Log frame houses
Log frame houses using the Canadian post and beam construction are modern houses that combine attractive appearance with the highest degree of living comfort.
The post and beam building technology has come a long evolutionary path and has undergone many improvements. You can trace how it changed along with the home builders in Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland) and migrated to the New World where the immigrants’ first log houses were no different from Scandinavian tradition. It then continued to evolve in Canada and in the northern states of the USA until it finally turned into the renowned post and beam design.
As the name implies, the post and beam homes and structures are basically based on a frame of vertical posts connected by beams. The beams are made not only of timber, but also logs.
Quite often you can find Canadian log and timber frame homes which combine the log basement with a frame second floor and are made of large logs (38 cm in diameter or more).
Large logs are used for external (and some internal) walls of the basement floor of a home. The same logs are used as the frame for the second floor, whereas the rafter system may use full round logs or bar-shaped timber. Full round rafters complete the interior of the second floor, while the bar-shaped rafters are hidden in the roofing pie, and the supporting frame of the building is firmly connected with the wallplate system.
Canadian log and timber frame homes typically use a large number of long logs (about 12 m long) which helps to avoid non-bearing cuts in the walls and to enlarge the internal space.
The advantages of log and timber frame homes:
- Material savings – up to 50%, when erecting structures using the post and beam construction method (compared with a conventional log cabin), which translates into significant savings in logging
- Short construction time – 3–5 months on average, provided the foundation and materials are available
- Architectural variety – the frame technology allows you to fill the enclosure with a wide variety of materials, and the wall studs can have any arrangement to create any desired shape (circle, semicircle, hexagon, etc.).
- No sagging – wall studs in Canadian log and timber frame homes are placed vertically preventing the sagging as such. This means that the doors, window openings and floors will not get inclined or skewed, and the roof structure will not undergo any significant changes – which is quite likely for sagging log cabins. This is an obvious advantage: once the walls have been built, builders can immediately proceed with the finishing work.
Canadian log and timber frame houses are much lighter than log cabins and can be erected even on simple foundations.
