Design of your log house: tips to avoid problems
Almost all log homes are custom designed, whether you’re modifying a stock plan or starting from scratch. By their very nature, custom floor plans open up a host of untested challenges, especially if you’re trying to design the home yourself. With almost all log home manufacturers, an in-house architect will take your design and turn it into a set of drawings that fit their construction system. Your home will be structurally sound. However, don’t necessarily expect them to point out every flaw or bug in your design. This is a hands-on business, and in the end, the design of your home is up to you… and you’ll just have to live with that. Here are some tips I can suggest to make your layout more efficient.
MECHANICAL: Open floor plans are the essence of the modern log home. They make a home feel bigger and keep the cook from feeling isolated. However, if you have a second story, you should consider how you are going to run the plumbing, electrical, and ductwork (both supply and return) to the rooms above. You won’t be using the outer walls for that, so you need to create enough inner walls on the ground floor to fit all the mechanics. In all likelihood, each object will occupy its own space among the 2x4s. Even if he uses underfloor heating, he’ll need ductwork for air conditioning. There are some systems that use high pressure ducts that are much smaller in diameter than conventional ducts, so there are other possibilities if you are short on space. But the best solution is to think about the future. If you’re tempted to use a full log interior wall (or none at all), you may be sacrificing the opportunity for more ductwork above.
PLUMBING: The smartest floor plans are the ones that try to keep the bathrooms together (either next to each other or directly above each other) and the shortest runs in the plumbing. This can’t always be done, but when placing the bathroom upstairs, try to align it with a downstairs interior wall. This way, plumbing doesn’t have to meander all over the place.
CABINETS: I would venture to guess that log homes typically have little closet space. I know where my home is. It would be a terrible waste to put a cupboard against an outside log wall in the first place. Why hide their beautiful trunks? And because we try to keep square footage to a minimum, it almost seems like a crime to waste precious closet space. However, there is more than one reason to include them. Not only do we seem to collect more things as we get older, but by law in several states, the closet determines whether a room is a bedroom or an office. This could affect the resale (or refinance) of your home. Here’s a suggestion: Place two cabinets side by side on the wall that separates two rooms; the closets may not be huge, but it doesn’t change the shape of the rooms. Try to include a coat closet near the front door.
WINDOWS: As I’m sure you’ve read many times by now, you can’t have too many windows in a log home. Wood absorbs light like a sponge. If you have a large bare wall, inserting a window near the peak not only lets in more light, but adds character. Some people add windows to both sides of a dormer shed. In my case, I had to move the roof line to increase the size of my bedroom window, because by code it had to be 6 square feet for the egress. In any upstairs room, you’ll need your windows to be large enough to get out in the event of a fire. Also remember that too many direct fit windows will decrease the amount of airflow to your upstairs. In my house, I added an awning (a small casement window) to the bottom of the stationery windows in my dormers. This helped to let air in, but even so the rooms can be stuffy. A ceiling fan helps, but ultimately you may need to add a skylight to create a draft.
KITCHEN VENTILATION: One of the toughest decisions we made involved how to ventilate the range hood. If you don’t want your stove to be on an outside wall, you’re in for an interesting puzzle. Will you run the exhaust duct between the floor joists to the outside? Will the run be so long that you will need to add another fan? I gave up and moved my stove to the outside wall, but then we had to cut a hole in the logs for ventilation. Horrors! How do you hide that? My builder built a small cedar box around the hole and we were lucky enough to have a porch roof under it so you can’t see it from all directions. Still, this ugly vent is in the front of the house, and if I had thought about it, I could have moved the kitchen to the back of the house.
DRAG SPACE vs. BASEMENT: There are many reasons to choose a crawl space over a basement, none of them particularly comfortable. Besides the obvious disadvantages of a tight space, there are some things we don’t think about. I, in my blissful ignorance, gave no thought to the ugly electrical panel. Of course, I knew that we would have meters and a panel, but I did not think where they were going. What I didn’t know was that, by code, we couldn’t put the panel in the crawlspace. Since we don’t have a garage, the electrical panel was installed in one of our rooms on the log wall. Isn’t that lovely? Another downside to the tight space: You’ll need a short hot water heater if that’s where you’re going, and you may need to purchase a horizontal-mount furnace. Because our water quality was poor, we had to install a purification system. This 54″ unit is to be mounted upright and our crawl space is 48″ high. We had to drill a hole in the concrete floor to make room for the unit.
GUTTERS: Yes, you want to get the water out of your log house at all costs. There may be challenges; we have an alpine style house with a vaulted ceiling. However, the roof becomes a deep V at the corners creating a magnificent rain duct. This is not necessarily wonderful when it falls on your terrace! Due to the generous overhang that comes with a log home, the end of that V projects away from the walls and does not form a logical angle from which to hang a downspout. In one corner I made do with an old fashioned rain barrel, and on the deck side we had to divert the water into the pergola we built against the house and put a gutter along the edge of the pergola.
OVERHAULS: Must have at least a 1′ foot and preferably a 2′ overhang to protect your logs. This overhang must be taken into account when designing the roof line. If you have overlapping angles, make sure you don’t create a water trap or snow trap. There are times when your overhang can collide with another angle of the roof. You may need to raise part of the roof a bit to clear space.
DOOR SWING: This can be one of the most annoying mistakes you can make and not realize until it’s too late. Think about what covers your door when it is fully opened. Are you covering another door? Will two doors collide together? If it’s in a tight space, will it open all the way? When we installed our bathroom vanity, we didn’t think about swinging the door until the plumbing was already hooked up. The door cleared the dresser by a whole inch; It could have been worse. You can compensate by swinging the other way (before it’s already hung, or your hinges will be on the wrong side). However, in the design phase you can use a narrower door. Or get a smaller vanity.
ELECTRICAL: The electrical and plumbing design will not come from your log home architectural plans. The manufacturer is not concerned with where he places his outlets. Once the plans are firm, it’s time for you to sit down with the electrician and mark out exactly where you want the sockets, switches, and light fixtures. Local code will determine the minimum distance between outlets, but anyone will tell him to put more than he needs; eventually you will probably use them anyway. Even if you don’t need it, put your cable and phone in each room; it is much easier and cheaper to do it in advance. Also remember, you can never have too many lights in a log home. Plan ahead for those accessories, especially those on the ceiling. They won’t be pretty to add later.
DEAD SPACE – If you’re building a huge log home, you have so much space that it doesn’t really matter. But for most of the rest of us, every inch counts. There are a few approaches that could maximize your floor space. First of all, do you really need hallways? Some space-saving designs arrange the rooms so that they all open onto a small hallway. I prefer none at all. Also, consider that each cabinet door creates dead space. If you can arrange your floor plan so that the closet door opens into a place that’s already dead (for example, another closet door or a hallway), it might open up the room a bit. Does your loft have a purpose or is it just an open hallway from one room to another? Can you put a piece of furniture on top? If not, maybe it will serve to give you an angle and make your “open down” space a bit smaller.
I hope I have helped a little. I learned many of these tips the hard way, and I’m sure there are many more that I haven’t stumbled upon yet. After all, a custom home is a steep learning curve.