ICF Foundation Cost? There is no way you can do this with poured concrete walls.
One of the first questions asked when planning a home is “How much will my project cost?” Questions involving pricing, can’t be properly answered simply by information posted on the internet, regardless of how much information is supplied in one article. Same goes for the insulated concrete form (ICF) foundation cost.
ICF is a premium building system and does cost considerably more than stick construction when costs are compared for above the ground structure. From a foundation cost point of view, it’ll still be cheaper just to pour concrete, but from an insulated foundation perspective the costs are very comparable. Furthermore, for the foundation portion you will find many contractors who say an ICF foundation is less costly than any other conventional poured concrete foundation system.
To dive a little deeper into the subject, we would have to compare apples to apples. In other words, we would have to compare ICF foundation cost and the cost of poured concrete foundation with two sheets of R-12 styrofoam insulation on both sides. Even to someone that is not a building expert, it should be clear that it is much cheaper to build a foundation with ICFs.
On the other hand, if the comparison is ICF foundation and poured basement, a poured concrete wall will cost you approximately $7-$10 per sqft. To finish it, for studs, framing, insulation and vapour barrier you will spend another $5-$7 per square foot.
For the ICFs; concrete, rebar, all the labor to stack, place the rebar, pour the concrete, etc., you are looking at $11 – $18 per square foot of wall space, including windows. Most likely it will be somewhere in the middle $14-$15 per square foot unless you have curved walls, enormous openings or many angles to the house.
So, you end up spending as much money with a strip form wall as with ICF wall. Concrete block foundation wall construction would be in the same ballpark.
Other advantages of ICF foundation are:
[udesign_icon_font name=”fa fa-arrow-right”] Speed of construction: On projects where time is money one step concrete pouring, framing, insulation and vapour barrier.
[udesign_icon_font name=”fa fa-arrow-right”] Adverse weather conditions construction: You can pour in minus degree weather as concrete cures between two pieces of insulation.
[udesign_icon_font name=”fa fa-arrow-right”] Do it yourself friendly construction: To save money on installation costs, many people undertake to build their foundation themselves.
You should know that ICF’s are not meant for basement construction. They perform the best in super energy efficient, complete ICF house or as basements to SIP and log home construction. But if you are going to finish your basement it is a no-brainer to use ICFs.
The following factors will influence ICF foundation cost:
The price of ICF forms – manufacturer, size, supply, shipping, and unloading on site.
The price of concrete – supply of and pumping.
The price of steel rebar – supply and bending.
The Price of window and door buck material- supply and install.
The Price of buying or renting bracing and scaffolding –
The price of miscellaneous materials: screws, nails, straps, foam, etc.
The cost of labour – includes putting up the ICF forms, providing and setting up the bracing, installing bucks, rebar, and any inserts and cleaning up the site.
Adding insulation to your home’s building envelope can be one of the most cost-efficient ways to reduce your heating and cooling bills.
In new construction, investing in the insulation is a smart way to reduce future maintenance costs by reducing the home’s energy consumption. However, because no two buildings are the same, and because there are so many ways to insulate, it can often be confusing to determine what’s best for a particular project.
Straw-bale home construction is a building method that uses bales of straw (commonly: wheat, rice, rye, and oats straw) as structural elements, building insulation, or both.
The first straw-bale structures we know of were built about a hundred years ago by European settlers in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. Having little other means to shelter themselves, they were driven by necessity to improvise.
Using the newly invented steam and horse-powered balers, they baled the grasses that surrounded them, stacked the bales to form walls, and applied mud or cement plasters inside and out.
Some of those homes still exist and are in good shape, as are a few more that were built in Nebraska and Wyoming over the subsequent decades. A revival in straw-bale construction began in Ontario in the 1970s and has now spread all over the world.
What is the straw?
Straw is the plant structure between the root crown and the grain head (hay includes the grain) and is composed of cellulose, hemi-cellulose, lignin and silica. Bales are masses of straw compressed into rectangular blocks that are bound with steel wire or polypropylene twine. (Some bales are enormous wheel or block shapes compressed by larger machines, useful for large-scale agriculture but not for building.)
Bales might be two-string or three-string, of any grain (typically, in North America, wheat, rice, oats, hops, barley or rye), and are not homogeneous; that is, they have some “grain”— different qualities in different directions—based on how the baler works.
The narrow end faces receive the compression of the baler head, which thrusts straw masses in “pulses” into the chamber. These pulses, when compressed, become flakes of about 4 inches (102 mm) in thickness.
Straw-Bale Construction Plastering
Thus, a typical bale consists of a series of 4-inch (102 mm) flakes compressed along the long axis.
Because the baler is operating continuously with a series of slightly varying pulses of straw mass, and because it will only cut and tie off a bale at the end of a flake, the bale length will vary by a few inches.
Discussing technical aspects:
The different types of grain straw have varying chemical compositions and inherent strengths, rice straw being perhaps the toughest due to an unusually high silica content. However, the micro properties of straw appear to be far less important than the macro properties of straw bales.
