Timber Source

Spruce v. Pine

We use SLOW GROWN SPRUCE in our Log Cabins.*

The timber is responsibly sourced from cold northern regions where the timber grows slowly. We all know the old adage of counting the rings to see how old a tree is. Well our timber grows slower, takes longer to get to size and so has more rings in it. This means it is tighter grained, as each ring helps prevent cracks and shakes appearing in the timber.

Spruce is a whitewood, which is generally considered more stable as it expands and contracts less than Pine, which a lot of our competition use. If you live in a timber frame house the timber framing is highly likely to be spruce as the construction industry has long understood the superiority of spruce over pine in their requirement for a stable, strong softwood as they don't want service calls from cracked plasterwork as the timber moves behind it.

The reason why spruce is more stable than pine is because it is less porous and so less able to soak up water in the air from humidity and rain than pine. Pine is also susceptible to the fungus blue mold which will not grow on spruce.

Some companies will say they use spruce when they only use it in small quantities in the doors and the windows, as these are the parts where you want the least movement or the parts will stop working. But then they will use Pine for all the wall timbers.

Pine is a much more resinous timber which means it contains more sap and moisture, so you will end up with more sticky sap runs which can ruin clothes and furniture. Our spruce will have far fewer sap runs.

Some companies will just buy the lowest cost timber they can at the time they order and then these get mixed during production and you end up with a cabin where the walls are a mix of pine (redwood) and spruce (whitewood). Not only does the cabin then look comical, with stripey zebra walls of different timbers, but we feel it just shows a lack of care about the product. We are consistent and buy in such bulk that all of our timber is high quality spruce and as such is always whitewood. Our competition normally use the grade “saw falling plus sixths” in their cabins, Dunster House use the better grade of “saw falling plus fifths” which means a better looking, higher quality and better value cabin for our customers. The grading of “sixths” refers to timber which more likely to have been cut close to the edge of the round logs. This means you are more likely to have bark runs and larger knots as the timber was much closer to the outside of the tree. We don't pretend that the timber in our cabins is absolutely perfect like a manmade material, because it won't be, it's a natural product and as such each piece has its own individual properties. What we can say is that we have done all that is reasonably possible to offer the best timber for the purpose and in comparison to the many competitors we have looked at it is the best available on the market, bar none. It's one of the reasons we are the largest Log Cabin Company in the UK.

*(with the exception of the Redwood outer skin for the Prairie and the Savannah)

Summary:-

SLOW GROWN SPRUCE

One type of timber – No mixes and stripey cabins

Spruce, not Pine – Less sap runs than pine

Slow grown – More stable with less cracks appearing

Saw falling plus fifths – Better quality control than competitors