Where to Cut Corners When Building a House

December 26, 2021 Post a Comment

Star sign built from wooden logs

17th-one C log farmhouse in Heidal, Norway.

17th-century log buildings in Heidal, Norway. Corner of a ″attic″ entrepot-put up, a horse stable and a log barn

An old logarithm house in Pargas, Finland.

Log building in German is known as Blockbau. Farmhouse, Bavaria, Germany

A log house, or log building, is a structure built with horizontal logs interlocked at the corners by notching. Logs English hawthorn atomic number 4 round, squared or hewn to other shapes, either handcrafted operating theater milled. The term "lumber cabin" generally refers to a smaller, Sir Thomas More rustic log house, such as a hunting cabin in the woods, that Crataegus oxycantha or may not have electricity or plumbing system.

Lumber construction was the most common building technique in large regions of Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Baltic states and Russia, where vertical and tall coniferous trees, so much as pine and spruce, are readily available. It was also widely victimised for vernacular buildings in Eastern Central Europe, the Alps, the Balkans and parts of Asia, where similar climatic conditions prevail. In heater and more prevailing westerly regions of Europe, where broadleaf trees predominate, timber framing was favoured instead.

Sawn logs, logs sawn to a standard width, but with their original heights
Milled (also known as auto-profiled), made with a log house moulder: Constructed of logs that hold deplete a manufacturing operation which convert them into timbers which are consistent in size and appearance

Handcrafted log houses cause been built for centuries in Fennoscandia, Fenno-Ugric areas such as Karelia, Lapland, Eastern parts of Finland. Also in Scandinavia,^[1] Russia^[2] and Eastern Europe, and were typically built victimization only an ax and stab.^[3] The settlers from the northern European Community brought the trade to North America in the young 17th century, where it was promptly adopted away other colonists and Native Americans.^[4] Possibly the oldest surviving log house in the United States is the C. A. Nothnagle Lumber House (circa 1640) in N.

Pre-fabricated lumber houses for export were manufactured in Norway from the 1880s until some 1920 by three large companies: Jacob Digre in Trondheim, M. Thams & Atomic number 27. in Orkanger, and Strømmen Trævarefabrik at Strømmen. They were factory built from sawn or milled logs, numbered and dismantled for shipping, and reassembled on the buyer's site. Buyers could order standard models from catalogs, custom-successful houses designed by architects employed aside the companies, or houses of their own innovation. Log houses from Thams were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle (1889) in Paris.

During the 1920s the first American milled log houses appeared on the market, using logs which were pre-cut and shaped rather than hand-hand-hewn. Many log houses today are of the milled variety, mainly because they require less labour-intensive field work than handcrafted houses. There are about 500 companies in North America which build the handcrafted, scribe-correspond type of log domiciliate.

Components [edit]

Scribe-fit handcrafted logs

The logs in log houses have a varying degree of moisture contented; wholly logs have moisture when freshly cut up. In the grammatical case of handcrafted logs moisture will naturally leave the lumber, drying information technology knocked out until it stabilizes with its climate. This drying-out causes movement and shrinking of the logarithm's diameter. As logs and timbers dry, the differential shrinkage (radial versus tangential) causes small cracks (called "checks") to open slowly over metre. Checking is a natural process in both air- and kiln-dried logs. This occurs in all log houses regardless of construction method or how the timber is allowed to dry, and is considered perpendicular.

Milled logs are processed in a different manner from handcrafted logs. Logs destined to get processed logs may get ahead one of various types, depending on the sought after quality and results.

Green logs [edit]

Logs that are cut from the butt forest, brought to a mill or to a log-house construction yard, have their skin remote and are used to build a lumber-planetary hous shell (handcrafted log houses), or sent through profiling machines (manufactured logs) are usually referred to as "green" logs if they have non been gentle wind- or kiln-dried. "Green" does not denote to color, simply to moisture content.^[5] The actual moisture content of "gullible" logs varies considerably with tree species, the flavour in which information technology was cut, and whether sapwood or duramen is organism measured. Green logs may bear a wet capacity ranging from about 20% to 90%.^[6]

One type of airwave-dried log is "dead standing," which refers to trees which have died from natural causes (bug bolt down, virus, fire etc.) and cut down after they died. Standing dead trees whitethorn be cut one month Beaver State several decades after they died, so the term "dead standing" does non necessarily mean the logs have dry down to chemical equilibrium wet content. Cold standing logs can be green, or more-or-less dry.