Experience, and some laboratory testing, strongly suggests that moisture content, density and history (the history of bale storage and protection from harvest to construction) are the primary determinants of bale quality.
Moisture content will depend on the circumstances at the time of baling and during subsequent storage and transport; quality control and inspection of a straw-bale job requires the use of a bale moisture meter, available from farm supply houses.
Bale density will vary depending on the type of grain, moisture levels and the degree of compression provided by the baler, but should be at least 7 pounds per cubic foot if intended for use as a load-bearing element.
The size of the bales varies with local custom and prevalent balers, although 23 inches by 46 inches by 16 inches (584 mm by 1168 mm by 406 mm) is more or less standard for three-string bales (two-string bales are much smaller).
Until construction standards are established for straw bales, prudent design and inspection must allow for the actual qualities of the particular bales selected for the given project.
As a practical matter, specifications must be phrased as performance criteria, such as maximum allowable moisture content at the time of erection and minimum density.
History, if not well known, can be checked by visual inspection and smell; it is usually obvious (if not quantifiable) when bales have been left out in the rain.
Straw-Bale Finished House
Architecture
There are two basic styles of straw-bale construction.
1.) A load-bearing, also sometimes called Nebraska style, denotes structure in which the weight of roofs and floors above the ground are supported, partly or entirely, by the bales. (The first straw-bale houses were load-bearing, built with nothing but common sense as a guide.)
2.) Post-and-beam straw bale denotes construction in which no weight of roofs or floors above the ground is supported by the bales. Rather, bales are used as infill panels between or around a structural frame, which can be wood, steel, concrete or masonry. This type of construction has become predominant as builders often find it more adaptable and more readily acceptable to building officials, lenders, and insurers.
Despite the obvious differences between these two basic types of structures, there are many qualities common to all straw-bale buildings. Virtually all are plastered straw bale, where “plastered” is used generically to include traditional mud-based plasters, lime and gypsum plasters, shotcrete or gunite (concrete pneumatically shot from a nozzle), cement stucco, and various combinations.
In thinking of plastered straw-bale walls, it is essential to understand that, once plaster is applied directly to either one or both bale surfaces, the structure is now a hybrid of straw and plaster. Effectively, any further loading—snow, people, the wind, earthquakes, etc.—will go mostly or entirely into the plaster skins.
This is because of the relative stiffness, or the relative moduli of elasticity of the two disparate materials. Any plaster is far stiffer than the straw, and will therefore “attract” any subsequent loading, much as a sharp stone in the sand will “attract” the weight on your foot.
When a wet snow or earthquake loads a plastered straw-bale structure, the soft, flexible straw yields, and the brittle plaster “skin” attracts all the stresses.
Unlike in a pure concrete structure, however, where such a failure of a bearing (or shear) concrete wall or column could be both sudden and catastrophic, the failure of the plaster skin would throw any loads back on the straw-bale assembly.
The capacity of the bales to pick up the load yielded by cracked plaster is fairly substantial. Tests conducted in various laboratories over the past ten years have proven that an unplastered wall can carry an appreciable amount of vertical load, as well as some In-plane and out-of-plane shear, and would, therefore, provide a backup against a failure of the plaster skins.
Furthermore, recent tests in Washington and California have revealed the surprising strength, ductility and toughness of plastered walls, even when cracked and subjected to cyclic loading. We are finding that the bale walls when plastered on both sides, behave much more like an integral sandwich panel structure than might be expected.
Sandwich Panel Behavior
The structural model is complex: Rigid inside and outside skins are attached to the comparatively soft straw-bale “masonry” assembly. The skin material can be known, but the thickness will vary appreciably as it fills in the gaps and notches. Most important to the whole package, there is both some shear capacity in the bales and some shear transfer capacity between the bale surfaces and the skins. Though it is essential to see the plaster skins as the primary load-carrying elements, it is nevertheless also important to recognize that the straw bales are still crucial elements of the package. This is analogous to the relationship of the web to flanges in a steel I-beam: The flanges (skins) carry bending loads, but rely on the shear capacity of, and connection to, the web (in this case, the straw-bale assembly). So the assembly consists of strong, brittle, thin “concrete walls” braced by, and somewhat elastically connected by, the straw-bale core.
There is now enough accumulated testing and anecdotal evidence to make reasonable predictions about the behavior of plastered straw-bale walls under various load conditions. Using data from the Albuquerque out-of-plane tests on plastered and unplastered walls, it would seem that a plastered straw-bale wall is 20 times stiffer than its unplastered counterpart, but still about 600 times less stiff than a true sandwich panel. (Space limitations here preclude a more in-depth analysis, but the data supporting these conclusions, as well as some test result summaries, can be found in Buildings of Earth and Straw by this author.) As more tests are done to investigate straw-bale wall behavior, some usable approximation of wall moment of inertia, such as 1/600 of the wall “pure” sandwich panel moment of inertia, should become apparent.
