Welcome to the second installment of this five-part series, which follows the construction of an elegant log home in North Carolina's mountains. When completed, this home will satisfy the owners' desire to have a spacious and unusual mountain retreat for lavish entertainment and personal escape. 

Log homes boast a long and varied history. Throughout the world, logs' sturdiness, insulation value, ease of construction, permanence, low cost and availability made them a popular building material. In areas with wooded landscapes, from northern Japan to Siberia, Europe and the American frontier, houses constructed from logs became a common sight. 

Today's log homes are a far cry from their forebears. Modern building techniques make it possible to construct log homes of spacious luxury and utility. Gone is the pioneer look of a rough-hewn cottage. Taste and refinement are evident in both the interior and exterior of this 7000-square-foot log home, which rivals conventional construction in its elegance and beauty.  

In the first installment of this series, the owners selected the site, finalized the architectural plans and prepared all the necessary contracts and building permits. This article will cover the challenges of site preparation and foundation construction. 

We will also take a look inside the Heritage Log Homes factory to discover how massive trees are transformed into finished log components. Unlike a conventional home, where all construction takes place at the site, the parts of a log home are pre-made elsewhere. Located in Tennessee, the Heritage factory was designed specifically to modify rough timber into precision-cut logs, windows and doors. These components are then shipped to the job site, where they are assembled piece by piece into the home of the owners' dreams.  

While Heritage Log Homes cut the logs for this extravagant mountain getaway to their precise size and shape, crews prepared the lot for construction�a difficult task, given the densely-wooded, mountainous location. 

Lot clearing always requires complete removal of every tree from the house footprint and the adjoining septic leaching field. This lot was no exception. In order to have perfect views of the mountains and valleys in all directions, some additional trees had to be thinned out. To preserve the site's environmental integrity in the face of development, a landscape arborist was brought in to recommend which trees were the healthiest and which needed to be cut down. 

Once the lot was cleared and the well drilled, the next step was to dig a cavity for the septic tank and the leaching field. On the day of excavation, the temperature was just 14 degrees above zero. Luckily, construction crews had the equipment and expertise needed to dig through the cold, rock-hard ground.  

Since the house will be built on a sloping, mountainside lot, crews began by cutting into the hillside where the back wall of the basement is to be located. Footers were prepared and concrete poured into a frame to hold back the earth. The remainder of the basement was then built forward with concrete walls. This solid foundation will support the beams and first floor on which the log home will rest.   

Fortunately, in this case, the developer provided the lot with access to utilities prior to construction. The builder only needed to bring the electric, cable, water and gas lines to the house and connect the sewer line to the septic system. At this point, the essential support for the house is in place and the utility connections are at their precise locations.  

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the Heritage Log Home factory was busily manufacturing logs to their finished condition. State-of-the-art milling equipment and the latest in computer-assisted technology allows Heritage to cut, mill, rout and finish each log so that it conforms exactly to detailed house plans. Every piece of the modern log home is made indoors to precise standards and then assembled later at the job site. Precision is the key, as each log is made specifically to fit a particular spot in the house. 

As this process begins, rough logs are delivered to the stacking machine, then placed one-by-one onto a conveyor belt, which feeds them into a machine that shapes the timber into an 8,' 10,' or 12' round log. The logs are cut to have a tongue along the top and a groove along the bottom, allowing them to fit precisely onto one another. 

Holes are drilled through each log on one-foot centers. At this point in the finishing process, a through-bolt is dropped from the top log to the bottom log through every fourth hole. Electric lines, switches and other conventional utilities can be fed through the holes not used for through-bolts. By tightening a compression spring, the logs are squeezed closely together.  

All of these openings must be pre-drilled or cut at the factory to extremely tight tolerances.  If each log had to be cut to size and shape by hand�especially in the field�the required precision would prove almost impossible. 

Once the holes have been pre-drilled, the computers operating the forming machines on the factory floor are programmed to make the precise cuts required by the house plans. A tagged log is then rolled into position. Tagging, color coding and barcoding is important, as each log will be loaded onto trucks with hundreds of others.  The individual logs must be easily identifiable at the job site during the assembly process. 

When the log enters the forming machine, multiple cutting tools descend, creating holes, grooves, shapes or whatever the computer dictates. The ends are then sawed square to the desired length. After exiting the forming machine, each log is sanded to furniture-quality smoothness by technicians using hand-operated power sanders, inspected, then delivered to a staging area and stored with hundreds of other logs awaiting shipment. 

In another part of the factory, boards undergo an ancient woodworking technique called hand-hewing. Originally, pioneers hand-hewed trees to create square logs for construction. They had no saws, so they shaved the logs square with an adz. With all of the Heritage factory's state-of-the-art equipment, the company still relies on skilled laborers to employ this technique, which creates the antique, rough-hewn look that many homeowners desire.  

With all of the home's components completed, a crew loaded ten truckloads of exterior logs, railings, timber stairs, bolts, screws and threaded rods, all tagged and barcoded for accurate assembly identification. These materials were driven to a holding area eight miles from the job site.

Offloading at a staging area avoided cluttering the building site and eliminated the daunting prospect of driving eighteen-wheelers up steep mountain roads to the site's 3000-foot elevation. When required, smaller trucks will deliver each component to the job site. To keep from complicating the inventory at the staging area, in two months the factory will deliver the finishing components, windows and doors.  

The next installment will cover building the house itself. As you will soon see, a log home differs from a conventional house in that builders do not use drywall, weather barriers or exterior siding. Tightly-joined, mammoth logs do it all. One of the great benefits of owning a log home is the incredible insulating quality of logs that are one foot thick. 

The next article in this series will also describe how the roofing, flooring, walls, paneling, trim, ceilings and lighting fixtures in this log home open up new options for design and efficiency.  As the house takes shape, we hope you will continue to follow its evolution and share the excitement of watching a dream come to life.