How to dry a wooden house after construction? Expert advice

According to the technological recommendations, during the construction of a wooden house, a break is needed between the moment of completion of the construction of the main box and finishing work. It is necessary in order for the walls and ceilings to shrink, which is inevitable when wood dries. The length of this break depends on the material used in the construction, as well as on how the drying is carried out …

Regardless of the type of building material and even with proper preparation of the tree, the assembled log house will still shrink over time. In some cases, the change in geometry can reach 100 mm, which a priori excludes the possibility of carrying out both external and internal finishing. Decorative coatings will crack, and installed windows and doors will deform.

The recommended shrinkage period under natural conditions is from six months to one and a half years, depending on the type of material used. During this period, you can carry out a lot of other work, for example, the arrangement of heating, insulation, installation of a blind area, external communications and landscaping. At the same time, the home can be helped to dry out based on its original characteristics.

How to dry different wooden houses?

There are three main types of materials used in the construction of modern wooden houses:

• rounded log;
• profiled timber;
• wireframe technology.

Each of the options has its own characteristics of shrinkage, respectively, and its drying occurs in different ways.

• Houses made of profiled timber. The timber is also dried by the manufacturer, but usually this is not enough, and in order to minimize the shrinkage time, the moisture content of the wood should be brought to less than 12%. This can be done even before construction, by allowing the material to dry naturally, or using convection chambers. The main thing here is not to forget to carefully treat the timber and the finished structure with antiseptic compounds, and already six months after assembly, you can install the windows and doors and carry out the finishing.
• Houses made of rounded logs. The initial humidity and the serious volume of individual elements make the drying of a log house the longest possible. If you arrange ventilation and wait for the frame to dry on its own, it will take too long, however, reliably. But you can help the house. To do this, a strapping of metal plates is installed on the walls from above and below and a voltage of up to 36 volts is applied to it. Remember that the positive contact goes to the top circuit and requires careful fire safety monitoring. But instead of 1-1.5 years, drying in this way will take several months.

In the described options, a prerequisite for the adequacy of the drying process of a wooden house after construction is the observance of the temperature regime. It is necessary that the temperature outside and inside the house is approximately the same. It is advisable to completely abandon heating furnaces and using household heating appliances, since a large difference in degrees at the time of drying leads to cracking of the material.