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Well that low a R value kills the idea for me. Dead in the water. No point having a log home, then putting up studs and drywall inside to get the R value up. I am not one of these people that care much about kerb appeal. I dont live outside the home i live inside it and especially in winter. So having nice log finish outside meh whats the point if the inside has to be insulated somehow.
Heh, don't bail out quite so quick Rob The values we're talking about here are nominal for the wall only and don't take into account the rest of the building which can make a huge difference. Also 6" log walls are (imho) on the shy thin side. Once you get up to 16" or so you're competitive with 2x6 with fiberglass - without taking into account the thermal mass effect of the logs (which - using exceedingly handwavey numbers puts it closer to 14" average log size to be competitive).
A couple of interesting articles on log efficiency:
https://www.uaf.edu/files/ces/publications-db/catalog/eeh/EEM-00852.pdf
http://www.logbuilding.org/RValueLogs.pdf <- this one has some nice comparisons of the different wood types.
This paper is claiming I'm all washed up as well - which is probably true to some extent although I'd take what they say in general with a wee grain of salt given that its part marketing:
http://www.findhomesincharlottesville.com/energy-efficient.asp
The claim is basically that thinner logs are cheaper and it takes to long to pay back the cost of thicker logs based on cost/therm of heating. That is most likely true and is similar to the argument around window replacements (price/month for heating vs that $20k window replacement has how long of a payback period? Yeah.. fixing the weather stripping and maybe adding storm windows starts to look pretty good).