Alot of people have given differing opinions on this,

Is it a good idea, hopefully when my paperwork goes through, this will be a possibility,
Anyone done it from scratch or have experience of using a company in Canada?

jon

When going through the process of deciding what type of house to build we considered a log home. Several factors counted against building one for us:

The build cost was considerably higher compared to other construction techniques.
Ongoing maintenance was more onerous and costly.
Insurance cover was costlier.
Each log acts as a shelf for dust - we live in a dusty, arid area and the prospect of having yards and yards of dust to keep removing wasn't very appealing.

Amongst other companies we talked in depth to http://www.nevilogcanada.com/Information/ who were very helpful, and honest about the advantages and disadvantages of log home building.

We tried that route, we couldn't understand at first why there weren't more log built houses, after all most people in England when they hear the word "Canada" think of log cabins and lakes, plenty of wood lying around is there not?

Wrong. When we were looking at BC to live we looked into building one of those places and got brochures and so on. The cost was prohibitive and there were various other things we hadn't considered at the time. Not for us in the end, although if you've got loads of spare cash (a million?) and a nice bit of land with views to die for...

Our house cost c$225 s/ft, whereas a log home built to the same standard would have been c$280 s/ft. Thats about $150,000 more expensive.

I have to agree with R I C H on that one... It's not something we ever considered before buying our log home, but wow do those logs collect the dust in no time at all! It wouldn't have put me off buying the place, but it's probably something worth being aware of if you're a bit of a clean freak...whereas we've now just learnt to ignore the dust until our boys start drawing in it!