it’s a picture most of us dream of – sitting in a comfortable sofa, by a log burner, in a stylish log cabin home. But are log cabins easy to heat? Like any building, as long as they are well built, well insulated and draught proof, you should have no problem heating your new log cabin.
Is a log cabin easy to heat?
Log cabins, built of quality timber and well insulated, are very very cheap to heat. That is as long as they are well built, with quality windows, doors and insulation.
If you think about it, there is only one key difference between heating a block built house and heating a log cabin. In both cases, you have an interior space that has to be heated. In both cases, you have a floor, walls, windows, doors and a roof that create the building envellope. So really, if the insulation levels and the draught proofing are the same in both buildings, you could imagine that the same amount of heat is required to heat the space within.
Are Log Cabins easier to heat than block buildings?
The main difference between the two types of building – log cabin and block built – is the timber surface on the interior cabin. Think about the amount of heat that a block and plaster wall requires in order to heat it up, and how long those walls will be drawing heat out of the room, while the equivalent timber walls are actually acting as an insulator, and doing nothing to keep the room chilled!
Log Cabin Heating Systems
The picture above shows a very cosy scene – actually, this is the log cabin showhouse in Boyle – the Limerick Log Cabin – with its wood burning stove. But of course you do not have to use a solid fuel stove to heat your log cabin. You can heat a log cabin in the same way as you would heat a conventionally built house. So yes, you can use a log burner or solid fuel stove. You can put a back boiler onto it, no problem. You can use a natural gas stove or boiler. And of course you can use an oil boiler – why not?
There are a lot of options nowadays with electrical heaters – wall panel, radiant, with all sorts of timers and heat sensors built-in. And if you want to be very daring, you can put in underfloor heating. Why not have an air to air heat exchanger built in? All of these options are endlessly possible.
Single or double wall in your log cabin?
This is a very important question, if you’re planning to buy a log cabin. Single walls, which are available on the market from 40mm up to about 90mm, are ALWAYS insufficient if you’re using your log cabin for residentioal purposes. This is because if you are heating your cabin regularly on colder winter nights, the temperature of the cold damp air will be too low, and the wall thickness is not great enough to insulate your cabin. In other words, the interior of your wall will be chilled be the cold exterior. Why is this important, you may ask. Typically what happens with a single wall cabin at night, if you’re heating the interior on those nights, is that you will feel warm in your cabin. BUT, the covered wall areas, behind presses, wardrobes, pictures etc, will not be warmed by the heating in the log cabin, because the warm air won’t readily circulated behind these fittings. So, the air that is behind these fixtures remains cold, and, as the walls cool due to the low exterior temperatures, the moisture in the air will condense, and this is how mould forms. The unfortunate thing is that this only happens on hidden surfaces, and it is usually not noticed for a long time, when so much damage is done that it is too let to remedy the situation.
Double glazed windows and doors
There is no doubt that double glazed windows are an important element in keeping your log cabin warm and easy to heat. Make sure the windows supplied in your log cabin are up to European Union specifications. At Timber Livng, wer offer a number of different window choices. Read the Blog Post here: Which windows for your log cabin?
South facing for solar gain
Remember when siting your log cabin, that there’s lots of free heat available from the sun, as long as you orientate you log cabin correctly, so that the biggest windows are facing south or south west. Solar gain is a major contributor to reducing cabin heating costs, and its very easy to get this right. Sometimes, you might be unlucky enough to have a stunning view to the north of your building, and you plan to have your main windows facing that direction – but generally, where possible, you should face your cabin southwards.
If you’re looking at planning your heating for your log cabin, it would make a lot of sense come to one of our TimberLiving showhouses in Boyle, Tullow or Carrigaline to have a chat with our ever-helpful sales crew. They would be only delighted to help you with your decisions.
Log cabins look cosy and cute and warm. They have so many endearing qualities. They look so inviting: you just want to go in there and sit down by the stove and relax. But do they stay warm for long?
A stove is the perfect addition to a log cabin
Easy and cheap to heat
You want a warm, cosy log cabin.
At timber living, all of our residential log cabins are very well insulated. We are very proud of the high quality of build of our log cabins. We use only the best materials, and that makes our log cabins reliable, durable and warm.
There are two factors that ensure that a building is
As long as a building has sufficient insulation and is well draught-proofed, heating should not be a major issue. The major difference between a log cabin and a block built building is that the blocks used tend to draw heat out of the rooms, and in effect, they need to be heated sufficiently before the room really feels warm. These cold surfaces will make the room feel cold until they are warmed up themselves. You do not have this issue with timber walls, floors and ceilings.
