This month, we sat down and chatted with Brett Youngstrom from Yellowstone Log Homes via Zoom to learn more about his family’s story—how they started building log homes, why they got involved with the IMTA, and where he thinks the future of log homes is headed. Below, you can read the transcript, or watch the 15-minute full-length interview.
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Brett: Hi, my name is Brett Youngstrom. I’m a third-generation member of the Yellowstone Log Homes team. My grandfather, Louis Youngstrom, 1962 started building or milling and manufacturing logs for log homes. That transitioned over time to where my father and my uncle were also interested in doing the same thing, so he helped them get started at the location we’re at now. It was Youngstrom log homes initially, and then, over time, we brought his milling equipment here at our location in Rigby, Idaho.
Yellowstone Log Homes officially started at this location in 1976, but we’ve been building log homes as a family since 1962. I work here. I have a daughter who’s worked here, nephews, lots of cousins, a couple of brothers, and uncles.
So it’s a lot of family involvement, but there are a lot of workers here that we consider family and have been with us for a long time. It’s, I guess I worked before, as I was in high school, and then I went to college for a few years, and then for the last 22 years, I’ve been here pretty much full time and just trying to help contribute to the business and help things grow and kind of roll with the punches as things have ebbed and flowed.
Sarah: That’s awesome. What’s your role there?
Brett: I’m officially our office manager, but a lot of what I do is sales and IT.
Oh, nice. Your Uncle David said you had worked there since you were a kid.
Yeah, as a real little kid, I’d have had plan books and various flyers and things like that. That’s probably the earliest thing I remember doing: stuffing papers in books to get ready to send those out so people could have floor plans to decide from.
Sarah: That’s really cool. Some kids have paper routes, but you’re getting sales experience early.
Brett: I guess so. Yeah, I didn’t ever see it that way when I was a kid. I just thought it was fun sticking pages in books and making a big stack of them and getting to go to lunch with Dad sometimes. So I liked that.
Sarah: Why did you get involved with the IMTA, and why did you donate?
Brett: A big part of our involvement was our history with Rob Pickett; we worked with him for about 40 years. So, in the log home industry, he’s pretty respected, and with his name there, we were interested in joining in on it. But a big part of things is that we’re hopeful that the log home systems can become more popular through testing and other things like that. Again, there’s a lot simpler back when there wasn’t the necessity for as much documentation in some regions in the country, but we know they’re energy efficient. We wish that the world understood that, too.
Sarah: I agree. And what kind of challenges have you faced over the years since you’ve been in it for 22 years? How has building changed over those years? And with the building codes and requirements.
Brett: Where we’re at in our local market, it hasn’t made a huge difference. The biggest differences of what we see is with engineering. It seems like every year, the snow must be getting heavier because they’re asking for bigger beams. And things like that.
Log homes are just a little more expensive to build because larger logs are required today than before to support snow loads. But in some parts of the country where we’re interested in shipping logs, you get into the res check and things like that, and the question often comes up about how to log. Homes fit in with this where the R-value isn’t necessarily a fair reading of energy efficiency as it translates to the log.
Sarah: Can you go more into R-value, for some people that might not know? I think about it with Windows, right too, because I used to work for a window company, but it’s kind of different when measuring the thermal mass performance of logs.
Brett: R-value measures the ability of the building material to reflect heat, whereas logs are not going to reflect heat so much as absorb it and store that energy and then be able to release that after the heating system turns off or the cooling system. And so, since log homes don’t reflect heat as much, they will be more absorbent. It’s hard if you’re running only off of that, but things like U value and thermal mass benefits, I think they’re starting to gain a little more traction, and we’re hopeful that these new tests will show that in a more measurable way that people can get their heads around.
Sarah: How will the testing, when they prove it, how will that help your business?
Brett: It’ll get the ball rolling to where legislation can change because that’s a big part of it. There are some parts of the country where it flat out. If there’s no data there, they will have a hard time approving it. But some parts of the country are still very log-home friendly, and in those areas, it’ll just help keep them that way. We don’t want to lose traction in those areas.
