The roof goes on

Before the roof panels go in place, we need a ridge beam, which is supported on two 21' high fir logs.The top picture shows us hauling the logs onto a trailer using a come-along. We got five, of which 2 will support the roof over the front porch. That was a good morning's work.I peeled them at the site as shown in the second picture, and two posts were hoisted in place using the crane. In the lowest image, the ridge pole is placed on the log posts.

On day 30, the roof panels arrive.  They are unloaded in an hour or so, and the first panels on either side of the dormer the go up the same day. The fourth image below shows the dormer roof, which was put together from smaller panels on the ground. The come-alongs seen in the left of the image allow the tilt to be set so that the panel comes down with the same clearance everywhere. In the fifth image, it is being set in place. The sixth image shows a short log post being slipped in before the roof is shut.  All roof panels are in place on day 34. The last image shows the added on eaves. The 12" roof would be too thick to extend out as eaves, so we had to add on eaves built with 2 x 8s.

in the

So how are we doing with the cost and how does it compare with a more conventional house? The  wall and roof panels cost $33k, including the crane rental, sales tax and delivery. It took 3 men 8.5 days to put them up plus 2 days for the eave construction. Counting workers comp, social security, etc and the 8.4% sales tax, the labor costs for putting up the walls and roof were $6.2k. Total cost of the fully insulated shell is ~$40k. One of the contractors I interviewed priced out conventional framing and sips for this house. The labor would have cost ~$5k more, and the insulation would have cost $12k. The total cost was identical to within ~$2k.