It should be clear that plaster coatings should always be worked directly into the straw. All testing and experience to date has shown a huge increase of strength from an unplastered to a plastered wall assembly when the plaster skins are bonded to the straw substrate. In areas of heavy snow, temperature extremes or seismic risk, making use of the integrated system also requires reinforcing for the plaster skin, which has no (useful) tensile strength.
That reinforcing can usually be a conventional hexagonal 17 gage stucco mesh, but for particularly heavy loading, may need to be some form of welded wire mesh with a comparatively tight weave such as 2 inches by 2 inches (51 mm by 51 mm) with 14 gage wire. Design and detailing of edge conditions may also be necessary at any boundary considered to transmit loads. Since the bond provided by working the plaster into the straw is more than adequate to hold the plaster in place under load, many, including this author, believe that mesh reinforcing need only be attached well enough to stay in place during plastering. Weaving, stapling or tying stucco netting to or through the bale wall is labor-intensive and of highly uncertain value.
Post-and-beam Straw Bale Home Construction
The structural frame for an infill bale wall can be anything the local codes allow, with detailing as appropriate. Analysis for vertical and lateral loads is conventional, and the bales must simply be supported for their self-weight and out-of-plane loads. With conventionally proportioned buildings, the plastered sandwich panel behavior is more than adequate to resist out-of-plane loads even in Seismic Zone 4, though care must be taken to secure edges and transmit loads to the frame surround.
One advantage of infill straw-bale construction is the introduced option of stacking the bales on edge, thereby reducing wall thickness. Tests have shown that bales on the side have a little load-bearing capacity but have a higher R-value per inch, so the net thermal insulation of an edge-stacked wall is about the same as a flat-stacked wall.
Builders report that plastering is made more difficult because the straw is presented across the face of the exposed wall, as opposed to the end grain exposed in a flat-stacked wall. Notching the straw for conduit is also made problematic because the strings are left exposed when bales are stacked on edge.
Load-bearing Straw Bale
A typical foundation detail for a load-bearing straw-bale house on a concrete slab on grade. Bales will sit on treated wood sill plates bolted to the foundation, with pea gravel in between as a capillary break.
All the bales were stacked, and the roof-bearing assemblies were in place and being strapped down by lunch time on the day of the wall-raising for this load-bearing straw-bale house built by the Town of Guadalupe, Arizona.
By midafternoon, all the trusses were in place. By the end of the day of the wall raising, the roof was sheathed and ready to be dried in.
The finished house in Guadalupe, with a typical three-coat stucco finish. It cost less than $50,000 and is a very energy-efficient, 1,120-square-foot (104 m2), three-bedroom dwelling.
Straw-Bale Library
In-plane earthquake and wind loads can be carried by the plaster skins, as discussed above. Wind forces have yet to cause any problems in straw-bale projects to date. For example, the Real Goods Solar Living Center in Hopland, California, was struck in December of 1995 with a record windstorm that wreaked havoc up and down California.
That building, was particularly vulnerable at that time, for there was no glazing on the huge south walls facing into the storm winds, and the building’s shell shape collected and focused winds onto the north bale walls (coated with a thin gunite substrate and an earth plaster finish coat), which were completely undamaged and uncracked.
In another case, load-bearing straw-bale walls in Pensacola, Florida, easily survived a powerful hurricane—before they had been plastered. In short, the empirical evidence to date tells us that straw-bale walls of conventional dimensions are not appreciably affected by high winds.
Bracing typically consists of light gage metal straps, steel plate or slender all-thread bolts set diagonally across the surface of the bale wall and protected by the plaster. The diagonals must be designed for calculated forces and adequately fastened to the top plate and foundation. However, because even lightly reinforced cement stucco on straw-bale walls has surprising strength, ductility, and toughness, and as further testing is conducted, reliance on the reinforced plaster/sandwich panel behavior will likely increase in engineering designs.
American Society for Testing and Materials fire tests have been conducted on plastered straw-bale wall assemblies in Albuquerque and California, each of which showed enormous resistance to flame spread and temperature rise.
This is apparent because the bales are typically too dense (lacking in oxygen) to support combustion, and even when unplastered will tend to char on the outside as does a heavy timber beam.
Plastered straw bale structures have survived wildfires where wood buildings burned to the ground and steel melted. Based on this type of field experience and the tests, bale structures have been considered to be at least one-hour fire assemblies (if not better). [Recently, the California Energy Commission assigned an R-value of 30 to a 23-inch (584 mm) plastered straw-bale wall construction based on a state-of-the-art test at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.]
Effectively, fire is not of great concern for the completed structure, but it is of enormous concern during construction. While the walls are going up, a lot of cutting, notching, and reshaping of the bales will invariably leave the site covered with loose straw, which is highly flammable. Common sense dictates that the site is swept clean regularly in this phase, that fire extinguishers or hoses be readily available, and that any welding, cutting, brazing, etc., be done with extreme care. If the design has bales on an edge (with the ties exposed), then the walls are vulnerable to fire until the plaster is applied.
