Where Quality Starts with the Wood

 

When You make an investment in a log cabin whether it be as a house to live in, or as a garden cabin you expect it to last. The key to long life for a wooden building starts with the wood it is made from. Our cabins are manufactured by Jörnträhus in a small town called Jörn in the far North of Sweden. In the North of Sweden the summers are very short so there is only a short growing season for the trees. Consequently trees grow very slowly, and the grain is very hard and dense.

In the forests where Jörnträhus source their wood it is illegal to cut down a tree before it is seventy years old. The median age of the trees when they are felled is eighty to ninety years old.

When comparing cabins from other suppliers check on the age of the wood used. Another aspect of Jörnträhus's devotion to quality is the type of wood they use. All Jörnträhus houses and cabins are made from Scots Pine ( Pinus Sylvestris in Latin).

Scots Pine is more expensive than Spruce, but studies have demonstrated that it is a superior building material. For example the paper by Mika Grekin published by the Finnish Forest Research Institute concludes that Scots Pine is denser and less prone to twist and split compared to Norway Spruce. When comparing cabins from other suppliers ask if they use Pine or Spruce logs? Note: Scots Pine and Norway Spruce are names of the species of tree. It does not mean they come from Scotland or Norway. Another demonstration of Jörnträhus's skill with wood concerns the way logs are cut.

Jörnträhus always cut the logs such that the centre of the tree, the 'heartwood' is facing the outside. This heartwood is older, harder and more resistant to the weather than the younger sapwood. Cutting the logs this way takes more time and costs more money, but results in a more durable cabin. When comparing cabins from other suppliers take a look at the end grain of the logs. Is the heartwood always facing out?

By comparison take a look at this picture of one of our competitors cabins. The owner bought a cheap cabin from one of the Baltic states. He thought he had got a bargain, but this is what the logs look like after only 12 months!

Note all the splits in the end grain, and how the logs have been cut inconsistently. Notice also how shallow the tongue and groove is on the logs. The logs are merely sitting on top of each other. They are not being firmly gripped like the Jorntra log.

 

The moral of this story is that all wood is not the same. Quality matters.

 

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