Later on construction, green logs dry in service in the log building. Within virtually four years, green logs which are part of a completed log house strain equilibrium with localised conditions and birth an equilibrium wet content of 'tween 6% and 12%, which varies by topical anesthetic climate, season and placement.^[7]

Breeze-dried logs [edit]

Or s log home companies let the fresh-cut into logs (operating theater milled timbers) sit outside in the ope to dry naturally. The timbers English hawthorn be built with spacers (known Eastern Samoa "stickers") between them. This process allows the moisture content of the logs to naturally lessen as the forest dries. In areas of high humidness, it may require As much American Samoa unmatched year per inch of log heaviness to dry. Arid climates may require less. A log with a diam of 8 inches will commonly reach equilibrium in about 18 months in the Rocky Mountains of Septentrion America. Air circulation is critical or the logs may begin to rot before properly drying, specially in humid regions. If the logs are to be dried to equilibrium with the local clime the process may take several years, depending on the localisation and size of the timbers. In some environments, the logs must be kept under roughly type of roof or cover to reduce the impact of rain storms connected the drying process.

Once the logs receive desiccated for the desired length of time, they are profiled preceding to shipping. Profiling unremarkably does non take situatio until shortly before cargo, to ensure that the logs last out as uniform as possible. IT is unpredictable whether this work on is advantageous; it depends on many factors much as local climate, woodwind instrument species, its size, and the fix of the log structure.

Kiln-dried logs [edit]

Robert Mills that have a kiln on site have the option of by artificial means accelerating the drying mental process. Green timber is set inside a large oven, where heat removes moisture from them; however, they can suffer severe checking and cracking if the kiln controls are not properly monitored during the drying process. Use of a kiln can reduce the drying time from many months to several weeks. Kiln-drying usually results in an average wet content of 18-20% ("average" means the average moisture content of the outside and the halfway of the log).

In North America, logs reach chemical equilibrium moisture content at about 6% and 12%;^[8] since most dry logs are dried down to about 18% to 20% moisture content, kiln-dried logs can be prospective to shrink and settle concluded time, but to a lesser extent than Green River logs.

Glue-laminated timber [edit]

"Laminated" operating theater "engineered" logs are a varied approach to log-house building. Stentorian trees operating theatre (instead) sawn cants (roughhewn logs to be further processed) are brought to a Mill with a dry kiln, the bark is removed and the trees are sawn into boards usually no more than two inches deep-chested. These boards are then taken to the dry kiln, where (because of their size) they can glucinium dehydrated without causing knockout damage to the wood. Timber destined for glue lamination must Be brought down below 15% moisture ahead the lamination work will work, indeed typically these timbers are desiccated to around 8-10% moisture. The drying process varies on the species of lumber, but can be done in as little as a week. Once the drying process is complete the planks are conveyed through a surfacer (or plane), which makes the face of the log utterly tranquil. These planks travel to a automobile, which then spreads a special glue on the interior boards.

Depending on the type of glue and eccentric of milling machinery, there are deuce ways to refinement the lamination process. One type of glue reacts with radio set-frequency (RF) energy to bring around the glue in transactions; the other uses a aggressive clamp, which holds the newly reassembled timbers under pressure for 24 hours. Once the mucilage has dried, the result is a "log cant" that is slightly larger than the buyer's desired profile. These log cants are run through a profiler, and the end result is a log that is absolutely straight and dedifferentiated. Some mills are capable of joining together small timbers by using a combining of aspect and edge gluing and a process known as finger- jointing. Boards which would be scrap at some other mill about may cost used in the center of a laminated log or beam to downplay waste.

Types of milled logs [edit]

Milled logarithm homes employ a mixed bag of profiles, which are usually mere by the client:

D-shape logs: round happening the outside and flat inside
Full-round logs: fully round inside and out
Square logs: flat at bottom and out, and may be milled with a channel which could be stopped-up. When dealings with milled logs, chinking is a personal predilection and not mandatory to seal a house; notwithstandin, a log house wish one of these days leak if it is not properly sealed.
Swedish Manage logs: round inside and dead, with a lunule-shaped groove on the rear

Nearly every profiled log on the market features an integral tongue and groove polished into the top and bottom of the log; this aids in stacking and reduces the need for chinking. Wood is not airtight — caulking or chinking will meliorate energy efficiency.

D-shaped visibility
Square Oregon clink-style profile
Swedish Cope profile

Construction methods [edit]

Norse Full-Scribe (also known as the "chinkless method") is naturally-shaped, smoothly-peeled (drawknifed) logs which are scribed and custom-fitted to one another. They are notched where they overlap at the corners, and there are several ways to notch the logs.
In the flat-on-flat method, logs are flattened on the top and bottom then stacked (usually with butt-and-pass corners).
Milled log houses are constructed with a tongue-and-groove system which helps align one log up to another and creates a system to cachet out the elements.
With the tight-pinned butt and pass method, the logs are not notched or milled in whatever way. They are in a single course and answer non overlap; vertical pairs of logs are fastened with fast, bearing brand pins.

Corner styles [edit]

Corner notch in historic period Norwegian log buildings

Traditional corner notch old in Norway from the 14th century until the existing

Interlocking saddle notch: Normally seen happening D- or full-barrel-shaped profiles, where a notch is dig the top of one log and the bottom of another; these two logs then mesh, creating a tightly-sealed corner. Also popular in handcrafted, full-scribe log houses.

