Why not more love for log cabins?

About as natural as it comes, I’m surprised that more permies don’t build them.  What’s the deal?

They are very good for building on virgin land where there are a lot of logs of the right size.

Locally they never got fashionable because the logs here are too large or the wrong type.  They are also tricky to insulate for our weather and we have to build the walls quite a bit larger than the inside of the house, to allow for an insulation layer and plaster.  

I think it's very much about using the building method and materials that suits the location.  In Ontario (eastern Canada) log cabins make a lot of sense as they have the right kind of trees and a building tradition that works well for this method and their climate.  

Isn't a Wofati a version of a log cabin that's been earth-bermed with an umbrella?

What R Ranson said - difficulty insulating, and difficulty as things dry, not to end up with a lot of cracks that are hard to keep the wind out of.

I did read of someone building essentially an inner wood cabin, then an outer one with a gap that was filled with sawdust. This was somewhere on the Prairies? Unfortunately, I also read that there was a fire and the fire got into the gap with the sawdust and the fire department couldn't get it out. It didn't go up fast, but sort of like those "underground fires" they talk about in forests or coal mines.

My in-laws had a country place in Ontario that was 100 years old made of squared off logs. That at least solved the chinking issues. It was essentially one room with an attic for sleeping, so the wood stove was enough to keep it warm for winter visits.

It isn't a cabin, but...

I live in northern Minnesota in a log home with no insulation, and I love it. I'm not sure why it works, but I think it must have to do with thermal mass of the wall. There are two places where we could see light and feel infiltration through a spot where two log-ends butted up, but we tucked some mineral wool into those cracks with a paint scraper. This is the most comfortable house I've ever lived in, even at -37F (the coldest it's been since we moved in three years ago).

r ranson wrote:Locally they never got fashionable because the logs here are too large or the wrong type.

Oh, that's funny. I can't find the documentation that came with the house right now, but I was disgruntled to discover that the logs were imported from BC in 1974 when the house was built rather than it being built of local timber.

Maybe a lot of folks don't have the skills or equipment to build log cabins.

Back in pioneer times, folks knew how to cut down trees and move those huge logs. And pile them on top of each other.

A lot of folks had more help back then too as in the way they had barn raisings.

I am sure there will be lots of different replies here.

My buddy's dad built a huge two story log cabin in the 90s in Northern California with nothing but a chainsaw, some blocks and a pickup truck. The county harassed him for years about something called "permits" but he would just tell them to pound sand. Though, eventually though he moved out to Idaho. The crazy thing is somebody still lives there! I don't know how that works but I met the guy and told him about how I used to help my buddy bark those logs with a shovel before his dad would let us go play in the woods. The current resident says the cabin is holding up great!

Me though, I am going to build a log cabin chicken coop this fall I think.

Christopher Weeks wrote:It isn't a cabin, but...

I live in northern Minnesota in a log home with no insulation, and I love it. I'm not sure why it works, but I think it must have to do with thermal mass of the wall. There are two places where we could see light and feel infiltration through a spot where two log-ends butted up, but we tucked some mineral wool into those cracks with a paint scraper. This is the most comfortable house I've ever lived in, even at -37F (the coldest it's been since we moved in three years ago).

r ranson wrote:Locally they never got fashionable because the logs here are too large or the wrong type.

Oh, that's funny. I can't find the documentation that came with the house right now, but I was disgruntled to discover that the logs were imported from BC in 1974 when the house was built rather than it being built of local timber.

BC is huge!  We have just about every type of forest.
a quick google search suggests that there are only 28 countries larger than BC (probably less because BC is measured in landmass^2 and countries are measured by territory which includes water).  Or to put it another way, (if I got my math right) our landmass alone is larger than the territory of almost 7/8ths of the countries of the world.  

Where I live we have twisty oaks and a peak forest of conifers as our two main forests.  The oaks are too twisted to make 'logs' and the other trees - at the time of settling - would be better used by carving out a hole in the base and just turning that into a two-bedroom.  There was very little in the way of deciduous forest that wasn't human-managed in these parts.  The houses here (both First Nations and post-settlement) were from planks.  Quite a few early settler houses were from imported materials as the trees were mostly too large to hand process (the first nations harvested planks from living trees which is a whole different story).  In this youtube video, you can see one of the first pre-fab houses behind the flax-to-linen setup.

Go inland - even inland on this island - and the forests are drastically different.

I love the log cabin idea.  Most people have lost the skills to build one with hand tools but I'm guessing it's not too terribly complicated with a chainsaw.  I'm reading an old book on homesteading skills and I happen to be at the log cabin chapter right now.  

Chinking the gaps seems to be the biggest issue with long term energy efficiency.  If you can keep them chinked, I'd think the R value would be around R8 or so.  Not too shabby.  Plus they have tons of thermal mass.  Insulating a roof seems to be a bigger challenge (naturally) unless you do a more modern ceiling with insulation laying above it.

I wonder if part of the comfort is that wood absorbs moisture when it's damp, and dries out when it's dry.

I read about inoculating cellulose with fungi which turns it into a polymer structure. The fungus actually formed a useable structure. Great stacking of functions. I wonder if a log cabin could be inoculated? Fun pipe dream anyway.

Mike Haasl wrote:Chinking the gaps seems to be the biggest issue with long term energy efficiency.  If you can keep them chinked, I'd think the R value would be around R8 or so.  Not too shabby.  Plus they have tons of thermal mass.  Insulating a roof seems to be a bigger challenge (naturally) unless you do a more modern ceiling with insulation laying above it.

That might be a big part of the image problem, similar to an rmh. Places suited to log cabins have increasingly become weekend playgrounds for city folk, who come up Friday evening in cold seasons, burn the wood stove for hours and notice the building is still chilly. “Log cabins are old, inefficient technology, we need something full of nasty pink stuff in the walls."  They aren't around Sunday evening / Monday morning to appreciate how it almost heats itself...

Every log home I've been in has felt very dark. My in laws have one that my husband's dad built. He put a lot of effort into making it not feel dark. It's definitely the best one I've been in, but it's not what I'd call a bright home.

It's probably 3,000 ft2 on two storeys, with a full basement. They used to have this huge, home made monstrosity in the basement to heat it and the ground floor, along with water for the hot water tank and for the radiators upstairs. My husband says they'd go through 12-16 cords of wood a year - and his dad was really stingy with heat. My husband wants our house hot now as a reaction to being cold for most of his childhood.  The in-laws got rid of the big heater and have a couple normal wood stoves now. In cold weather (-20C) it's very hard to keep the house warm, even though they keep half the ground  floor closed off and don't actively try to heat the second floor. The square footage they're heating is right on the edge of what the two stoves are capable of, though. I suspect having a big basement makes it harder to heat.