Moisture
Water penetration, as with any other type of construction, is a potential problem. Straw left in a moist, aerobic environment [generally, above 20 percent moisture content and 50°F (10°C)] will support the growth of molds, which leads to decay of the straw. Even for a post-and-beam structure, this can be a problem, as degradation of the straw leaves the plaster unsupported and can release mold spores into the air that may be hazardous to health. For these reasons, moisture issues receive particular attention from straw-bale designers and researchers.
The overwhelming experience with straw-bale buildings is that moisture vapor intrusion is not a problem if the wall can “breathe”; that is if both surfaces are vapor permeable. There have certainly been leaks and degradation failures, but without exception they have been due to outright moisture intrusion, not vapor intrusion.
Although moisture considerations are related to the climate—arid regions will tend to pull moisture out of any wall package, whereas warm or cold humidity presents specific vapor problems—moisture control must largely focus on preventing leaks. In short, and to perhaps oversimplify, it seems that water vapor should be allowed to move in and out of the wall assembly while extra care must be taken to keep liquid water out.
Tops of bale walls, exposed horizontal surfaces (that is, windowsills), and joints with wood frames must be carefully sealed and designed to shed water.
As with fire, the structure is especially vulnerable during construction, as bales and walls can be wetted by rains, appear to dry out, and then develop problems after the wall is completed. Extra effort must be made to store and protect the bales all the way from the field of origin to the completed building.
This leads to the most important, unusual (and seemingly counterintuitive) feature of accepted straw-bale construction: No moisture or vapor barriers should be used except possibly for the first few courses on the outside, window sills and tops of walls to provide protection during construction and backup against a roof leak.
Building permit reviews have commonly generated the requirement to cover the bales with a barrier such as Tyvek or Grade D paper (as is done over studwall sheathing, though the evidence is emerging that even here moisture barriers can trap moisture where it can cause harm), and the argument has been waged many times in many jurisdictions over this subject.
However, experience with straw-bale walls overwhelmingly shows that no barrier should separate the plaster and straw because the straw needs to breathe (transmit water vapor), moisture must not be trapped against the straw/plaster interface, and the structural system depends on a thorough bonding of plaster into the straw.
The bottom of the bale wall must be well separated from the foundation; at the very least, a waterproof barrier should be laid over a supporting concrete surface to halt any wicking moisture from below. Additionally, many builders are laying a 1-inch (25.4 mm) layer of pea gravel between 2-by-4 plates along the inside and outside faces, thereby ensuring that the bales will never be sitting in water.
Pinning
Though they are stacked like masonry, straw bales are comparatively soft and do not behave like bricks. Except where surrounded by a sturdy frame of posts and beams, the bales must be braced or pinned during stacking for stability and alignment.
Internal pinning of the walls (with rebar dowels) has been prescribed in straw-bale codes to date, but is an area of some controversy, for it is not known how much contribution internal pins make to the strength of the finished wall assembly. (Most testing to date has been on pinned walls.) Field reports strongly suggest that exterior pinning (paired rebar or bamboo dowels against the bale surfaces that are tightly connected through the wall with heavy wire) is easier to build and apparently stronger, but much testing is still needed on the subject.
Precompression
A big consideration, also a somewhat unexplored field of study, is the long-term creep deflection of the bale wall. Straw builders have found that an 8-foot (2438 mm) wall can lose ½ to 4 inches (12.7 to 102 mm) of height in a few weeks from its weight and added roof weight. Builders have found, though, that these deflections are drastically reduced if bales are emphatically stomped into place both downward and against adjacent bales.
Knowing that any appreciable settling of the straw will induce unwanted stresses, and possibly cracks, in the rigid plaster skins that are already in place, builders have historically let the loaded walls settle as long as possible before applying plaster.
More recently, however, rather than waiting for the roof weight to compress the bales, some builders have been precompressing the walls mechanically. In earlier buildings, this was accomplished with all-thread rods every 6 feet (1829 mm) or so beside or through the bales, connecting top plates to the foundation and tightened with nuts at the top. Unfortunately, some precompressed walls were found, a year later, to have settled further beneath compression nuts, while others are (so far) performing well.
Others have introduced the use of elastic polyester package strapping or heavy gage (fencing) wire wrapped over the wall and down through the footing, in both cases cinching down the bale assembly to the foundation at close intervals, such as 2 feet (610 mm) on center. In a more elaborate system developed in Canada, stucco mesh sheets on both faces of the bale wall are grabbed from the top with oak bars, tightened upward with car jacks or inflatable bags (which push down on the top plate, compressing the straw) and secured in a taut condition.
