What is a membership in The Log Home Builders Association of North America, and how do you become a member and attend a class?

To become a member, all you need to do is sign up for one of our classes and submit a membership application. Your lifetime membership automatically begins when you attend the class. The sign up fee includes both your class tuition and your lifetime membership. You will receive your membership card at your class.

So what do you get when you join the Association? You become a member for life, with NO further dues or fees of any kind.

You may attend our famous two-day log home building class -- where we cover every topic needed to build a log home from scratch, without a kit. This includes one class for one person (the member). Guests are not permitted -- everyone who attends must have his or her own membership card.  Please note, we do not offer a log home building class to the general public. Only members of the Association may attend our class.

You are also invited to attend our periodic member's meetings at no charge.  Our instructors are always at the meetings, and we often have a professional engineer there too.  The meetings can be a great way to get a "refresher" on things you might have missed or have questions about.  There is no charge to attend any of our member's meetings.  Only members may attend, and guests are not permitted.  Many members who have already built their log homes regularly attend these meetings and offer assistance to members who are just getting started.  We often offer professionally catered BBQ at our meetings at no cost to members.

You can join the member's area of our log home forums, where members discuss detailed issues related to log home construction.  The forums contain a great wealth of information to help you along during the process.

You have access to our instructors for life - through our online forums, e-mail, and over the telephone (when they are available) for life.  There is no charge for this service.

We do not offer any kind of "advanced" class, or video tapes that you have to buy to complete your skill set.  Everything that you need to know to build a log home from scratch will be covered in your class. 

You never have to buy anything additional from the Association.  While the Association does sell some items, the class will cover tips and tricks on how to get those same items on the open market as inexpensively as possible.  If the Association has an item for sale available to members, it typically means we're beating market price by 50-75%. 

Discounts: Many of our members draw their own construction plans if their jurisdiction requires them. If you don't want to draw your own plans we can refer you to draftsmen who offer discounts for Association members. We are currently in negotiations with tool suppliers who may offer Association members discounts.

After you have taken our class you have the opportunity to get hands-on practice by volunteering on other member's log home projects. If you are building your home, you can usually get free labor from other members who haven't built yet. Just post a want-ad on the forums!

Finally, when you attend a class you will receive the most recent edition of our Log Home Construction Workbook and CD-ROM. See below for a list of what is included in each.

What is in the Association's Log Home Construction Workbook?   The workbook includes: Dozens of diagrams, drawings, photos and charts of all of the important elements of log home construction. The manual is updated periodically to account for code changes, engineering information and advances in technology.

The manual includes detailed notes on all aspects of the log home construction process. You should still plan to take lots of notes during your class, but the bulk of the "tedious" work has been done for you! Major log home construction styles detailed, how to buy logs for the lowest price, how to get logs for free, foundations, roofing, rafters, floors, building log walls, finishing your home, chinking, and lifting logs A hard copy of the Association's "Million Dollar Rolodex", a catalog of numerous resources for log home builders. The Association's "perfect" log home floor plan. Our guide to tree species typically used in log home construction, and various properties of each species (strength, decay resistance, shrinkage, weight, etc). Our professionally-engineered span tables for rafter spans (both log and rough-cut), log ridge pole spans, floor joist spans (both log and rough-cut), and deck joist allowable spans and cantilever.  If you aren't quite sure what these things are, don't panic! They are explained in plain English during the class.

The class manual also has hundreds of pages of articles on topics such as: heating with wood, radiant floor heating, windows and skylights, radiant barriers, landscaping for energy efficiency, insulating foundations, and many more. And we include information on plumbing and electrical that is specific to log homes (we can't make you a plumber or electrician in a two-day log home class, but we will cover how to adapt traditional plumbing and wiring techniques to log homes. Most of our members subcontract plumbing and electrical work to licensed plumbers/electricians, so we also cover how to do that for the lowest cost). For a more complete list of what is covered in class

What's on the class CD? Making Money with Wood Passive Solar designs USFS Wood Handbook State-specific Wind Power info Hardwoods in North America -- names, characteristics, mechanical info Softwoods in North America -- names, characteristics, mechanical info List of softwood sawmills in North America The entire rigging manual