Keeping your log home comfortable in the summer and winter is a major factor in how much you will enjoy spending time there. If it’s a sauna in the summer and freezer in the winter, you are going to be thinking of reasons not to stay there. You can always beef up the heating and cooling system but that just makes it expensive to operate.  Making it as weather tight as possible will keep it comfortable and  your costs manageable. Log buildings have some unique challenges with being weather tight but they can be dealt with if you know about them.

To keep your heating and cooling costs down you have to keep the air you’ve conditioned inside the house.  Your dad was right when he complained about you leaving the doors open to the outside.  Log buildings are no different. Using poor building practices can allow air to seep between the logs.  The trick to stopping that is to use good quality logs that fit together well and then to use a high quality chinking material to improve the seal. Don’t scrimp on quality here. Care taken during the purchase and assembly will pay off in the long run.

Your windows and doors are also areas that need to be carefully bought and installed.  Getting the best insulated windows you can afford is recommended.  Also you need to make sure that both the windows and doors are properly sealed against air leakage.

The roof can be problem area where you lose your heating and cooling dollars. You need to make sure that it is insulated to control heat loss and gain.  Traditional methods of insulation can be used with some roof types. However roof designs with exposed beams and  high ceilings don’t allow for the standard stuff.  A good method of insulating those  is to use  rigid insulating panels installed between the inside ceiling surface and the outside shingled roof.  This product is called Expanded Polystyrene Roof Insulation or EPS Roof Panels.  This material is an efficient insulator and has an extremely long life span. Expanded Polystyrene is also friendly to the environment and can be recycled.  It’s ease of insulation and durability make EPS roof insulation a good match for log buildings.

If you have any questions on insulating and sealing your log home be sure to call our office.  We carry the high quality products you need to make your log building weather tight. We carry Sashco chinking products and ACH Foam technologies’ line of EPS roof insulation. Both companies are the best. Don’t wait until after you complete the design and construction to think about these issues. Your future operating costs depend on making the right decisions early on.