All these systems show more promise than the all-thread systems because the tighter spacing allows for some leveling of the wall top by adjusting relative tensions, and because their elasticity (springlike behavior) permits them to maintain some compression on the wall even if it settles. Elastic precompression may also supplant internal pinning, as the compressed bale assembly has superior strength to ordinary (pinned) walls. However, the long-term ability of chicken wire mesh, heavy gage wire or polyester strapping to maintain high tension, as well as their use in this type of construction application, is untested. Anecdotal reports to date are highly positive, but the use of these tensioning systems should be controlled and conservative until there is more of a track record and laboratory testing to verify long-term behavior.
The foundation must keep the bales well above grade, and the roof should provide a wide overhang—the proverbial “good hat and a good pair of shoes.” Roofs are conventional, connecting to the walls via some manner of top plate or bond beam (most commonly a plywood and “two-by” assembly, though many top plate assemblies have been tried).
The top plate serves like the double top plate in a studwall—as a bearing surface, as a tie beam under lateral loading, and as a fastening point for plaster reinforcing. Windows and doors are typically framed wood bucks that either sit on the foundation or “float” in the bale wall and require expanded metal lath strips over paper or bituthene to reinforce the plaster tightly at straw/wood joints. Cabinetry and fixtures are screwed to wooden stakes pounded into the straw, and conduit can be let into grooves carved by chainsaw or “weed wacker” into the straw surface.
SUMMARY
Over the past ten years or so—the dawn of the straw-bale revival—a growing number of people has been building and experimenting with straw bales as construction materials. There now exists a body of testing and anecdotal knowledge about straw-bale structures that, while modest and inexact, gives us some basis for understanding how these buildings work.
No-load-bearing bale structures are relatively straightforward, and structural design of the bales simply involves allowing for self-weight and the lateral pressure on bale panels induced by wind or earthquake. Load-bearing straw-bale buildings in high snow or earthquake areas can tentatively be designed using cement stucco skins (detailed and built for a clear load path from roof to the foundation) to carry live loads.
Backup (or alternate primary) lateral force systems, such as diagonal bracing, must be built into all but the most simple buildings in Seismic Zones 3 and 4. Plastered bale buildings never threatened by heavy snow or earthquake are far less problematic, and a wider, less restrictive range of plasters, foundations, and architectural shapes can be perfectly satisfactory. All straw-bale structures need particular attention to moisture detailing, to fire control during construction and to bale quality.
It is worth noting and emphasizing that there exist many load-bearing straw-bale homes in Nebraska and Wyoming that have peacefully endured almost a century of snowstorms, high winds, temperature extremes and human occupancy without ever having had the backup of rebar pins, precompressing, engineered foundations and other features that have been deemed crucial.
Those houses are out there, uncracked, unrotted, unburnt, possibly as much a testament to the value of common sense in construction and maintenance as to the strength of straw-bale construction. As a methodology for engineered design and building code regulation of plastered straw-bale buildings evolves over the years to come (along with the continued evolution of straw-bale building technology itself), it should continually reflect back on its basis in these impressive examples.
For more of straw-bale house click on video bellow.
The world of post and beam is one where homes are snug, warm and draught free.
Post and Beam construction is a method of building homes with heavy timbers rather than dimensional lumber
Where low energy running costs are matched by precise engineering quality and a new home doesn’t need to come at the expense of future generations.
“Post and Beam” construction or “Timber Framing” is a general term for building with heavy timbers rather than “dimension lumber” such as 2″x6″s or concrete such as insulated concrete forms.
Early settlers introduced the concept of post and beam construction in North America although the system dates from the earliest buildings of Greece. The earliest surviving examples from Europe include houses, barns, cathedrals, and abbeys from the twelfth century. These structures were built by highly skilled and trained guild carpenters.
In modern building, the posts and beams are usually spaced well apart; more than 600 millimetres by definition, but usually 1200 millimetres or more. The National Building Code of Canada requires engineering design of all structural members spaced more than 600 mm apart.
Wood decking is often used for the floors and roofs, spanning between beams.
Conventional wood‐frame construction, however, can also be used between the posts and beams, with studs, joists and rafters supporting the sheathing and sub floor.
In fact, post and beam construction is sometimes combined with conventional wood‐frame construction or SIP construction (Structural Insulated Panel).
Fast erection is another feature of post and beam homes construction. Since there are few members and joints, the framework is simple to precut and assemble. Infill panels can be fabricated in the shop and inserted quickly into the structure.
In addition to custom homes, many agricultural buildings are built using pole construction, in the post and beam style.
Lengths of lumber available will depend on species and location. Lumber in western Canada is readily available in lengths up to 6.10 metres; in eastern Canada, in lengths up to 4.88 metres. Longer lengths can be obtained on special order, but unit costs may increase.
For smaller sizes, any species of lumber can be chosen, but for larger sizes it may be necessary to select a western species, such as Douglas Fir, Western Larch or Pacific Coast Hemlock. Trees from the west grow bigger and taller than those in the rest of Canada. They yield larger sizes of lumber but are sold across Canada.