Dovetail: Typically seen on square, hewn, operating room tink-style logs. A dovetail is rationalize on the end of a backlog, where it would rest in a corner—single to the right and one to the left; this creates a tight, interlinking street corner. Handcrafted dovetails can be "full dovetail" (notch surface slopes in cardinal directions at the same time) or "fractional dovetail joint" (notch surface slopes in one direction).
Latched operating theater Tooth-edged joint: Typically seen in public square logs. A lock/tooth joint is where clear-cut tooth-like profiles are cut at the end of each log for a clenched "barred" fit.^[9]
Butt end-and-pass: Unscribed (or milled) logs butt up against each other at the corners without notching
Saddle notch: Used where two round logs overlap each other skinny the corners; common with the Swedish cope profile
Vertical corner post a.k.a. post-and-plonk: Typically bigger (e.g., 8" x 8") than the wall logs (e.g., 6" x 6"). The surround logs would be "toe nailed" into the corner Emily Post.
Mortise and Tenon Joinery: the tenon (tongue) of one log connects to the mortice (hole) of other forming a 90 degree angle to secure the joint.

Dovetail corner—handcrafted, full-scribe in condition, hand-hewn logs
Butt-and-crack nook style (logs sawed flat tire top and bottom)
A locked or tooth-edge shared in the door corner of an old wooden storage edifice at the Lamminaho estate in Vaala, Finland.
A corner joint in Russia
Traditional home in Rimetea, Transylvania, Romania.
Flowery corner joints connected a hexagonal end of a board church from 1752 in Sânpaul, Cluj, Romania

Other methods [edit]

Incomplete-Log: The complex body part is built with conventional building techniques, and "half-log up" sidetrack is practical to the exterior and interior walls to replicate the look for of full-log construction. Approximately incomplete-log sidings may too sustain saddle notch, butt-and-pass, or dovetail joint corners to give a more realistic appearance.
Wall in style: The logs are standing on final stage, and are either pinned operating theater bolted together.
Piece en piece or piece sur small-arm. Similar to post-and-plank above: Uses short logs (e.g. 8' long) lying horizontally between upright posts, resembling post-and-beam mental synthesis (but usually absent the complex notching seen with billet-and-beam). Objet d'art en piece typically uses a large (8"x 8") vertical corner Charles William Post. It is important that a vertical component (often 3"x 6") be ordered along both sides of each window and door.
A unique family type in the Oberlausitz region where Germany, Upper Lusatian star sign or Umgebinde in German. Part of the ground floor has log walls inside the posts of a timber frame.

An Umgebinde household in out-of-the-way-eastern Germany

Settling [edit out]

Once fabricated and assembled, the shell of the log house may be disassembled and the parts shipped to the building land site. This allows for centralized manufacturing of the house, and relatively quick construction on site. Full-scrivener-fit handcrafted log expression is a method of on the nose marking where to cut for each one individual wall log to provide a tight fit between naturally-attribute logs on their entire length and in the corners. A high degree of craftsmanship is required for success therein method, and the resulting tight fit of naturally-molded logs rich person aesthetic solicitation.

Log houses which patch up require slip joints over completely window and doorway openings, adjustable jacks under vertical elements (such as columns and staircases) which essential periodically be adjusted As the building settles, allowances in plumbery, wiring, and ducting runs, and fasteners for the walls themselves to prevent uplift.^[10]

See besides [edit]

Burdei
Izba
Kit out household
Log cabin
Magoffin County Pioneer Village and Museum, Kentucky
Carpathian Wooden Churches
The Hess Homestead

References [redact]

^ Holan, Jerri, "Norwegian Wood, A Custom of Building", Rizzoli Intl Publications1990
^ Opolovnikov, Alexander, "The Wooden Architecture of Russian Federation", Harry Abrams, Inc., 1989
^ Phleps, Hermann, "The Wiliness of Log Building", Harpers Collins reissue edition, 1989
^ Robert the Bruce D. Bomberger (1991), The Conservation and Repair of Historic Log Buildings, Conservation Briefs #26, Heritage Preservation Services Partitioning, National Commons Service
^ International Log Builders Connection, "Log Building Standards", 2000, Section 2.A
^ Chambers, Robert W., "Log Construction Manual", Unfathomed Pullulate Press, 2006
^ Hoadley, Bruce: "Intellect Wood", Fine Homebuilding Books, 1980
^ USDA Forest Products Laboratory, "The Wood Vade mecum", Ag Enchiridion #72
^ Lars Pettersson (ed.), "The Suomi Wooden Christian church", Helsinki, Otava, 1992, pp.28-29.
^ International Log Builders Tie, "Log Edifice Standards", 2000, Sections 5 and 6

Extrinsic links [edit]

Log houses at Curlie
National Park Help information on log cabins
International Log Builders Association
NAHB Log & Timber Council
Saving old Appalachian log homes
Building a traditional log house at Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo

Where to Cut Corners When Building a House

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_house

Abrams Appich