Garage Progress - July 18, 2012

    Yesterday I was in the mountains on horseback moving cattle. I'll be back there next Monday to help move them further into the upper pastures. Today I finished the last log on the third round and installed the first log of round four. You can see on the left side of the picture there is a split log on the wall. This will be a window on the south side. It will be 5 feet wide by 4 feet high. There will be two windows on the west side and two on the north side. These four will be 4 feet by 4 feet. I wasn't going to put windows on the north side, but they are good for cross ventilation on hot days. All the windows will be started on this round of logs. This fourth round will bring the walls very close to 5 feet high.

    Anytime I have a split log on the wall (A log unsupported by a corner.) and I start building up on it, by the time I get the third or fourth log installed, the wind here will actually start moving the log wall section back and forth. The shorter the wall section (Width), the worse it gets. When I was doing the house, I screwed 2 X 4's to the decking and then to the wall sections to control the movement until I could cap them with a full length log going from corner to corner. The garage deck (Floor) is cement! This leaves me with a decision to make this year.

    On the right side of the picture you can see the short wall section between the two garage doors. This section is 43 inches wide. I have already decided I will not install any more logs on top of this section until I am ready to run a full length log over the garage doors. I am cutting the 43 inch logs to length and numbering them. When I get ready to put in the top log, I can build this section up in a day, then secure it to the full length log. I will still have to secure the wall to prevent movement, but I will go with a 2 X 4s on a turnbuckle and secure them to the ground with steel pegs.

    I will probably not install more that five or possibly six rounds of logs on the garage this year. With just the windows, I will have three more unsupported log sections. I don't want to have to install any wall supports and leave them up over the winter. there are too many things that could go wrong.