Wall Insulation Codes

[bigD1031]

Hello All,

I have been a lurker for about a week now and am very excited about possibly building my own cabin in the near future, taking the class first of course.

I am currently in the process of closing on a piece of land in La Plata County Colorado and my main concern right now is that the county requires an R19 rating in the walls. Since you get approx. 1.2 R rating per inch that means I would need 16 inch logs on my wall to pass code.

Can anyone tell me if they have any experience on getting around these kinds of codes? Anyone have experience in La Plata County?

Thanks in advance for the help....looking forward to moving forward with this new adventure.

D

[rreidnauer]

Can't say it's the same out there, but here, log homes fall under a different set of rules in regards to energy efficiency.

Have you called the building department to discuss it?

[AkChas]

bD;
Rod's right -- logs (log homes), fall under slightly different rules, for R-value / efficiency. Somewhere (International Building Code?), I've read that, when it comes to rating log homes, there's also a factor plugged in to account for the Heat Mass that logs provide. Might start with your local (County/State), building code publications. There are a few Coloradons on here that have built there as well. Perhaps they will chime in.
P.S. Last I looked, there's still slots available for the upcoming Class in Las Vegas, this weekend :)

[loghousenut]

"You'll never be too hot or too cold in a properly built log home"... Skip Ellworth.


And he was right about that.

[donjuedo]

upcoming Class in Las Vegas, this weekend :)

Ah, that would be next weekend, Aug 31. I signed up for it and your note scared the ____ out of me. I thought I had the wrong airfare and everything. :-)

[bigD1031]

Thanks for the info all.....wish I could make the class but I just recently stumbled onto this website and already have plans for that weekend.

I haven't talked to the building department as of yet but did find the county building codes online with minimum ratings for insulation, which is what caused my initial concern. Will definitely be doing more research though.

Also, this is probably more of a general construction question, but it looks like the required roof loading for the elevation I will be building is going to be 100-120 lbs per sq ft. Will that be something difficult to achieve or simply a few more supports?

Thanks for the help and info so far.

[edkemper]

BigD,

What you'll find out in the Class is just how overbuilt these things are. No worries.