Learn to build a log home in Alaska

UAF is offering a log home building workshop May 24 to June 5 at the Palmer Center for Sustainable Living.

The workshop will appeal to anyone interested in building or renovating energy efficient, quality log structures in Alaska. (Pictured at right are students in a similar workshop held in Sitka in 2008.)

Robert W. Chambers of New Zealand, world-recognized authority for handcrafted log home construction, will lead the sessions. He is the author of The Log Construction Manual: The Ultimate Guide to Building Handcrafted Log Homes. Chambers has been building log homes sine 1983 and teaching log construction since 1988. He has written numerous magazine articles and invented log construction methods, products, and machinery. In 2006 the International Log Builders Association presented Chambers with its grand achievement award, awarded only three times in the organization’s thirty-year history. Mike Musick and his son, Richard, from Fairbanks, will also be instructing. Musick has worked in construction in Alaska for over forty years and has been building energy-efficient custom homes in interior Alaska for thirty years. His son Richard works with his dad in the family business, Ester Construction.

Basic procedures and techniques will be described and practiced to help even the novice log builder get started with a project. Building an energy-efficient log home requires the highest level of craftsmanship to meet modern standards of air-tightness, indoor air quality, safety, comfort, and durability. The class is a hands-on experience, with students actually constructing a cabin of aspen logs on Trunk Road where the Matanuska Experiment Farm has its summer garden area.

The class will run from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, with a break for the Memorial Day weekend. A maximum of 12 students will be accepted. Cost is $650 if registered by April 30 and $800 after that. Contact Valerie Barber, director UAF Forest Products Program, 907-746-9466 or vabarber@alaska.edu.

Further reading:
A Log Cabin Building Workshop, Agroborealis, Spring 2009, page 6-14, by Valerie Barber (PDF)