Roofs and floors can be built using exposed decking or conventional sheathed joist and rafter construction with a finished ceiling. The exposed decking, however, lends itself best to post and beam construction since it is so attractive.
Poat-and-Beam-Home
If finish flooring is applied over decking, it should be laid at right angles to the decking, using the same procedure as for conventional construction. If heavy concentrated loads occur, additional framing may be needed beneath the planks to help carry the loads to the beams.
Load‐bearing partitions, if they occur, should be placed over the beams, and the beams should be designed to carry the loads. Or supplementary beams can be put in the floor framing arrangement.
Usually, however, partitions are non‐load‐bearing in post and beam construction. If they are set at right angles to the decking, no supplementary framing is needed for non‐load‐bearing partitions if calculations show that the decking will support the dead load of the partition.
Allowance must be made for movement around the perimeter of the panels, such as beams deflecting at top and bottom of the panel. Frames should be designed to take care of this change, particularly where there is glass so that no damage will occur. Joints should be airtight to seal the frame.
The higher R value can also be achieved by adding rigid insulation to the outside of the studs or posts or by using furring or strapping on the studs or posts and adding additional insulation in the cavity.
How much does this cost?
A rough estimate of a finished home averages somewhere between $200 and $300 per square foot, not including land or land improvements (power, well, septic, driveway, etc.).
The cost of a timber frame can be slightly higher due to the custom hand craftsmanship involved. However, if you compare the attributes of timber frames’ naturally open floor plan and the ease of creating a cathedral space to the premium expense of having these in a conventionally built structure, then the cost is very comparable.
Additionally, the cost to build a stick frame structure as energy efficient as a timber frame enclosed with SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) is quite similar. On average, the timber frame and panels represent 25% of the entire project cost. Thus, 75% of the cost is the same as a conventional structure (i.e.,. the windows, doors, roofing, siding, mechanical work)
Also, the cost of building your new timber frame home depends on choices you make: materials, architectural details, design complexity and selected Homebuilder or General Contractor. Site conditions and location are also important cost factors.
Are these homes energy efficient and “green”?
Yes, you will use less energy to heat and cool your home, which reduces your monthly bills and decreases the home’s environmental impact.
Most designs can be Energy Star and LEED certified. Timber frames homes are built with sustainable practices and remain among the most environmentally-friendly houses available.
A timber frame home requires little maintenance. Most of the builders use passive design techniques to take advantage of the natural climate to maintain thermal comfort, so the home can be affordably heated and cooled.
How is the structure insulated?
One of the great benefits of building a timber frame is using SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) to enclose the structure. Efficient R-values can range from continuous R-16 to R-65. SIPs can be used for your roof, walls and floors.
What types of wood are used?
Typically, they are Eastern White Pine, Douglas Fir or Eastern Hemlock. Other species of wood may be used as well. Our wood proudly comes from multigenerational family mills.
Depending on your bioregion there is typically a variety of suitable species. Care has to be taken in the processing of the wood from tree to Timber Frame. The function of timber, joinery utilized, and aesthetics are all taken into consideration. Many Traditional Timber Frames used a variety of species in a single home.
As a craft tradition, Timber Framing has used green wood since its inception. Throughout the ages, carpenters refined a system of joinery to work with “live” wood. Millions of Timber Frame structures from the Twelfth century onward have been joined in green wood and are still in active use today.
In addition to “green” timber Kiln Dried and reclaimed offer a more consistently stable option where desired or necessary.
Log Home – 20 Essentials of Great Log Home Designs
Everything you need to know to create a warm, comfortable, attractive log home.
Over the last 30 years, architects and designers have taken log cabin design to places our founding fathers could scarcely imagine. Yesterday’s one-room cabins have become full-fledged homes—even castles—sought out by do-it-yourselfers and boardroom barons alike.
No matter how far-flung the application, log homes remain a direct link to things that are earthy and natural. We see them. We feel them in the very marrow of our bones. Logs choose us as much as we choose them.
Download [udesign_icon_font name=”fa fa-chevron-right” color=”#595959″]Log Home FAQ
Because these homes are what they are—dynamic, vigorous, natural—there is much to learn from them and about them when it comes to planning and decorating.
You will find many quirky challenges, but also exciting opportunities. Together, they form the core of your journey to the home sweet log home. To make that journey a little easier, here are 20 design essentials I have discovered during my years photographing, writing about and living in log homes.
1. Your Decor Should Fit with Your Logs
When decorating, you need to be mindful how the decor you choose will fit with the log style and corner style of your home. While nobody would pigeonhole a given decorating style as being specific to one log style or corner treatment, certain decor does fit better with certain log profiles and building techniques. Rustic and casual styles often work best with rough-peeled and dark-stained logs. Traditional furnishings fit well with hand-hewn dovetail construction. And the contemporary decor is a good match for round, smooth-skinned walls with light finishes.
