building a log cabin from landscape timbers

#Building a log cabin from landscape timbers windows

Or use rot-resistant shingles like redwood or cedar.You can choose from a log cabin 10×10, log cabin 10×8 and more or you can build your own log cabin? In this article we will tell you some of the rules you need to bear in mind when building a cabin. Who was advocating that it be untreated? If you want another less-toxic treatments, try borate-based treatments.Įven if it were untreated, if it were cheap enough, you could just rebuild another one in ten years after it rotted. Any rational calculation of risk, must take those risk reductions into account as well. $150,000? That money could go to driving a safer car, quitting work (reducing stress), having more time to cook healthy food, and having more time to make friends/nurture family (highly correlated with longevity). They dose rats daily with levels of the potential carcinogen that would never be encountered in the real world.įinally, how many deaths would be saved due to living in a simple house that cost $5000 vs. If you preferred the natural look of wood, a coating of varnish would also probably minimize the level of arsenic transmission as well.Īlso, the EPA's toxicity numbers are notoriously conservative. If the house were lived in (as opposed to being used as an outbuilding) would most likely have a layer of insulation, followed by sheetrock. Whatever risk the arsenic represents is almost certainly skin-contact mediated. On the whole, pollution (from all sources) appears to account for 1-3% of all human cancers. Now, I don't know how the EPA's risk analysis was done, so I don't know how comparable the numbers are, but the lifetime risk of living in such a house doesn't seem that great to me (relative to these other risks), even if the numbers are 10 times greater). Note that the numbers describe risk of death per year. I notice you didn't choose to define 'safe'. Well, that's cool and all, but how long would such a structure withstand the elements if the logs weren't treated? In any event, the main reason I posted the link was the building technique, not the method of log treatment. If your chances of winning the Lotto were that high, it'd have a positive EV almost every day.

Not to mention that 1 in 100,000's not all that low. If the lifetime risk of arsenic-related cancer (and exposure to arsenic can cause a host of other maladies as well) is 1 in 100,000 just from playing on treated-wood structures, how do you think that compares to living in a house built from the stuff? Since kids don't spend at least 8 hours a day on the playground, I'm willing to bet the latter risk is considerably higher. This building is finished on the inside with heat and air conditioning.Ĭontact: FARM SHOW Followup, Clyde Barnhart, 13637 Angell Rd., Athens, Ohio 45701 (ph 740 592-4203).Īccording to the article '.the lifetime risk of an arsenic-related cancer for children who play frequently on CCA-treated structures could be as high as one in 100,000.' How does that compare to the lifetime risk of driving say, to the movies with your kid? He calls it his 'lab' and he uses it as a place to do glasswork, metal machining, repairs and inventing.

double door, which he uses as a blacksmith shop. It's much easier than building a conventional log cabin.'īarnhart has made four landscape timber buildings so far. 'Landscape timbers are only about $3 each and one person can lift them without any problem.

#Building a log cabin from landscape timbers windows

'You frame out the doors and windows like you would with any building,' he says. hole at each end of the timber and then drives pole barn nails down through into the timber below. The inside doesn't have to be covered either, depending on what you want to use the building for,' he explains.īarnhart fastens the timbers together by drilling one 3/16-in. Since they're treated, you don't have to paint it. The timber itself is the frame for the building. There's no notching and no framework to the building. 'At the corners, I stagger them and let them stick out.

long treated landscape timbers which are most often used for flowerbed edging. He calls them 'landscape timber buildings.' He recently came up with a low-cost, relatively easy way to put up buildings that have a 'log cabin look' to them. in entomology and is retired from a career in research. The 88-year-old says the Depression taught him to be frugal and innovative.īarnhart has a Ph.D. Being born in 1916 may have something to do with Clyde Barnhart's ability to find economical, inventive ways of doing things.