We are building a vacation log home in Northwestern North Carolina. We will only be spending a few months there each year (mostly in the summer.) What type of heating system is best for this type of use?
Please give us some more information regarding your log cabin. You plan on living there only a few months a year in the summer, so I'm thinking that you'll want air conditioning.
Is the log cabin going to be open on the inside or will it be framed into seperate rooms?
Is this cabin going to be on a cement slab, over a crawspace/basement, or over a garage?
Is the cabin secluded or will you have close neighbors?
Will someone be maintaining the cabin for you when you're not there?
Answers to the above questions will at least give the rest of us an idea of what you're looking for from a HVAC system.
Sorry it took so long to answer--I was out of town. Yes, we will want AC. The cabin will be framed into rooms. There will be one large room in the center for kitchen/dining/family. On one side there will be two bedrooms with a center bath. On the other will be the master bedroom and master bath. There will be a small pantry and laundry off of the kitchen end. It will be over an unfinished walkout basement. Neighbors are not too far off, but we would like for it to be OK on it's own without checking. I have heard that it is not good to completely turn the heat off in the winter. Is that true?
From the above information that you've supplied to us, I would recommend a normal forced air system. I would suggest you look at a air-to-air source heat pump system (minimum of 13 SEER and along with R-410A refrigerant) with a gas furnace as an auxillary heat source. This would be the most economical way to heat and cool your log cabin. I would locate the furnace in the unfinished basement and design the ductwork to be around the perimeter of the cabin and place the returns high on the inside walls. This recommendation is based on having enough available space in the unfinshed basement.
Have a quality contractor (i.e. not the cheapest guy you can find) perform a load calculation and design a ductwork system based off of ACCA-Manual D Duct design principles. This might cost you more, but its definitely worth it! I would search www.natex.org or www.acca.org to find several local contrators and have them all give you proposals on doing this project for you.
P.S. - Just a note of caution - I would stick to a HVAC company that does both residential service and installation (heavy on the service part) so that incase there ever would be a problem, the company can be quick to respond.
