Compare beam and log for a bath | What is better

The best mate­r­i­al for build­ing a bath is wood. How­ev­er, the mod­ern build­ing mate­ri­als indus­try pro­duces a vari­ety of wood mate­ri­als, of which two of the most suit­able for the con­struc­tion of a bath can be dis­tin­guished — a log and a bar. Our build­ing experts have ana­lyzed the pros and cons of these mate­ri­als in rela­tion to their use in bath con­struc­tion to help you choose the best one for you.

First of all, you need to know that each of these mate­ri­als has sev­er­al vari­eties that dif­fer in prop­er­ties.

bar

In con­struc­tion prac­tice, the fol­low­ing types of tim­ber are used today:

1. mas­sive unplaned;

2. pro­filed;

3. glued.

4. Mas­sive unplaned tim­ber

Mas­sive unplaned tim­ber is obtained by saw­ing logs — saw­ing from four sides, so that in cross sec­tion the prod­ucts are rec­tan­gu­lar or square in shape. The most wide­spread and used for con­struc­tion as a wall mate­r­i­al are prod­ucts with a sec­tion of 150x150 and 150x200 mm. After saw­ing, they are dried under nat­ur­al con­di­tions for a short time to a cer­tain humid­i­ty, which can be called “nat­ur­al”. The mois­ture lev­el of the prod­ucts then plays an impor­tant role in the behav­ior of the mate­r­i­al in the con­struc­tion of the walls of the erect­ed build­ing. This is due to the fact that walls made of wood­en mate­ri­als with nat­ur­al mois­ture shrink, which is why it is nec­es­sary to take a long tech­no­log­i­cal break in con­struc­tion.

Profiled timber

Pro­filed tim­ber is a prod­uct of high­er tech­no­log­i­cal pro­cess­ing com­pared to mas­sive tim­ber. Prod­ucts are obtained by saw­ing logs, plan­ing, grind­ing and sub­se­quent cut­ting on the upper and low­er sides of the recess­es, which, when lay­ing the crowns of the walls, will form tongue and groove joints. At the same time, there are sev­er­al types of pro­fil­ing for locks: “under insu­la­tion”, “with one spike”, “with two spikes”, “comb”. In addi­tion, the sides can be par­al­lel or with a D‑shaped out­er side, which allows you to sim­u­late the walls of a log cab­in. Man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce pro­filed tim­ber up to 200 mm high and up to 320 mm wide.

It can be dried, which is car­ried out in spe­cial dry­ing cham­bers, or nat­ur­al humid­i­ty. The price of dried mate­r­i­al sig­nif­i­cant­ly exceeds the price of prod­ucts with nat­ur­al mois­ture.

Some man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce cus­tom-made “house kits” from pro­filed tim­ber — that is, sets of ele­ments for a spe­cif­ic project, which can only be deliv­ered and assem­bled on site in accor­dance with the wiring dia­gram.

Glued laminated timber

The man­u­fac­tur­ing process of glued beams con­sists of many oper­a­tions. First, select­ed wood is dried in dry­ing cham­bers to a mois­ture con­tent that cor­re­sponds to the mois­ture con­tent of fur­ni­ture wood. Then they are cut into lamel­las — boards of a cer­tain thick­ness, they are treat­ed with fire-retar­dant com­pounds and glued togeth­er with spe­cial envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly glue. After that, the result­ing blanks are cut to length, planed and pro­filed, form­ing pro­tru­sions and recess­es for lock­ing joints on the work­ing sur­faces. The main advan­tage of glued beams over oth­er vari­eties of such prod­ucts is low humid­i­ty, which allows you to build walls with­out a tech­no­log­i­cal break for wood shrink­age.

Planed log

A planed log is obtained by remov­ing the bark and par­tial­ly remov­ing the upper pro­tec­tive lay­er of wood from a nat­ur­al log using an elec­tric plan­er. At the same time, such a prop­er­ty of a nat­ur­al log as slope is pre­served — a decrease in the diam­e­ter of the trunk in the direc­tion from the butt to the top, which caus­es dif­fi­cul­ties when lay­ing crowns. Vio­la­tion of the pro­tec­tive lay­er leads to the fact that the wood becomes more sus­cep­ti­ble to adverse fac­tors — mois­ture, dam­age by path­o­gen­ic microor­gan­isms, so the log after plan­ing must imme­di­ate­ly be treat­ed with an anti­sep­tic. At the same time, the wood remains with nat­ur­al mois­ture, so the shrink­age of the erect­ed log house is inevitable.

scraped log

A scraped log is obtained by man­u­al­ly remov­ing the upper lay­er of the bark with a spe­cial tool — a scraper, while the pro­tec­tive lay­er of the wood of the trunk is not dam­aged. The scraped log is much more durable than oth­er types, although there are dis­ad­van­tages such as runoff and nat­ur­al mois­ture.

rounded log

The round­ed log is made by pro­cess­ing on spe­cial wood­work­ing machines, result­ing in a prod­uct that has the same diam­e­ter along the entire length. That is, in this case, such a dis­ad­van­tage as run­away is com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ed. At the same time, man­u­fac­tur­ers, on request, can pro­duce house kits with prod­ucts in which bowls for cor­ner locks, grooves and recess­es for hor­i­zon­tal joints of crowns are already cut. How­ev­er, walls made of round­ed prod­ucts are also sub­ject to shrink­age, in addi­tion, the almost com­plete removal of the pro­tec­tive lay­er dur­ing round­ing requires increased mea­sures to pro­tect wood from dam­age.

Table of advantages and disadvantages

The main differences between materials

The dif­fer­ences between a log and a bar are as fol­lows:

1. cross-sec­tion­al shape: the beam is rec­tan­gu­lar, the sec­tion of the log is round;

2. tim­ber con­struc­tion is eas­i­er, does not require high qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Tim­ber con­struc­tion requires spe­cial car­pen­try skills;

3. when build­ing from a log, repeat­ed caulk­ing of joints and grind­ing of logs is nec­es­sary, which is not nec­es­sary when build­ing from a bar;

4. a log is more expen­sive than any kind of tim­ber.

How are the materials similar?

The sim­i­lar­i­ty of mate­ri­als is as fol­lows:

1. both mate­ri­als are made from nat­ur­al, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly wood, which ensures the cre­ation of a healthy micro­cli­mate in the premis­es;

2. the con­struc­tion of walls is car­ried out in a sim­i­lar way — the suc­ces­sive erec­tion of crowns;

3. walls con­struct­ed from both mate­ri­als are sub­ject to shrink­age (except for walls made of glued beams), which requires a tech­no­log­i­cal break in con­struc­tion, which can last from six months or more;

4. walls made of wood­en mate­ri­als do not require the con­struc­tion of a pow­er­ful foun­da­tion, due to their rel­a­tive­ly low weight com­pared to brick or con­crete.

Con­clu­sions: If we com­pare a log and a beam in terms of suit­abil­i­ty for the con­struc­tion of a bath, then it is impos­si­ble to unam­bigu­ous­ly answer which mate­r­i­al is more suit­able. Each of these mate­ri­als is pre­sent­ed in sev­er­al vari­eties, which have their own advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, while the mate­ri­als have more sim­i­lar­i­ties than dif­fer­ences. There­fore, the choice should be made based on your own pref­er­ences: require­ments for appear­ance, assess­ment of labor inten­si­ty and com­plex­i­ty of work, con­struc­tion time and finan­cial capa­bil­i­ties.