In a recent blog shared here by ohliz she pictured a new modular log home that sprang up at Old Wharf. In her words:"All due respect to the owner of this home and his/her personal taste, but I can't think of a more out-of-place or impractical beach home than this."

From an initial view, the home does seem to suggest the associations with log homes as suited to colder climates/regions. Their thick cellular, interlocking wood structure promising cozy warmth for the interiors, and a strength of materials, and an air-tightness in the context of a woodsy, rugged setting.

This design does not seem to speak to conventional, vernacular images of an airy, breezy lightness or a tropical colour palette to stand up to an equatorial sun.

While design-building timber post & beam in the northern US state of Maine, the operative principle was to design for the harshest conditions, which was to retain heat for the interior in freezing weather, rather than the opposite in tropical climates, which is to retard heat and blocking the sun's rays penetrating the outer skin of the house as long as possible, while inducing the movement of cooling breezes through louvering, cross ventilation, roof vents, overhead fans, passively through landscaping filters etc.

There was a little "trinity" of design prompts, while designing in colder climates that is modulated as you move down to the warmer latitudes, and proportions relationships among:
• Mass (the insulating value of the building envelope, roughly concerned with thickness/density of materials)

• Glass (daylighting; controlling solar gain for hotter climates vs inviting winter's low angle rays to interiors for warmth in colder climes, while constructing sufficient resistance (double/triple panes) to help ward off the night cold.

• Siting (A south-facing orientation, if that's the case with all that fixed glass exposure on the "Front" facade of the Old Wharf home suggests that, if unmitigated with shading devices, is subject to the longest duration of the sun's rays.

This 1950 square feet modular, log home at Old Wharf was built for Paolo and Tia Del Grande next to their existing home from a newer design out of the portfolio of Strongwood Log Homes, headquartered in Wisconsin (US).

The "delivered" price was approximately US$120,000, excluding the cost of the trained local building crew.
It is admirable how quickly the kit of parts were assembled on its site, and the attention to details, especially in joinery (nice furniture-quality butterfly butt-joint), hidden electricals, caulking...

Paolo & Tia also represent the manufacturers here in Treasure Beach and Jamaica, and an obvious friendly "performance" question that might be asked of them:
How much "shading" does the minimally extended roof, beyond the pediment, provide for that large expanse of glass there?
And, because there appears to be quite a bit of "fixed" panes of glass, rather than "operable", is there much heat build-up within such a well-insulated building envelope, requiring air conditioning to beat back the "heat gain"?

The Siting of Paolo's & Tia's home so close to the breezes off Old Wharf beach seems to beg for a natural design mechanism for cooling. It's perhaps no accident that in ohliz blog, Sally Henzell's elevated home, and louvered purple facade facing the sea, is pictured above the log home as a finely-tuned vernacular exemplar.


Building A Log Home in Treasure Beach
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq9CuYuEwCg

Stronghold Log Home Portfolio:
www.gostrongwood.com

Stronghold Log Home Owner/Rep Treasure Beach
Paolo & Tia Del Grande delgrandepaolo@gmail.com

Glad my beach observations provide some discussion here. I'd be curious about how the log home handles heat as well.