Our log cabin walls are one hundred and seventy five millimetres thick (seven inches). Of that 157mm, you have a 45mm outside timber, a 100 mm cavity and a 30mm inside timber. The outside and inside timber walls also add to the insulating value of the walls. This all means that a log cabin is going to heat up a lot quicker than a block building, its going to feel warmer sooner than a block building, its going to be cheaper to heat and its going to retain its heat longer.
In the showhouse in Boyle, we generally heat the stove until about four in the afternoon on a Saturday. When we go into the showhouse on the following Sunday morning, the temperature is usually a reasonable 12-14 degrees, even though it is 3 degrees outside.
What insulation does my log cabin need?
Our standard insulation levels are 100mm of kingspan insulation in the roof, and 100mm of Metac insulation in the walls, along with 50mm of kingspan insulation in the floor of your log cabin. While building regulations look for higher levels of insulation in all new buildings, we find that our customers have been happy with these standard levels of insulation ever since we started building log cabins in Ireland, over twenty years ago.
That being said, it is not a problem for us at Timber Living to increase the level of insulation in your log cabin, if that is what you require. Increasingly, people are looking for an increase in the wall, floor and roof insulation. This can be done easily, just by increasing the size of the cavity in the walls, and the roof and floor joist sizes too.
Increasing the size of the cavities and joist sizes in your log cabin will put up the overall cost. But there are other ways to increase the insulation – you could put extra insulation either on the interior walls of your cabin, using cosyboard or a combination of plasterboard and insulation, or you could put external insulation , fixed directly to the external log cabin timbers, on the outside of your log cabin.
The simplest way to increase the insulation in your floor is to build an insulated slab, with load-bearing insulating blocks, such as Quinn Lite.
Is Rockwool okay as floor insulation?
There are many new companies selling log cabins in Ireland, and it is natural that they are bound to make mistakes as they learn the intricacies of building log cabins in Ireland. One of the most common errors made by these companies (and one of the most costly to their customers) is the fact that they offer rockwool as a suitable floor insulation. ROCKWOOL IS NOT A SUITABLE FLOOR INSULATION!
I would advise that the first question you ask any log cabin company you are talking to is “what floor insulation do you use?” If they say rockwool or mineral wool, I would suggest that you walk away. The floor insulation is placed on top of a concrete slab, which naturally, gets very cold in Winter. Once the temperature gets below about four degrees, the moisture in the air in Ireland will stat to condense onto cold surfaces (as we all know too well!) So, with a cold slab on a cold winter’s day, you are bound to get dampness. The rock wool will soak up this dampness like a sponge, and loose its insulation qualities. It will also make your rooms cold and introduce dampness to the floor and wall timbers.
We use Polyisocyanurate (PIR) insulation in our buildings to avoid this damp ingress occurring. Polyisocyanurate (PIR) is one of the most efficient insulation material used in construction. Read more about it here.
Are log cabins warm in the winter?
Our walls are double leaf, cavity walls. Our standard cavity is 100mm and that can be increased if necessary, for planning purposes. In those cavities we make sure that we have the best available insulation. We use foil-backed PIR insulation, commonly known as kingspan insulation, in the roofs and floor spaces. This is a very durable, high-quality product that will last certainly the duration of your log cabin. Our windows and doors are very durable, double-glazed units, which will easily keep out Winter winds. All windows are tilt-and-turn, our external doors are five-point locking, and our internal doors all have gaskets (believe it or not) to keep the heat in.
Well-insulated log cabins
Whether you are building a single storey or a two storey log cabin, and no matter how many bedrooms is in your log house, we can assure you that your new home will be very cosy, warm and easy and cheap to heat.
You will see from our website that we offer a huge range of log cabins:
If you are interested in a quality log cabin, log house or timber home you should contact us at Timber Living.
Timber Living Log Cabin Showhouses in Tullow, Boyle and Carrigaline
We have show houses in Tullow, Boyle and Carrigaline. Please feel free to contact us now to make an appointment and come visit us.
A Log Cabin is a great investment – very cost-effective, quick to build, easy to heat and environmentally friendly (what other building construction type has a lower carbon footprint!). And, at TimberLiving we have such a wide range of cabins, from small one-bedroomed to BIG three-bedroom log cabins, so you can be sure you will get exactly what you’re looking for. And they look SO good once they’re built!
