many of them just seem stupid to me

the most aesthetic I've seen is probably Robert Chambers' method but it's incredibly labor intensive

a regular wall is lets say 6 inches thick...maybe a little bit less over the actual floor and a log home would be something like 15 inches thick...you are literally losing about 10 inches on the perimeter of the house....its probably like a 15 percent loss on the total floor plan

and the potential for moistrue infiltration worries me

yeah airsealing is super important thats why i dont like log contruction

yup... and the more you seal it the more it ruins the look

i can build a stick frame wall in maybe 45 minutes from materials i can carry in my truck and lift with one hand

the chambers method, you're literally carving natural logs to fit like a glove on top of each other

logs would be literally an order of magnitude off from that simplicity and time

yeah his method is really complex

logs also deteriorate at the same rate if im not mistaken

but it ends up looking like a work of art... like the trees grew together into a house

they do when they touch and capture water in between the nooks and crannies

another point against log construction

Sometimes I get larpy tho... and I think about what kind of house you could build if you didn't have access to all these modern materials... like if it's just the individual craftsmen in the village working on it

if you really love wood and trees i dont believe in cutting a ton of them down for a house ...i dont really know about log construction at all but new methods are so easy and sustainable and habitable it makes me proud of my ignorance

and there's also the aesthetics of it

that's why my preferred system is timber frame

aesthetics to me really arent a virtue

but you cant build timber frame with out SIPS and they arent local made

well then it's just a question of what you value

I've been researching how one might be able to build it without sips

it can be done

our ancestors did it for hundreds of years

we have better methods and materials for the in-fill these days

yeah exactly i value practicality...a stick frame your children could build at 15 ...a log home well maybe after a decades of learning they could pull one off half assed

and lime plaster and lath is more labor intensive, but it produces beautiful, durable results

any surface finish wont matter if its not airsealed etc. plaster can turn to shit really fast

yeah I don't want to live in a bland box that's insulated with fiberglass batting

but that's just my own personal taste

well do you live in one now

haha touche

yes I do

im curious because where does this distaste come from

I don't really like it though

im not mad you dont see it the way i do

i really dont care there are more of you on the board than of me

oh I'm not mad either... it doesn't have to be a flame war

I think modern building is great.. I'm glad there are people out there who are pushing the technological boundaries to provide effective, affordable housing for most people

but when I dream big, I don't reach for what's ordinary

maximizing profits....but i dont think that we should hold the house as an ideal where it should be more of creating a home no matter the circumstances