Caulking/Chinking

Caulking a log home is essential to ensure your home has a good seal.   This tight seal will reduce energy costs and keep insects, critters and water from penetrating your home and doing damage to your logs and wood exterior. Caulking should be applied to corners, butt joints, upward facing checks, gaps around windows/doors and any carpenter bee holes.   What are “checks”?  Checks are cracks in the wood.   These checks are natural and should not be a concern to the homeowner unless they run into a window or door jam or they are upward facing where water can accumulate and lead to rot.  In these instances, we recommend that they are caulked.

Some log home systems call for caulking or chinking to be applied between each log course.   How do you know which system should be applied?  As a general rule, if the gap between the log courses is ¾ of an inch or less, you should use caulk.   If it is larger than ¾ of an inch, chinking should be applied.  Both of these systems are designed to withstand the movement of your log home as the logs shrink and home settles.