These homes produce as much energy as they produce. Outside industry, housing is the biggest energy consumer. Therefore it is important that housing could become self-sustaining. Consumers could reap benefits in the form of lowered utility bills and favorable impact on nature.

Log homes are very challenging housing type to be changed into zero-energy homes, because of their unique building method. Governments all over the world are increasing their demands on energy saving housing types. Log homes therefore face tough challenges if they wish to remain in competition. Log home industry has best changes in the field of combined laminated and thermal log solutions. Many enthusiasts don’t regard this sort of building types to be log homes at all as the logs are artificial elements with inbuilt insulation. Do you count laminated thermal logs among log homes? Lapponia House, a Finnish log home manufacturer, masters this thermal log technology.

I decided to put new Google Trends service in use and look into log home industry. First I made some searches to determine, which companies are frequently searched for. I came up with lots of names but I decided to narrow my list to the TOP5 contenders. Anyway here’s the result of my original search:

Southland Log Homes
Tennessee Log Homes
Lincoln Logs Ltd
Satterwhite Log Homes
Katahdin Cedar Log Homes
Montana Log Homes
Heritage Log Homes
California Log Homes
Wisconsin Log Homes
Arizona Log Homes

Immediately it is clear that these companies are not necessarily the biggest U.S. log home companies, but they cleverly benefit from the manner in which people search for information. I bet that most people that type “California log homes” to their favorite search engine are just looking for various log home suppliers from the State of California. This is why I already plan to write similar article but from different point of view. Well then, let’s go to that TOP5.

Terrible disappointment I must say, none of the companies are searched for frequently enough for Google Trends to be able to draw a trend line. What now? Only solution is to tap into public log home companies, there ought to be some more interest. After searching with listed log home companies the result is still very bleak. Only two companies came up in searches Lincoln Logs and Honka. Here is a trend line picture of the two. Honka with red and Lincoln Logs with blue.

It is very problematic to compare these companies. Honka (Honka is the product name, while Honkarakenne is the actual company name) is the biggest industrial log home manufacturer in the world. This means that Honka gets lots of searches from all over the world, while Lincoln Logs gains most of the interest from home markets. All in all, I must conclude that Google Trends is not a good tool to look into log home companies. However, there is still one final trend search that we can make – log homes and log cabins. Here are the results.

Log homes are the most popular topic. It seems that log cabin is more prominent, but Log Cabin Republicans skew the figure out of proportion. All in all, interest seems to have remained strong and stable, take a point of regular peak in interest around Christmas and New Year. Holiday season is filled with sentimental pictures of log homes and fireplaces.

Here is a fascinating news article about the effects that DNC Registry has had in construction industry. Americans can give their name to the registry to notify that they don’t want any telemarketing calls. Now there are over 63 million names in these registries and that cuts deep into potential customer base for various construction companies. Before many windows, siding, roofing and sunroom contractors relied heavily on their active marketing push to create sales. Now they have to rely on advertising. This means that media is now swarming with tiny ads on all sorts of home improvement services. Article is a must read for anyone working in sales side of construction industry.

Here in Finland, we don’t have many old fashioned loggers left anymore. I suppose that is the case in the most Western countries. However, there are few horse and man units that still do logging in the old fashioned way. This sort of logging is a slowly growing trend.

This sort of logging suits perfectly on remote slots behind difficult transportation connections. Huge, modern machines can’t reach or operate at precision that is needed in projects that horse-powered (pun intended, so you can smile here, please) loggers excel. Horse team usage varies from parks to islands and construction sites that want most trees to be left standing. You can read this piece of news to get better understanding on horse teams in logging industry.

I wrote about Extreme Makeover, in which a struggling family got a new log home. Katahdin donated the log home in question. Now it was Katahdin’s turn to get lucky, as LHC (Log Homes Council of the National Association of Home Builders) gave Katahdin an Image Award. This award is given to any party that is able to improve the profile of log home industry. Read more about the topic over here.

Homeowners Mortgage signed an exclusive deal with Southland Log Homes. With this move, Southland is trying to ramp up their service as log home market is coming increasingly competitive.

In case customer decides to make purchase from Southland, they can get almost one-stop service, so only the land to build on is missing. If you check, Southland home page now has a pre-approval process link to Homeowners Mortgage. Just check under financing and you will find it.

This is big business for both companies, because Southland customers take double the average mortgage size of 125.000 USD. I wonder how come it is so that log homes are that much more expensive.

When I look back, I realize that all standing, old log structures in Finland are some sort of manors or churches. To less degree, there are some other buildings but almost to no exception, they are in poor condition. Why is this?

Log homes were popular because it was easy to fell trees and stack them as a log home. Sawing was impossible because of the inadequate tools. What made the difference were the building location and artisan skills. Farmers and hunters built lone log cabins all over Finland’s forests. However skilled they were, they weren’t master builders and their log cabins tended to rot away.

When important building was in question, master builders did their very best. These log homes and log buildings were also investments, therefore it was sensible to keep maintaining them even it was expensive.

Locations were also different from moist forest clearings. Important log buildings are located on hills and they are built on stone or rock foundation. This way log home can stay dry and solid.

These two principles are still valid today. It is fairly cheap to have a log home frame, but it is expensive to have professionals working on it and to locate it on solid and high foundation. I will soon write more about choosing a good location for log home in the article series, but for now – have a nice day.

Luoman launched new TV advertising campaign that is featuring their new mobile log home. In the ad, farmer is driving around with tractor-trailer and mobilehome is on the trailer. Very goofy and off the point, but will probably grab some attention.

On other note, Luoman Log Homes Oy has launched a new website, but that only covers the Finnish version. I suppose it was needed, because of their investment on advertising, there is no sense in driving traffic to appalling website after all. Go and compare the website versions Finnish/English. Quite a difference, right?

To me this marketing push is bit counter intuitive because they say that primary market for mobile log homes are outside Finland. Maybe they know what they are doing…

I have been paying some attention on Timber Heart log homes brand. Scandic Hotel Simonkenttä has a lounge where I have sipped espresso and planned my glorious future. It is a truly nice setting in Helsinki city center.

But wait, in this serene setting (well just next door) resides a sales office of Timber Heart. What an excellent choice to reach for international customers.

Honkarakenne Oyj bought 38% share of Timber Heart, which is why they are able to reach for global market share in a more aggressive manner. From Honka’s point of view, this is an excellent match, they get more usage for their log home factories, because Timber Heart timber framed homes are now going to be manufactured there. Also Honka will get wider product slate to promote for their distribution chain. Naturally Timber Heart will also benefit from this arrangement. Here are some pictures of Timber Heart log homes. Oh, before you start correcting me about Timber Heart homes of not being log homes… I know they go for Timber Framed path.

This is a follow-up to an earlier article called log mobile homes. That article tried to find out if there are any log-made mobile homes out there. Results were dim, just random search results, most of which were pure spam sites. This time I decided to use “mobile log homes” search string instead of previous “log mobile homes”. Do you guess what sort of results sprung up?

Well surprise, surprise, the good old http://www.mobile-parkhomes.co.uk/ was on the list, not on top of it, but there was so much pure trash on the top that you could say it was most relevant result. Google obviously can’t produce quality on these slightly obscure search terms. However, there was another discovery that I had missed previously. http://www.allianceloghomes.com/ provides mobile log homes that are made of Russian logs. Interesting development and also important to notice is that both of the two companies are working in U.K. Are mobile log homes growing British trend?