You may be considering the purchase of a log cabin but someone has put you off by highlighting some of the following myths. But don’t be put off – maintenance is a lot easier than you might think.
Beautiful, low-maintenance Log Cabin Exterior
Log cabin maintenance often gets talked about as a potential drawback compared to building a house from other materials. You will be surprised to find however that on balance, a log home will cost you a lot less in the long run. Wood is a remarkable material, and once it is treated well, it will last a lifetime. (They build boats out of wood, after all, and have done so for millennia. As long as the wood is treated properly, it will last and last.) Most of the ill-informed myths you hear about log cabin maintenance stem from stories where cabins have been badly built, badly treated or poorly maintained. Any of the following myths are as much down to people not looking after their wood properly as to anything bad about building a timber house.
Myth 1. Prepare yourself for a lot of maintenance work
If you build your house and follow the recommendations of any of our staff at Timber Living Log Cabins, then you can reduce any maintenance potential issues significantly. The exterior needs to be treated only every three to four years – just like any house!
Myth 2. Log homes attract mould
This myth is actually true in some cases. We have seen cabins with a lot of extensive mould, and you will definitely get mould in your log cabin if it is incorrectly built. Your log cabin needs a cavity wall and some decent insulation. (We offer 100mm cavities, filled with insulation, as standard.)
Do not buy a single wall (75mm or 90mm thickness, as offered by some companies) cabin, unless you intend to insulate either the interior or exterior of the wall. The reason these single-wall cabins get mould is due to the warm moist air inside the cabin coming in contact with the cold surface of the wall. The dampness settles on the wall and mould appears. Oftentimes, the mould only appears behind presses and other unseen spots, because the heating in the room warms the exposed walls, but the walls behind the presses remain cold, leading to mould forming.
Any house type can suffer from mould. The important thing is to keep your log home insulated and double-glazed while allowing air to circulate. Wood also happens to be naturally good at allowing air to circulate.
How do you maintain a log cabin?
The main element of Log cabin maintenance is the exterior “painting”. We talk about painting a log cabin, but actually, you need to use a solvent-based stain rather than paint on your log cabin. Paint is a sealant, and your log cabin timber needs to be able to breathe. Moisture is not good for wood, and painting a log cabin seals the surface and will trap any moisture inside your cabin. There are a number of different wood stain suppliers available.
Best exterior paint for log cabins
We highly recommend SIKKENS wood stains as the best exterior paint for log cabins. This is a Dutch product which is widely used and highly recommended. Their HLS Plus product is a solvent-based, highly translucent wood stain. Its low viscosity makes it ideal for use on bare timber.
Dulux is the distributor, and you should be able to get it in your local hardware store. Normally, they have a basic range available in-store, so ask behind the counter for the colour charts. They will probably have to order directly from the suppliers. They also recommend two coats of standard preservatives before any work is done, especially concentrating on any wood ends, where a lot of preservatives will be soaked in.
Treat your Log Cabin Exterior with Sikkens
A wide range of log cabin wood stain colours are available. The only problem with Sikkens is that they don’t offer cheap trial pots, so you will have to invest in a few of their smallest tins. But be sure that you do trials – the colour charts are not very accurate. Because the stain is translucent, the type/colour of your wood will affect the final colour of the building.
How often should I “paint” my log cabin?
First of all, you don’t paint your log cabin, you stain it. (See above). Depending on the location of the log cabin, and exposure to the elements (sunlight as well as harsher wind and rain) you will need to re-stain your log cabin every three or four years. Sikkens has a specific stain for UV protection, which can be used as one of the three coats required. You should apply this if your cabin is located in a sunny spot. Read their spec sheets carefully!
How Long will a Log cabin Last?
A good question! And the best answer we can give is that a log cabin will last a lifetime, as long as the wood is treated well. The picture below is of a 500-year-old timber-built house we saw in Brittany when on holidays over there.
We build our cabins so that they overhang the concrete base by 10mm all around. We also run a throat-ed rain sill all around the bottom of the cabin. In this way, water will never pool under the cabin. This is a crucial detail, and the most important one in ensuring the longevity of our log cabins.
Log Cabin Maintenance Checklist
What are the main things to check when maintaining your log cabin?
Stain the exterior every 3-4 years
Check that all walls are free from contact with soil/stones etc.
Ensure gutters are free from leaves/blockages and operating well.
Maintain mastic seals around windows.
