What role does waterproofing of the first log row play in a handcrafted wooden house, a bathhouse made of two-edged cant, round logs or even milled timber, or a frame house? Structurally, because of their very nature, the walls of a wooden house built from round logs and two-edged cant as well as a frame house have certain hygroscopic properties. They absorb and emit moisture depending on the outer coatings that were applied to wood, and do it with different intensity; in other words - they breathe. It is these wood properties that make a microclimate of rooms in a wooden house, bathhouse or cottage unique. In certain conditions this quality can be a disadvantage. If it is not allows to dry out properly, the wood begins to rot.
Excess moisture, which can cause and contribute to the process of decay, simply flows downwards from the vertical walls of a wooden house, but it a completely different situation in the area, where the walls of a wooden house connect to the horizontal plane of the house foundation. Moisture accumulates on the foundation, and the wood that lies at the base of a round-log or two-edged cant house or a frame house, that is, its first row of logs, is constantly exposed to this moisture. Waterproofing is used in order to isolate wood from a concrete base; due to its physical and chemical properties it not only serves as an obstacle to excessive moisture, but also prevents the reproduction of putrefactive bacteria and fungi in areas, where the wooden walls connect with the concrete foundation.
In addition to waterproofing, it is possible to use wood that is resistant to negative influences, for example larch, for the first row of logs in a log house. The well-known properties of larch will not allow the second and subsequent log rows of your wooden house or bathhouse as well as the bottom log row of a frame house, to collapse. It is rather expensive to build an entire house from larch, but conversely, it can be quite beneficial to make the first row of logs from this material in a log house or a frame house. In future, you will save substantially on very difficult repairs to your log house if the first log row decays.
In our company, to additional to all of the above-mentioned methods used to protect a wooden house from harmful effects, we always make special anti-drop kerfs and cuts, so that water drops flowing vertically along the surface of the walls do not get under the bottom log rog, between the log and the foundation. Many construction workers disregard such details, but in line with our construction standards we try to take into account all the minutiae, which have been accumulated by generations of craftsmen and tested over thousands of years.