A house from the North, with a warm atmosphere
How KONTIO homes come to be — from Nordic pine, through a non-settling structure, to "just in time" manufacturing at a Finnish factory near the Arctic Circle.
KONTIO log homes
KONTIO's roots run deep into the Nordic forests, in a land where Nordic pine, thousands of lakes, and a harsh yet beautiful landscape of hot summers and extremely cold winters exist in balanced symbiosis. These conditions give the wood properties that are unique for building log homes. Did you know the name KONTIO also comes from the forest? In Finnish folklore, it's the name given to the king of the forest — the bear :-)
Honest wood is our synonym
Today the term "timber home" mostly refers to houses with a prefabricated sandwich-panel structure. KONTIO log homes belong to this broader "timber home" category too, but they're proud to have walls of honest, solid wood — a modern log home built the traditional way. This sheer amount of wood shapes not just the look of the house, but its indoor climate too. Modern log homes don't look much like the log cabins our ancestors lived in. Today's log homes are built from solid-wood, glue-laminated beams, and can look either traditional or thoroughly modern.
A thoughtfully engineered structure
The timber beams are joined partly by shaped (milled) joints, a defining feature of log homes, and partly by wooden dowels that ensure stability and precision. On top of that, hidden steel threaded rods running the full height of the structure reinforce the corners and other sections at regular intervals. It's typical for a log home to settle by roughly 2.5% over the first two years, and the structure is designed with this in mind. One solution, for instance, is expansion gaps above windows and doors, fitted to slide — all hidden behind trim and panelling so the design isn't disturbed. These structural features let the building move and settle as needed, without creating tension or cracks in the wood. You can move in right after completion — there's no need to wait for the structure to settle. Only after the first year or two of living in the log home do we fine-tune the structure using the threaded rods and other structural elements, to achieve the best possible result and outstanding airtightness.
We build "just in time"
Every KONTIO home is manufactured "just in time" in Finland, at a factory near the Arctic Circle — around 2,300 homes leave it for destinations around the world every year. Once an order comes in, the house is designed, manufactured, packed, and shipped to its destination on a set date. There, the log home is assembled for the first time, which takes about 6–8 weeks. The entire process, from felling the tree, through machining and drying the beams, to shipping the finished house, is automated and remarkably precise.
No trace left behind
The wood itself, the main building material, is 100% renewable and leaves no carbon footprint at all — meaning the balance of CO2 absorbed and released over the home's life cycle comes out at zero. Beams of solid Arctic pine are remarkably tough against the weather and effectively regulate humidity and temperature indoors. Indoor humidity sits within the ideal range of 35–50%. An environment like that doesn't favour mould, viruses or bacteria, which is very good news for the people living there. Thanks to the excellent thermal-mass properties of solid wood, the home maintains optimal temperature conditions in both summer and winter.
Want to talk through your log house?
Tell us about your plot and vision — we'll talk through the options and send a rough estimate.