2. Drywall Isn’t a Dirty Word
Sometimes an all-log house can feel oppressive or dark. While exterior walls may be wood through and through, you should consider building at least some of the interior walls from conventional studs and drywall. Framed walls provide a break from the logs and make room for wall art, decorative paper and paint (not to mention providing hiding places for pipes and wiring).
3. Tall Walls Need Visual Relief
A 25-foot-tall wall built with small logs can feel vast and disproportionate without visual breaks. To create a visual tier and balance out empty vertical space, consider installing one or more large, attractive light fixtures that drop down into the room. In like fashion, you can break up a tall, unbroken expanse of log wall by hanging large tapestries, quilts, and rugs. Unique architectural ornaments, such as Victorian gingerbread, an iron gate, old window frames or ever-popular recreational gear, like canoes, sleds, and snowshoes, also are good choices.
4. Let the Trees Speak
As a raw product of nature, logs are as the sculptor’s clay: there to be carved and transformed into images of grace or fancy. When building your interior, consider using curvaceous branches to create spontaneous weavings and decorative rails. Or give a piece of burled wood a place of distinction. It is humorous, touchable and intriguing.
Used in a big way, logs can even give shape and substance to a room. Massive trusses and sculpted passageways help set the emotional pace. Arches, curved posts, and roaming twigs can become the focal point of a room or serve to soften the powerful
interplay of vertical and horizontal lines inherent in log walls.
5. The Sun’s Kiss Can Be Dangerous
Since log homeowners often pay dearly to get a building site with spectacular views, there is a tendency to shy away from installing shades and draperies over the windows. Depending on where you live and the exposure of your house, this can be a huge mistake. High-altitude cabins are particularly susceptible to damaging ultraviolet rays that can harm interior wood and furnishings. If your home is still under construction, consider installing windows that have special low-E coatings, multiple layers of glazing or tinted panes. Each of these reduces the amount of ultraviolet light that gets into the home. To mitigate problems with existing windows consider sunscreen shades. Made of flat, washable, synthetic materials, these shades are exceptionally durable and nearly transparent when lowered.
6. Don’t ‘Oversize’ Your Furnishings
In log homes, there’s a tendency toward grand rooms with soaring ceilings. Such places frequently call for larger furnishings. This makes sense since stout pieces match the stature of log walls while overstuffed chairs and cushy pillows invite comfort and intimacy. Just don’t go too far. Decorators emphasize that things can get too big.
Rather than over scaling everything in a large space, create separate furniture arrangements to accommodate smaller groups or different activities, such as dining or game playing. Use different- sized—and shaped—area rugs to divide a room and anchor individual furniture groupings. Tuck nooks and comfortable crannies into a room. Window seats and little alcoves can feel cozy and exceptionally private, even in a large space.
7. Every Room Needs a Point of View
Wherever possible; create places with a dramatic element that draws your attention. It might be any number of things, from a large picture window to a prominent fireplace, a magnificent staircase to an eye-catching chandelier.
In oversized spaces, you will frequently have more than one focal point to plan around, such as a fireplace at one end of a room and a breathtaking picture-window view off to the side. You can enlist those elements to create areas for separate uses. For instance, one furniture arrangement may encourage nighttime leisure around the fireplace while another might have you sporting binoculars to watch an errant moose rambling through your garden.
8. Muffling Your Walls Will Improve Acoustics
While the acoustics in log homes can be superb, log architecture differs from conventional construction in ways that an astute audio buff will want to consider. Sound waves can bounce around on bumpy walls, making it hard to control their direction.
To absorb and diffuse these errant waves, try installing large furnishings and heavy draperies. Bookcases at the end of a room, wall hangings and tapestries also help.
9. Your Rooms Should Be Versatile
You can enlarge your home’s practical value by planning and furnishing rooms for multiple uses. A convertible couch in the office or an armoire with a fold-down desk in the guest room is an obvious way to overlap space and function. However, what about installing a drain in the mudroom floor so you can wash down the dogs? Or, add seasons of use to enclosed porches by adding a heat source and trading screens out for Plexiglas windows in the fall.
10. Log Homes Crave Extra Lighting
Logs tend to be darker than plastered, painted or papered walls. Furthermore, the light that is reflected is typically warmer than it would be in other forms of construction. That means it takes more light to achieve the same level of illumination.
This is especially an issue in high spaces with striking trusses and beam work. Carefully consider your lighting needs and include additional lighting in the ceiling if it is warranted. Plan ahead. Wiring is relatively cheap before the logs go together and the roof goes on but retrofitting is not!
11. Brightening the Walls Helps, Too
Beyond electrical lighting, there are other things you can do to brighten dark interiors. You can stain the logs a lighter color. Refresh your chink lines with a lighter hue. Paint the wood ceiling white or cover it with bamboo matting, soft suede hides, tin ceiling tiles, even embossed (and possibly painted) wallpaper.
