Well, we had hoped to be in the new house for Christmas, but the devil as they say is in the detail and it is taking a long time to get all the little bits and pieces sorted. Mid December we had some strong Southerly winds and 24 hours of rain that gave the south facing logs a good testing and sadly found them lacking.

 We found the leaky knots in the last post, but also some strange drips from some of the studs that run vertically through the house, just above the top of the frame of the glass double sliding doors. We think it could be water running along some of the “shakes” in the logs and some how getting round the 6 seals that run along the log. So as well as filling short shakes with glue as per the last post, we have also covered some of the larger shakes higher up the house with duct tape, to give us a quick idea as to whether they are the culprit.

Of course now we need mother nature to repeat her strong Southerly wind and persistent heavy rain. With high pressue weather, light winds and no rain over us for the last 10 days, we may have to resort to simulating the rain.

 Like this! Here we were trying to find a very small leak during that day of rain, and in the end had to resort to the hose pipe. We found it, but it was so small, we’re not sure how to seal it. It’s a real strange one between the bottom of the external architrave and the window sill and other than taking the architrave off again, we may have to “can foam” it from behind.

 As well as some leaking knots, we also have some large cracks in some logs called “shakes” that go deep enough into the logs to cause leaks with strong wind and rain. Here the shake is allowing water to get in behind the window architrave, so we have drilled it and used a syringe with expanding glue like we did for the knots to attempt to seal up the shake close to the window.

  Once the glue is set the wooden pegs we drive into the drill holes are shaved off.

 For any poor log home enthusiast who needs to know, this is the glue we are using.

When we first looked at the detail drawings for the house from the log supply company we were concerned with how we would build some of the internal walls off the corner of dovetails where they appear in the house.

  First of all, using some left over Western Read Cedar, we need to make sufficient infill blocks to creat one consistent surface to commence the log wall

  Then these are screwed in place and this creates the consistent surface for the stud wall to be fixed too.

 Then a piece of 4 x 2 is slotted and two 6″ “lag bolts” are used to secure this to the end of the dovetail and the start of the wall is in place. The lag bolts and slide plates must be set so that the bolts go into side grain and not end grain so you need to take this into account when marking out and making the two slots. 

The advantage of putting the blocks in place to create a flat surface for the stud wall to start is that if you should ever wish to take the wall down you will be able to do so, remove the infill pieces and you have just a few screw holes to plug and hey presto, no one knows the wall was ever there.

So the house is made of a natural material, so naturally it has a few quirks. Like leaking from strange places when the rain is heavy enough and the wind is strong enough to find any ways in.

 With some recent weather we were surprised to find water dripping on the inside of the log walls in a few places. The culprits were large knots in the wood that went throughthe log and were near “shakes” (cracks) in the log or had cracks in themselves.

 So we measured where the offending knots were inside the house and went outside and translated these dimensions to the culprits on the outside (as the knots are not necessarily going straight through the logs). We then drilled with a 6mm drill in a few places.

 Then we put some polyeurythene glue in using a syringe with a needle to get it deep into the wood.

  And then we hammered some wooden pegs in to keep the glue in and help pressurize it into the cracks. We now have to wait to see if this works next time we get heavy rain and wind. Or of course you could test it with a high pressure hose pipe (not a steam cleaner or pressure washer!)

The last window installation is completed with the headers and architrave fitted. With our recent experience of leaks on the logs and with this window facing the south west winds we have been very carefull to make sure it is well sealed.

 A week or so later and all the siding in the house is fitted. You can see the difference at the far end of this room, compared with the original shot before fitting shown below.

 Having given the siding a week to acclimatise to the heated house, we can now start to fit it. It is 2″ thick, and our skirting is about 4 inches tall, so we pack out the bottom (first) piece of siding with some 4 x 2 reduced to 3.5″ which also sets the siding so that it is at the correct hieght to the logs on the walls and therefore looks like it is part of the log wall.

The house has several 7″ square posts supporting the roof through the floors and one of these just falls in the wrong place for the siding, which cannot be slid into position because of the post protruding in th adjacent side wall close to the corner.

 So we have to cut the siding lenghts slightly short and will have to fit a trim to cover this up later when all the siding has been fitted.

This particular stud wall has siding on both sides so we have to come up with a clever way around things to avoid showing any fixings on the log.

 So we fix battens to the back of the siding, lift the siding in place and then screw through the battens to fix the siding to the studs. As each piece of siding is put in place, sound insulation is dropped in place to fill the gap as we go along.

 We have a few dry days to get the extra window work finished off. The jigs we used to guide the router on the main doors and windows have to be modified because the return on the wall is quite small and the dovetails get in the way as well.

Here we have finished the routering for the architraves and header and just need to give the routered surfaces some protection treament before fitting. We will also put plenty of silicon to help seal the log to architrave and header faces.

 Ho Hum, we have some heavy driving rain the other day and found damp patches on the inside of some of the logs. Looking on the outside it looks as if there are cracks that extend along some of the logs for a considerable lenght, and in some places go all the way through the log. This cracking or “checking” is normal as the logs dry out. We experienced similar problems with water penetration in our earlier log house, and it sometimes needs and exact combination of rain and wind direction for the pesky crack to be found and the water to be pushed through it. So it really is a one or two day a year issue, but much better to discover it now, while we can fix it.

We contacted the North American log house supplier and they will be sending us a repair proceedure they recommend to deal with this.

 Adjacent to the two full height sliding glass doors our original house design had a full depth window on the return wall. The North American log house supplier was not happy to combine this with the two sliding glass doors to provide a truly panoramic view, but wanted to put a dovetail corner between the full height window and the sliding glass doors.

By the time the log kit arrived, the technician who helped with the build had told the production department responsible for machining the logs to leave the window opening out. He strongly advised we should leave the full height window out because there was considerable chance of the remaining short logs cracking.

So we decided to compromise and put in a half height window (similar in height to the other windows in the house) and make it narrower, so that less material was taken out and the remaining log ends were a bit longer. We also, because of timing, were able to leave doing this until the house had settled down for 6 months during the build, so was hopefull a lot more stable and less likely to start any cracking.

 Having cut the outline on the outside and the inside, more material is cut away until the log in the opening can be removed. There was also a tensioning stud going through the opening that we had to cut through and then “re-install” as a top stud and a bottom stud.

 Now we are ready to modify our routering templates to work in such a small space to be able to route out the surrounds for the architrave and header. To add this window takes about 4 man days!