Home & Garden...

Wood made items often get a bad rap in the realm of living green. However, not all log homes are a poor eco choice. It really depends. Looking beyond material, log homes offer some other eco advantages as well.

Pros of building a log home:

Beauty and aesthetics; many people find log homes lovely, giving them a better chance of being re-sold than say a green prefab.

Some research shows that log homes may use less wood than your basic wood frame home. Keep in mind that this is based on the less waste theory. It's true you have less waste, if you use a whole log, but you still are minus a tree. Still, it's one green theory.

If you have land with trees or can use local forest lumber, then logs save energy by cutting transport needs.

You can reclaim, reuse, and recycle wood logs.

Using only the logs needed to build your home can help (in some cases) to keep a forest healthy by thinning.

Like any other dwelling, you can build a log home with passive solar aspects and many other earth friendly techniques.

Because wood is a norm to many builders you may have a better selection of builders who can offer what you need and want.

Wood grows back - it's an ultimate renewable resource.

Because you're not dealing with milled lumber the energy required to build a log home is less.

Tons of style choices are available from contemporary to rustic.

Of course, like with any material, there are some eco and building negatives to consider when it comes to log homes. We'll go over that next week - have a wonderful weekend.

Learn more:

Natural Log Homes

Designing Green Log Homes & Timber Homes

[Image Natural Selection via Thinking Green at LogHome.com]