Before you all get carried away, I must point out that currently this program is only available in Finnish. It is based on the research done by the Construction faculty of the Tampere University of Technology.

Results speak for themselves. For example, my friend did crude cost calculation for his house project and walked away with estimation figure of 162 000 euros. Year and a half later he had his final inspection and the tab for construction cost was closed. The real total cost for the whole project came to 159 thousand euros – pretty accurate.

So I decided to set a price for a log home made by Honkarakenne Oyj with this tool, let’s see how it turned out:

First of all, I chose Honka’s Aikamatka as the test model. Aikamatka means “time travel” in English, but that is not why I chose it. I chose it because of the simple structural design, which is as close to ordinary house as possible. Also, later it is easier to do some comparative cost estimating with different materials, while maintaining the basic floor plan and design.

Biggest problem here is that Honka doesn’t give out their prices, so the program has to set an average pricing for a log cabin kit. Here is a PDF-file if you care to check out some details (still everything is in Finnish).

On the right bottom corner you can see a box with overall costs. I set the land price to 12 000 euros and that extra 1 200 euros goes to obtaining construction permits. Cost of construction with those specifications tallies 121 172 euros, but because I’m willing (and able) to do major part of constructing by myself, 36 350 euros can be deducted making the totaling 98 000 euros. 1 180 euro per square meter sounds quite high to me, what about you?

This is another cabin that is very close to me. I built it for my cousin together with my father. Cabin has been standing tall for almost ten years now, but unfortunately it doesn’t get used much these days.

Cabin has the look of a squared log home, but actually using post and beam technique with wood paneling as siding makes it look like one. In case you want to know more about post and beam building, please go and read this book.