![]() They built a house that was 112,000 square feet in Colorado, and a recent build in Russia involved shipping 80 containers full of logs overseas. “There is a spirit there.”Ībout 60% of Pioneer’s customer base is Canadian but they’ve had some pretty epic builds abroad. As a builder, who works with a tree from hand peeling to construction and installation, he says it’s always rather emotional when you revisit a client’s home years later and get to check in on that tree. Peter says you can tell by the size of the tree what type of house it would be good in. That’s the good part about the industry is that it’s renewable,” Beat says. ![]() “I want my children’s children to be able to build log homes too. They also produce 60 truckloads of bark, chips and sawdust per year and incinerates the waste to produce electricity. To date, they have planted over 1.5 million trees. The guys tell me that they get so much out of one single log from peeling to the last touches, and everything gets used.įor each tree they harvest, Pioneer plants seven more. They have a very strict commitment to sustainability, and follow green procedures from start to finish. Pioneer works with Western Red Cedar, mostly, from up and down the Pacific Northwest Coast and Vancouver Island. Its bark was grey but Joel says that when it’s cleaned up it will be a rich, dark red.Ī photo posted by Rebecca Bollwitt on at 1:05pm PDT “ These trees are Mother Nature’s fine art, and the three of us are privileged to work with them,” Peter told me as we walked around a 1,000 year old tree that was as tall as me, as it lay on its side. The air was thick with the smell of cedar, an aroma that I revelled in but the guys said they tend to get tired of. Some individual trees lay out on their own, like twisted ancient cedars that have been deemed unfit for the logging industry, which are the most prized pieces around. The trio walked my group around the expansive site, where groves of trees lie horizontally stacked, each needing to dry out for an entire year before it can be used in a home. Beat is based at a second location, north of the city. Peter and Joel work at the Sugar Cane site, where our tour took place, just south of Williams Lake along highway 97. Peter Arnold, Joel Roorda, and Beat Schwaller all bring decades of experience to Pioneer - Joel alone having been with the company over 20 years - and all have stories to tell about their dream job, crafting and building log homes for clients around the world. They have 120 employees working at three construction yards and one office. Pioneer has been around for 40 years and has become the largest builder of handcrafted log homes in the world. I was recently passing through Williams Lake on a workshop tour, about 6 hours north of Vancouver, and I was invited to meet with some of the stars of the show on their home turf. Each tree on the Pioneer Log Homes Sugar Cane site in Williams Lake has a personality, and story to tell, just like the stars of the hit HGTV show, Timber Kings.
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