. If you want to use full log interior walls, you'll have to find another way to run the ductwork, electric, and plumbing. We made that mistake, and there are not enough return vents in our bedroom. The air is stuffy in the summer time, even with the windows open.

Where do the vents go? Since all our exterior walls are full log, many of our vents were placed in the floor. If your interior walls are sheetrock or tongue-and-groove, you can put the vents where they normally go. One thing I wish we had done was go over the plan with the HVAC contractor, because he put the vents in places I found most inconvenient. Some times it can be helped, and some times it can't.

If you are energy-minded and prefer to leave your thermostat at a minimum, you will find that the southern-facing side of the log home tends to be warmer than the northern exposure. Because the sun tends to sink closer to the horizon on a winter afternoon, it's advantageous to arrange your large windows facing south; during the summer, the sun will cross over the roof, so it won't overheat your house. However, you may find that the northern side of your house - which won't get direct sun at all - could be noticeably cooler. The best solution is to install radiant-floor heating (if you can afford it). Although this system requires a boiler instead of a furnace, the in-floor heating spreads the warmth evenly throughout your home, eliminating the northern-facing blues. With radiant-floor heating, you need to keep the thermostat steady all the time; the system is not designed to be turned down when you go to work. Additionally, you can use the boiler to heat your hot water as well, eliminating the need for a hot-water heater. On the other hand, you will still need to install ductwork for the air conditioning.

Overall, the same considerations apply as in regular construction. We thought we could get by with only one zone of heating and cooling, but in retrospect, two zones would have solved a lot of problems. In the long run, it's cheaper to do it correctly in the first place. Retrofitting a log home is not going to be a breez . Tar River Log Homes official service provider. To know more about Tar River Log Homes please visit here:-  http://www.tarriverloghomes.com/

Tar River Log Homes Best Log Homes

Tar River Log Homes Qualified Service Provider. Designing, building and owning a log home is different from a conventionally framed home. Our architectural firm designs dozens of log homes each year and here are the top 10 things that you should know about log homes.

10: Logs require maintenance. This is an unyielding reality of the nature of wood. It will shrink, warp, twist, crack and if not protected, rot. But this is also why we love it - the character and very nature of wood itself is still alive long after it has been cut down. If you want to live with the warmth of wood, you have to protect it and plan for it to continue moving.

9: Log homes provide thermal mass in the walls. R-value alone doesn't tell the whole story about thermal comfort in a home.

8: Log walls settle. It doesn't matter if the logs are kiln dried or dead standing, the material is made up of millions of tiny cells that were once living. As those cells continue to dry out, the logs will continue to shrink. As the logs shrink, the entire structure of the home settles down with it (provided you are using your log walls as bearing walls). This requires a great number of special details and very close consideration in the design by your architect so that settling components do not literally rip themselves apart from nonsettling components. Now, there are glu-laminated products that significantly reduce some of this movement and there are systems to help mitigate it, but at the end of the day, you're working with a material that is still alive in many respects.

7: Window walls get expensive. While everyone loves the expanse of windows in certain rooms (and we do too), these window walls can be much more costly to achieve in a log home than in a stick frame home. The reason? because there is a limit to how short you can cut the logs and rely on them for bearing, so window walls tend not to be log walls at all but instead a structural grid of posts and headers. The problem is that all of the structure in a log home needs to be designed so it can settle with the logs. This means, that the entire window wall structure in a great room needs to allow the roof above to settle over it, compromising its structural integrity and thermal barrier. These are challenges that have solutions, but like every complicated solution, not at a price.

6: Electrical runs can get very interesting. Unless you pre-mill the logs (which some manufacturer's will do), and plan very far in advance, your electrician may find that he's pulling significantly more wire than he would in a conventional home. The reason is obvious, but also consider log homes on a slab - then the problems compound. Now imagine a log home on a slab with a SIPs roof. We've got to give them somewhere to go!

5: Pay very close attention to the insulation package. What insulation in a log home? Plenty. There are still some framed walls in a log home, dormers, gable ends, basement walls, slabs, roof and all of the settlement gaps above windows and doors. All of these things need to be tightly sealed but still allow for settlement which requires a number of special details.

4: Log Homes cost more to build. Some will say this is a myth, but let's not kid ourselves here. There's more material and more labor involved with a log home. Period. This means a premium cost of maybe 15%-20% over a stick built home. Lots of folks decide to build their own, set their own logs, etc. Sweat equity is a great way to save in your construction costs, but that doesn't mean that you can compare to stick framing in an apples to apples comparison. CAVEAT: You can "trick out" a stick frame home and drive cost per square foot through the roof. I'm talking about equivalent homes with equivalent finishes. The good news here is that you get what you pay for.

3: Your bank or appraiser will have a hard time finding appropriate comps for your home. Unless you live in an area densely packed with log homes (where is that?), they are relatively few and far between. This is good news for the log homeowner because of the good old law of supply and demand. Remember the 15%-20% premium you paid in item 5 above? well, that can result in a 20%-30% premium on valuation over an equivalent stick framed home. This is also because the market values log homes higher than their conventional counterparts. So, don't settle with a bad appraisal based on stick-built comps. Insist on accuracy and if your appraiser doesn't understand what you're talking about, find someone who does.

2: Your architectural style is NOT constrained. Sure, most people who dream of living in a log home envision traditional rustic styling reminiscent of the pioneer lodges of old. While this is a very consistent style with the materials, it is not the only style. We have designed much more contemporary, clean lined architecture with logs and you can even venture into the modern with bold forms and simpler geometries. Remember that logs are the medium, the architecture is anything you want it to be.

1: Log homes are livable, comfortable and calm. Maybe it's built into our psychology from centuries of our ancestors living in natural settings, but everything from acoustics to even the natural smell (no VOCs please) of wood in the home results in a very warm and comfortable atmosphere. Quiet environments and calm settings that reduce the stress of daily life and therefore promote healthy living. Tar River Log Homes Certified Service Provider. To know more about Tar River Log Homes please visit here:-  http://www.tarriverloghomes.com/