A log home built by one of our students was recently selected as the 2009 Built Green Washington award winner* in their remodeling category. 

Mike Vowels took our 2-day log home class back in the 1970s and then built his log home.  It's a very well built and beautiful log home, in fact it was featured in the book Hands-On Log Homes by Cindy and Art Thiede.  You can see pictures of his log home in our student gallery.

Mike recently remodeled his log home, adding many environmentally friendly features.  He added features like an on-demand hot water heater, living roof, bog scape grey water treatment system, rain catchment system, solar hot water heater, et cetera.  He also used recycled beams, boards, windows, and doors purchased from salvage yards.  Mike really set out to turn his log home into a showcase for green living. 

In 2008 Mike's log home was selected to be included in the  King County Green Tools Program, as a "Remodel Case Study" of Sustainable and Green building practices.  LHBA staff attended the event and had a great time, we even took tons of pictures at the event.  It's worth noting that Mike harvested the logs for his home in a sustainable fashion, and his property is part of the King County Forest Stewardship program.

Now in 2009 Mike's home has been selected as the 2009 Built Green Washington award winner.  It's a well deserved reward, because Mike's home exemplifies the principles of living an environmentally conscience lifestyle.  Congratulations to Mike Vowels for a job well done.

Unfortunately our December classes are now full.  They filled up fast since we haven't had classes for 6 months.  No additional classes are planned at this time. 

To keep informed about future classes you can view our 2009 schedule, or sign up for our automatic email notification service.

We are pleased to announce that the King County Green Tools Program has selected a Log Home Builders Association member's home as a "Remodel Case Study" of Sustainable and Green building practices.

Mike Vowels log home was built in the 1980s.  He used site harvested logs, which is a very environmentally friendly practice.  The property has been part of a flag ship forest stewardship program, ensuring that native growth is preserved. 

Recently Mike has remodeled his home, with a real emphasis on green living and sustainable living practices.  It now features a graywater system, tankless hot water heater, rain water harvesting system, et cetera.

Dear Friends,

With great regret and sadness I must inform you that my father, DeWelle 'Skip' Ellsworth Jr. passed away.

He died in his sleep on August 6th 2008, at his resort in Daanbantayan, Cebu Philippines.

Skip was a great man who touched many lives.  He will be deeply missed.

We're pleased to announce that we're having our second annual thanksgiving members meeting.  We had such a great time doing a Thanksgiving celebration with our members last year, that we just had to do it again. 

The Thanksgiving meeting will take place on November 3, 2007 from 5 to 9pm at Skip's ranch. Members of the Log Home Builders Association are invited to attend!

This will be a semi-catered meeting. We will be supplying several delicious smoked turkeys from the famous "I met the Man" Dixie's BBQ in Bellevue, Washington.

Members are welcome to bring additional dishes that would go well with a Thanksgiving party theme.

RSVP is required. Please RSVP by October 27th. You can send us an e-mail to info@loghomebuilders.org

There's also an RSVP thread in the members forum, and members can post their RSVP there instead of emailing us.

The switch to our new website is nearly complete. We should be finished with the bulk of the setup in a couple of days, and we should have our complete photo album moved over within a couple of weeks.

UPDATE: The IE comment posting bug is now fixed. If you are using IE and things look weird when you try to add a post on the forums, try holding down the control key on your keyboard and refreshing your screen (CTRL+F5).

We are still working on a couple of minor issues, but the comment bug was the biggest bug since it was preventing members from posting on the forum.

Welcome to the new website. Don't worry, all of our articles about log homes are still here, as well as the pictures of our student's log homes. Over the next few weeks we will be adding and organizing our content. Click the "Articles" tab above or use the search function to find what you are looking for.

Our privacy policy is as follows: We do not, under any circumstances, sell, rent, or trade your e-mail address or contact information with anyone. Period.

We have just set up an e-mail alert system to notify you when we schedule new classes or have last-minute cancellations. Subscribers to this newsletter will, in most cases, hear about new classes that are scheduled before they are posted on our web site. Since our classes fill up very quickly, you should join this newsletter if you are thinking about taking our class. To sign up, visit our log home newsletter page.

The Herald published an article about us a few days ago and you can read the log homes article. Also, here is an older article written about us in the Northwest News -- log home news.