Best exterior paint for log cabins
We highly recommend SIKKENS wood stains as the best exterior paint for log cabins. This is a Dutch product which is widely used and highly recommended. Their HLS Plus product is a solvent-based, highly translucent wood stain. Its low viscosity makes it ideal for use on bare timber.
Sikkens Cetol HLS Plus is a low-build satin basecoat and wood stain for most exterior woods. It can be used as both a basecoat and a finishing coat depending on the project you are doing.
https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/…
It is resistant to UV, surface mould and algae, peeling and cracking. The wood grain remains visible and it can be over-coated with Sikkens Cetol Filter 7 Plus.
It is an ideal product to use on softwood, hardwood, plywood, block board and particle board, such as cladding, fascias, architraves, timber frames, fences, and sheds.
Preparation
Wood to be treated with Sikkens Cetol HLS Plus should be clean, dry and free from surface dirt, debris and surface coatings such as paint or varnish.
Degrease any exposed bare timber surface by wiping with a cloth dampened in a suitable solvent.
The use of ‘knotting agents’ is not recommended with translucent finishes as they are not always fully effective in sealing in resin, the presence of knots is often highlighted and adhesion of coatings can be impaired.
When filling, be sure to use fillers specifically designed for use with timber. General or all-purpose fillers may not be suitable.
Applying Sikkens HLS Plus
Always do a test area before starting any project to test adhesion and final finish. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions on the tin at all times.
Ensure that Sikkens Cetol HLS Plus is stirred thoroughly before and periodically during application use to ensure a consistent finish.
Application temperature should not be below or exceed 5 – 30℃ and a relative humidity of 85%.
New timber
Where a superficial application of wood preservative to softwood and hardwood is deemed necessary, ensure that the wood preserver used does not contain any wax and has fully dried before applying Cetol HLS plus.
Note: Sikkens Cetol HLS Plus cannot be used on substrates which have had water-repellent wood preservatives or pre-treatments applied i.e. products that contain wax, oil or silicon.
Where possible, the first coat should be applied all around prior to fixing. Only use non-ferrous screws, nails and fixings. Denib using a fine-grade nylon abrasive pad or a fine-grade (P240 or finer) wet or dry silicon carbide abrasive paper, in the direction of the grain. Do not break through the surface coating. Take care to ensure that all sanding/denibbing dust has been removed from the surface prior to applying additional coats.
Note: Where any damage or deterioration has occurred as a result of exposure to the factory coating for longer than 3 months, affected areas should be thoroughly sanded back to a sound substrate.
Damaged or decayed timber
All damaged or decayed timber must be removed and replaced, cutting at least 25mm into sound timber. When splicing in new sections of timber, consideration should be given to the use of timber species whose natural durability is sufficient. Brush and apply two coats of a suitable wax-free wood preserver. Ensure timbers are thoroughly treated, especially any end grain sections, and are fully dry before splicing in. Secure with non-ferrous fixings and fill all voids surrounding the spliced-in area with a suitable exterior wood filler.
Apply 2 finishing coats of Sikkens HLS Plus. For best results, it is necessary to keep the interval between applications of these coats limited, not exceeding 1 month.
Depending on the condition of the finish, clean, degrease and sand thoroughly. Repair defects with Cetol HLS Plus in the appropriate colour and apply one full coat of Cetol HLS Plus, overall. Transparency Maintain the translucent appearance of Cetol HLS plus over a longer period. It is recommended to use Cetol Clearcoat LB or alternatively use lighter colours, 077 or 006 for maintenance applications.
Product Coverage
Coverage greatly depends on the wood species under treatment, the surface condition, the method of application and conditions during application. Under normal conditions, coverage will be between 10 to 14 square meters, On rough-sawn timber the coverage is significantly lower (e.g. 7 – 10 square meters).
Equipment Cleaning
Application brushes and equipment should be cleaned immediately after use with White Spirit.
Storage
Keep this product tightly sealed at all times and stored/transported in an upright position. Store in a dry place at temperatures between 5 – 30℃. The shelf life for this product is a minimum of 24 months in original and unopened packaging.
Drying Time
Sikkens HLS Plus is touch dry after 4 to 6 hours and recoat between 18 to 24 hours. Air temperature and humidity may affect drying times.
The only problem with Sikkens is that they don’t offer cheap trial pots, so you will have to invest in a few of their smallest tins. But be sure that you do trials – the colour charts are not very accurate. Because the stain is translucent, the type/colour of your wood will affect the final colour of the building.
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