Wood-Mizer LT15 Sawmill and MP100 Log Planer at Work with Log Homes in Czech
By Wood-Mizer, Europe
For Hanis Log Homes in the Czech Republic, log home construction is a big business. Employing more than 50 craftsmen and producing more log homes each year, the company specialises in custom home designs that truly showcase the natural beauty of natural wood.
Common in Scandinavian countries, Eastern Europe, and North America, log homes are growing in popularity in other areas of the world for their natural appearance, energy efficiency, and fresh aroma and warm atmosphere. After building his own timber frame home in the 1990s, company founder Pavel Hanis began receiving inquiries to build similar projects for other people in the area. He started the company officially in 1999, and since then, the company has built more than 500 timber frame homes and log homes throughout the Czech Republic.
The company works with clients, first meeting and discussing possibilities, layouts, and budgets, and then moving on to developing a 3D model of the finished house. This allows their clients to really see what the final project will look like. Once a project is approved, the house is manufactured in their production hall, where typically up to four houses are being assembled at the same time.
Once a log house frame is built, it is then disassembled and shipped to the client’s site, where it is rebuilt and finished. The final build takes 2-3 months before it is ready for the client to move into.
"We check on the house for the next four years to observe the process of natural shrinkage in the wood and continue to make small adjustments as the structure settles,” shares Petr Taufmann, production manager. “We have accumulated a lot of experience in wooden house construction and have developed building techniques that anticipate and minimise the effects of future shrinkage.”
A few years ago, the company added an LT15 Wood-Mizer sawmill to the production to make it easier to produce the long logs needed for their projects. The LT15 has several additional bed extensions, enabling it to cut logs up to 12 metres in length. They also added the MP100 Moulder/Planer attachment that shares the LT15 log bed. Once logs are sawn to the correct size, they do not have to be removed to a separate machine for planing or moulding into various profiles – the MP100 enables them to do it all in one place.
The LT15/MP100 combination is growing quite popular among log home builders, timber framers, and anyone supplying high quality beams for builders. By using Wood-Mizer’s own provided moulding knives, or other moulding profile knives, many different designs can be created in the surface in a beam or column.
Currently, Hanis Log Homes uses the LT15 sawmill and MP100 twenty hours each day, spanning two work shifts of 10 hours each. The company brings in logs harvested from local forests, and uses Wood-Mizer’s well-known DoubleHARD blades. The company also maintains their own blades with Wood-Mizer’s BMS250 CBN blade sharpener and BMT100 tooth setter.
More information: www.srubovedomy.cz