Want more options? Try enlarging existing windows or merely lightening window dressings with bright fabric-covered valances. Or line up a row of prints framed with broad white mats, or hang up a quilt.
12. It’s OK to Play with Your Decor
Whether you favor the Wild West, Mission style or something more eclectic, identify the inspiration for your decor early on. This way you can narrow down your palette of colors and materials.
Do not be afraid to take chances. Slathering your kitchen cabinets in fire-engine red or papering a framed wall with a bold floral print can be exciting. Indeed, you can make a wrong turn, but if the fear of trying leaves you with a dull, neutral palette, your log home might lack the very qualities of originality you desire most.
13. Color Can Accent and Unify
Pops of bright color used sparingly unify a space and create flow among rooms that spill over into each other. When choosing the color, balance it with the surrounding walls. If you have three or four dark- stained walls, then mix in lighter, brighter furnishings or big splashes of intense color. Where lustrous honey-colored wood dominates, you may want to use subtle, earthy tones as accents. Have gray or pickled finishes on your walls? Consider colors that are more contemporary or a roomful of cool neutrals.
14. Fabrics and Textiles Should Match the Setting
Fabrics are the building blocks of home decor, so it is important to choose yours wisely. In log homes, coarse treatments and nubby textures are especially popular while durability and feet-up comfort are also high on the list. Soft-to-the-touch chenilles invite you to curl up by the fire. The leather is about the most durable fabric you can have. It will stand up to rivets, jeans, and big-buckled belts.
For a new look, recover a couch, throw a half dozen patterned pillows on a bed, or re-dress your windows. You also can apply backing to fabrics and use them as wall coverings, much like paper but with more muscle.
15. Flooring Should Fit with Its Function
Log homes are steeped in a timeless sense of permanence. We instinctively want to pair them with kindred materials: stone, granite, more wood, earth-inspired tiles. But when choosing flooring, countertops, and other hard-surface materials, it is important to keep function in mind. Light-colored carpets naturally do not fit well in a home filled with kids and pets. Likewise, unforgiving stone floors are not good choices for the kitchen or rec room if you have young children around.
On the other hand, stone, brick or poured concrete are the best options if you intend to have radiant- heat floors. They transmit heat readily and, with the thick mass, continue to give off warmth even after the heating system has cycled off.
16. Consider Collectibles for Your Cabin
Despite being all grown up and perfectly capable of formal and sophisticated airs, log homes still come from a long lineage of doing and using stock.
As you pick your furnishings, keep that in mind and work in the trappings of everyday stuff—the things people use, wear and eat—or the things they used, wore and ate in former times.
Tools, hides, heads, utensils, quilts, blankets, boots— logs make friends with them all. Fix them to the wall, saddle up a beam or set a canoe afloat in the rafters.
17. Hanging Wall Art Takes a Little Creativity
Chunky, bumpy walls can make hanging pictures a challenge. But I have yet to meet homeowners who were stopped cold by a few errant dips and humps. Instead, they seek creative solutions, such as fitting corks behind pictures to even out irregular spaces and help the pictures sit flat against the wall. One designer uses a crumpled tissue to help temporarily float groupings of pictures on new log walls.
Later on, after the logs have settled, she will go back and make the fix more permanent. When it comes to nail holes, logs are forgiving, making it easier to have fun with your art and move pieces around.
18. Nature Belongs in Your Log Home
Our need for nature is as fundamental as our thirst for water, and bringing it inside is partly instinct. To incorporate natural features into your home, look to your local willows, woods or distant red-rock cliffs for color and inspiration.
Fill an urn with long-lasting corkscrew willow, red dogwood, and paper birch. Or add baskets and containers full of earthy collectibles and fresh flowers. They make a home feel lived in and comfortable.
Feel free to vary things occasionally, too. Change table linens, draperies, blanket throws or the art on your walls to suit seasonal shifts and moods.
19. Decorating Doesn’t Stop at the Back Door
Outdoor spaces enlarge living areas and often extend the connection with nature that log home owners value and delight in. To create comfortable living space outside your home, start with the porch. Fill it with a swing and rockers, line the walls with pegs for gear, screen it in or even include an outdoor hearth.
Want to take the outdoor theme further? Build a stone-lined path down to the brook or out to a hammock anchored under shady boughs. Scatter Western memorabilia and abandoned farm equipment around as yard art. Hang collectible metal signs on your barn or shed.
20. There is Always Room for Improvement
Houses grow a little as people do. They get older. Styles change. Eventually, they may need some cosmetic surgery—or a heart transplant.
An older, nothing-special house might need a decorative infusion of cabin spirit and some log accents to perk it up. If you have got an aging log home, consider some structural adjustments to update it. Knock down old walls to create one spacious room where several small ones once lived. Or add on to the home to create unique space. If you are not a purist, you can save time and money by framing up a new addition then using log siding. Siding can also come in handy when trying to cover scarred logs that surface when you move a closet, eliminate a fireplace or take out existing cabinetry.
