Looks solid. It’s a lot of work to put one of these up, to me, from the clearing, the base, then plank by plank. So, nobody wants to put a poor-quality building up, I narrowed it to Dunster and Tuin so far, both seem decent. On the roof aspect, a few people seem to have ‘augmented’ the designs of a log cabin with a fairly sophisticated layering-up. A membrane over the stock roof, then insulation board (foil-backed possibly?), then what they called ‘chipboard’ but surely not, they must mean ‘sterling’ board, finally a waterproof layer on the outer side. I have systematically set about removing every single felt roof on my property. The issue is, if you have several additions, like shed, garage, extension etc, all those felt roofs go wrong, within 5 years I find of construction (but you don’t notice it initially), then they don’t all go wrong at the same time, perhaps thankfully. That’s a lot of maintenance, I got sick of it. I had the extension tiled by tradesmen, I tiled the single garage myself with used ‘red’ tiles that had weathered to the right shade of grey, and the summerhouse that was growing mushrooms on the roof, I used twinwall 9mm I think it was, plastic material. I screwed it down with stainless screws and washers, and a dollop of silicone every time. That’s ten years ago. Not a drip. The light that the summerhouse roof construction now permits, is massive, only the struts across underneath the twinwall, interrupt it. It was used for making some vids, so that’s useful. It’s also translucent so not really visible through it, and I used the ‘spare’ from the massive twinwall sheet, to make a double of the roof exterior as an interior on the other side of the struts etc, but therefore about 2 inches lower. The summerhouse is roasting hot in a good summer like we have in 2023. But, if you want to sit there in such weather, you open the double doors and it cools in minutes. We use it for drying clothes, the windows are always open an inch to let air through. I used grey/allegedly fire-resistant polystyrene foam to insulate the walls, and used a benign bland sort of square-embossed beige carpet to cover over those insulated walls, and the door sections that are not made of glass. Felt was invented by a roofer, discuss! Anyway, thanks for this info, even buying materials now in 2023 (june) is hideously expensive, I cannot get the price just for wood, down to the kit price of either Tuin or Dunsten. Good luck all.
No pal. Made sure the structure was just under the height limit where planning would be required. I had to take off the diamond shaped wood feature at the apex of the roof on the front and back of the cabin as that put me over the height.
Can anyone give information on the long term finished product I’m getting a one bedroom cabin built I’m interested in how they manage long term. If there is a kind soul out there with information please give me your impression. I worked construction all my life so I’m not worried about that side I’m concerned about life span of cabin. Thank you to any kind soul who helps me.
It's 12 months since the video and the log cabin is still in the same condition. No leaks, no separation of the logs and the roof shingles are still in great condition. I've always used oil as a preservative on exterior wood and the Barrettine decking oil used on this cabin is doing an excellent job. So much so that I'm only going to treat the wood every 2 years now instead of every year. One thing I didn't mention in the video was the Damp Proof membrane that I nailed to the underside of the sacrificial wood before placing it on the prepared base. Creating a waterproof barrier between the wood and base will extend the life of the cabin by some distance. You can see the black Damp proof membrane on the bottom wood section at 4.18 mins into the video.
