01/26/07 Home On The Range (Part 2)

Home on the Range (Part 2). I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Building the perfect home takes a lot of planning. Knowing how many rooms and the layout of the rooms, one, two or three floors, and how much the home will cost to keep it warm or cool. A lot of technology has gone into developing building materials and insulations but one product has been used since the beginning of home building with excellent results. Hank Schaffeld with Gold Valley Log Homes is a dealer for Lincoln Log Homes says that using real logs has many benefits. SCHAFFELD: Solid wood construction through and through which gives you a very efficient, very quiet home. You'll find that you're going to save about 20 percent on your heating and cooling bill with a log home and that's due to what they call thermal mass and that's the term used when you are dealing with solid log construction. There's no air in the middle, it's just solid mass material. Another term used is like a heat sink or heat reservoir. It's the same idea. That's that heat retaining property that you achieve with a large thermal mass like a solid log home. Lincoln Log Homes has mills in up-state New York and one in Idaho that produce the companies various types of logs. Schaffeld says the Idaho mill turns out the more traditional logs from local lumber. SCHAFFELD: The mill in Idaho does all of the round stock, the Swedish cope style, the various sizes; all of our round log roof systems, floor systems so all of our round product which comes from the Rigby, Idaho area. Not only do all natural log homes have great heat and cooling insulation properties but according to Schaffeld, superior sound insulation. SCHAFFELD: It's incredible. Especially if you are in the Tri-Cities area, you know the wind blows around here from time to time or if you have a home that's near a busy street of course not too many log homes are like that but you won't here the sound come through those walls. All of the homes comply with local building codes. Schaffeld says one question though keeps coming up. SCHAFFELD: How do I get those outlets in those walls? I can't just put one in anywhere I want. So what we do is carefully do all that designing and planning in the home when it's being built and all that's constructed in the log wall as it's being put together. It's fabbed on-site. So we don't build the home and tear it apart and rebuild it. And that's why you can get more home for your money and you're not paying an outrageous price with Lincoln Log Homes as compared to some other log home manufacturers. Visit their website at goldvalleyloghomes.com. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.