What type of lumber for a log home?

I'm a newbie so please forgive my ignorance.

I plan on taking the class with my wife and hopefully one of my kids next spring.

In the mean time, I'm looking for land in the Northern Vermont area to build my home on.

Before I become serious about a piece of land, what type of lumber should I look for? Pine, Hardwood, or what? What is best to work with and what lasts the longest (bug resistance)? What size (height, circumference) should it be?

I would like to use the trees from the property that I buy to build the home. Any help would be appreciated.

I know you guys have the answers, please share with a new guy.

Thanks,
No'easter

[brent217]

Whatever is on your land that you can get free is the absolute best wood to work with. The point is to build your house as cheaply as possible, so you are not in debt to banks for the next 30 years.

Pine is fine. In general, look for land with nice tall trees, lots of them, cause you will want to cut a lot down to build a house.

In order to qualify your log home as heavy timber construction, you need a minimum of 8" diameter logs (at the skinny end). However, IMHO, you should get thicker logs. How thick? As thick as you can find, that are still within your budget. The more wood you have in your walls, the more thermal mass your log home will have, and the less your monthly utility bills will be.

For more, information, take the course ;)

Thanks for the reply. Lots of large diameter, tall trees. I take it Pine is fine.

Just didn't want to buy any property with trees that are to hard to work with.

Again thanks for the assist.

[JeffandSara]

Hi, Nor'easter--

Just two other comments.

You mentioned hardwood vs. softwood in your original post, I believe? A few members have built lately with hardwoods, and that seems to be more difficult using the LHBANA methods you'll learn at the class. We used Engelmann spruce and it was darned hard work pounding rebar into that. I'd hate to think of trying to pound it into something harder. :roll: :D

And just a caveat to Brent's comments... go as big diameter as you can get/afford... and can lift. :wink: Mechanical advantage is a marvelous thing, but there ARE logistical issues the larger you go. Your building site can also make log lifting easier/harder. We had no local logs, so ended up importing ours from B.C., Canada. Our house has butt-end dimensions from 26" and down, mostly 42 feet long, and most days Jeff and I lifted without additional manpower on a site with very limited "pull-room" (like for a pick-up, etc.) around the house itself. We were fortunate to borrow and later buy an old ex-military 4x4 crane, without which, frankly, I'm not sure we could have moved the logs at all. So, although our 18"+ of average thermal mass log walls is GREAT :D it's not necessarily "practical" for every building situation.

Of course, based on what we have in softwoods on my family's property in northern NH, I'm thinking that your best stands of local house logs would probably be much more within reasonable "man-power" size, though still providing good thermal mass.

Good luck to you, Nor'easter! Land hunting is exciting work! :D

Sara

[RockEngineer]

Usually pine, cedar or fir are desireable because of their characteristics. You are looking for long straight trees that don't have more than 3" of taper in 30 ft if you can find them. If you follow the associations recommendations and use raw logs rather than milled logs this will help keep things simple. You can use other types of logs and logs with more taper but things start getting more complex. Most people build with logs about 12" diameter. I have seen some people use logs as small as 8" (not recommended) or as big as 24". You want all the logs on any one layer to be about the same diameter. :lol: