LOG RHYTHM : Trend: Today’s spacious, custom-built log homes have come a long way since the drafty, one-room structures of yore, as one former Orange County couple can attest.
Once the province of rough-and-ready types heading full-bore into the 19th Century, log homes have begun to penetrate a larger market of well-heeled suburbanites looking for a genteel version of the backwoods life.
“As much as anything, people are buying the lifestyle,” says Mark Moreland, vice president of Rocky Mountain Log Homes in Hamilton, Mont. “They’ll buy in Orange County, for example, but they’ll envision themselves somewhere else.”
In fact, the term log home is a narrow and inadequate description for this housing market niche, but no one has come up with a better term.
Log home suggests too much rusticity for the average urban dweller, conjuring visions of outdoor plumbing and cold winds blowing through cracks of space between the logs. But manufactured housing dredges up images of mobile homes, and pre-crafted and kit smack of modular warehousing.
But terminology is only one of the obstacles that manufacturers are struggling to overcome in this market.
Log home designs range from thick, round, hand-hewn logs with protruding corners, to clapboard styles virtually indistinguishable from stick-built homes. They’re delivered in such a variety of packages that it is difficult for potential buyers to compare apples to apples. And, log homes exhibit certain traits as they age that keep some buyers at a distance.
Log homes represent only a small part of the single-family housing market in the United States, but sales are estimated at 20,000 homes a year. The industry has evolved from an 80% do-it-yourself market to something quite the opposite.
“It’s no longer the weekend warrior type of theme,” says Jerry Rouleau, director of marketing for Real Log Homes in Vermont. “The owner is heavily involved, but not from a do-it-yourself perspective.”
And forget the one-room cabin image. Custom log homes can be 5,000 square feet or more. The primary market for Real Log Homes is people in their 30s and 40s with incomes of $40,000 or more, Rouleau says. He adds that more than 80% of his company’s homes are used as primary residences.
Steve Janowski of Quality Log Homes in Crestline, a company that specializes in log home construction throughout California, says most of the log homes he is building are 1,600 square feet or more.
Verne and Marilyn Dorn, formerly of Orange and now residents of Sugarloaf, near Big Bear, built a three-story, 2,900-square-foot log home that Marilyn Dorn designed. They called on New England Log Homes to translate her design into a log home package they could handle themselves.
Starting in May, 1989, they finished the house in nine months, putting up the logs and doing finish work with family and help from the New England Log Homes dealer in San Diego. They had to hire a crane to lift the beams on each floor, but they were able to put up the logs in eight weeks.
Predictably, the customized look and increasing girth of the average log home has pushed prices skyward.
“The (finished) log home will cost the same as a well-built custom home,” Moreland says. A rough price guide for a log home package is $20 to $30 a square foot, excluding land, plumbing, electricity, finishing costs and any customization of the original design. The turnkey cost will be roughly $75 a square foot, excluding the land.
Marilyn Dorn says that her home cost about $80 a square foot, not including the land, but the couple went the high-end route on the finish work. She estimates they saved about $20 a square foot by building the house themselves.
The Dorns’ choice of log home supplier resulted from six months of research. With more than 450 manufacturers nationally, the log home business is very competitive. Many of these are very small suppliers that build only regionally, but there are eight to 10 manufacturers who operate nationally, says Ken Payton, a Real Log Homes rep in Colfax, Calif.
The log home style has been slow to penetrate California. Rugged structural engineering requirements throughout California keep many manufacturers out of the state, explains Scott Baker of New England Log Homes. While many of the home designs would meet the state’s requirements, only the largest companies can deliver the detailed blueprints and structural calculations required.
Log homes come under the state housing law and the Uniform Building Code’s heavy timber construction section, according to Kathie Parrish, spokeswoman for the state Department of Housing and Community Development in Sacramento. Actual oversight and approvals come from local building officials.
As the Dorns discovered, simply gathering enough information to make an informed choice requires a moderate investment of money and time. Manufacturers’ catalogues range from $5 to $25.
Lindal Cedar Homes’ $15 idea book weighs in at 3 pounds, with 240 pages and 600 photos. It includes tracing paper with step-by-step instructions for customizing the model under consideration and provides clear explanations of the technical matters that these manufacturers must address. There’s a cardboard ruler enclosed with a scratch and sniff patch so that you can get a whiff of the wood scent of your future home. (Lindal’s designs fit into a niche between log homes and conventional homes, but its Justus brand is a log design.)
Marilyn Dorn says she looked at 30 catalogues and more than 600 designs before she decided to design her own home. She liked New England Log Homes’ approach because they use logs for interior beams. The company was also able to extend one of its designs by 4 feet to meet her requirements.
In selecting a log home package, homeowners consider not only the floor plan but also the wood type, the length and shape of the logs, the sealing system, and the degree of completion of the package that is dropped on the lot. Manufacturers will deliver anything from an amorphous pile of supplies to a package with all parts numbered and pre-cut logs.
A weakness in the log home industry, one that is slowly being overcome, says log home expert Brad Burgat, has been the lack of a nationwide builder-dealer network. Most buyers want a turnkey job, but less than 50% of the manufacturers will take a product to completion.
Two publications address the log home market, Log Home Living magazine and Muir’s Original Log Home Guide (which also runs the Log Home Guide Information Center, (800) 345-5647, which sells books on log homes).
In the planning stage, the buyer will have many decisions to make that rarely enter the picture in planning conventional homes. More than 18 species of trees can supply the logs needed.
Invariably, the logs shrink. Green logs take 1 1/2 to 2 years to dry to the point that the wood contains the same degree of moisture as the air around it; each log can shrink 1/4-inch in the process. Unless the doors and windows are properly framed, they may bind as the wood shrinks and the house settles.
Most manufacturers have developed systems that allow for settling and shrinkage; Real Log Homes, for example, uses a built-in screw jack system under the bearing partitions that permits gradual adjustment.
The upshot is, dry logs are more predictable, but they’re also more expensive. Successful use of green logs depends on the builder’s expertise.
A conventional builder unfamiliar with the fine points of log home construction can turn a stately, well-crafted package into a drafty cabin. Most manufacturers can recommend builders experienced in the construction of their homes.
Air and water infiltration have been one of the controversial elements of log home construction. The most sophisticated systems used to seal the gaps between the logs are highly elastic, allowing the logs to adjust to changes in temperature, humidity and settling.
“Log homes have an inherent problem--they leak,” says J. Randall Roberts, an Irvine residential architect.
Roberts believes that log homes’ air and water infiltration problems haven’t been fully solved, although the high-end manufacturers say differently. Marilyn Dorn says that her house has done minor settling, but she hasn’t noticed any air or water infiltration. The house retains heat in winter and stays very cool in summer, she adds.
Another log home owner, Harold Laughinghouse of La Habra Heights, says he has had no problems with either settling or infiltration in the year and a half that his 2,100-square-foot Crestline house has been up. Laughinghouse, an architect and structural engineer, says he chose the Real Homes package because it used cedar, a very stable wood that doesn’t twist and is resistant to decay.
Financing a log home is not necessarily any more complex than having a conventional home built. In many cases, the log home manufacturers will recommend lenders that understand the particular qualities of the log home, and many manufacturers’ designs qualify for FHA loans and other commonly available monies.