Sarah: Is there a difference between different regions in the US? Are some more log-home-friendly than others?
Brett: I feel like the Rocky Mountains, for the most part, are pretty friendly. Colorado seems to be starting to become more difficult, and so I’m concerned about Colorado. We we’d love to do a lot more log homes there, but it’s becoming more challenging there. Utah is pretty friendly. Idaho and Montana, Wyoming, they’re pretty friendly, still in the cold weather areas, that’s what we see. But you get out to like Michigan and those regions, we send homes there, but we should be sending more homes there. Part of the difficulty is just the changes in codes and the way those are interpreted.
Sarah: Yeah, how do you guys find out about codes, like when they pop up?
Brett: We have dealers that are all across the country, so a lot of times. The first we’ll hear from is from a dealer, who tells us they’re running into this difficulty, and we try to help them move through that. But we’re, we’re not in all states. It’s, it’s hard for us to have a presence in all regions where we’re here in the Rocky Mountains, it’s where we’re able to travel a little bit, and we can go to meetings and try to have some influence in those but the further you get away from our location, we aren’t able to do much. We don’t know about those meetings, and we don’t have the manpower to attend them. Hopefully, lots of other members of the mass Timber Alliance are attending them and advocating for, better, better codes for the members.
Sarah: I know Rob is very busy, so he’s out there doing it.
Brett: Yeah, he informed us a lot. I think it was, it was probably about 10-12, years ago when codes, there were some energy codes that we ended up going to a lot of the surrounding states and going to meetings and pleading our case because we were afraid that it was going to have to be a 14-inch log or or it wasn’t going to work for a wall. And that’s a lot bigger than most people can afford. And there’s not a lot of logs that are there’s not enough logs that are that size to be able to do the number of houses we’d like to do.
Sarah: Okay, since the codes are the way they are, how do you adjust the building or the wall to meet those needs? Are you able to, or is it just bigger logs each time?
Brett: That’s been what our fear was, was just bigger logs each time. But we haven’t run into situations where we’ve had to increase the diameter logs drastically in personal projects. But I’m sure some parts of the country aren’t exemptions for log homes that allow something with a lesser R-value to still work. But generally, where we’re at an eight-inch log or bigger, you’re okay for almost anything in our surrounding states, but you get into some counties, and they do have to get bigger.
Sarah: How do you see the log industry evolving in the next five to ten years?
Brett: It’s a good question. I wish I had the crystal ball to answer that, but short-term rentals are growing in popularity, so a lot of the designs that people will be coming up with will be more short-term rental-friendly.
For a lot of people, that’s probably the only avenue that they could afford to get a log home in some of these resort areas, mainly because the costs of new construction tend to be pretty high. But if something’s short-term rental friendly, those are the designs that people will gravitate toward. But the people with enough money will still build whatever they’d like.
A lot of our clients have dreamed about owning a log home since they were children. So now, at 50-60 years old, they’re ready to retire, and they’re going to build what they’ve been dreaming about. And it’s fun to help people make that happen.
Sarah: That’s awesome. I’m a little jealous of those people, I have to admit.
Brett: It’s neat to see the joy that many people have once they get into the home of their dreams.
Sarah: How many homes do you guys build in a year, then?
Brett: We usually don’t have a construction crew that does the final assembly. We mostly just furnish the building materials. But we produce, depending on the year, between about 120 and 200 homes per year. Last year, we were probably closer to 120.
Sarah: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to add? Or anything about about Yellowstone log homes we should know?
Brett: We’re really proud as a family to be able to work in the log home industry. It’s something we’re all in love with, and we’veall grown up in log homes, and so we’ve been around them. It’s our passion. We would love to be doing it for another 63 years.
So, the IMTA will be vital to helping codes stay in the right direction. Unfortunately, that’s what is required to help the government move. The direction you want it to go is to get more lobbying and more data.
Sarah: Having that data really helps to build your case. Even though we all know log homes are efficient, we need the numbers.
BrettYeah, we’re a pretty niche industry. It’d be awesome to see it become larger like it was—it was bigger back in the 80s and early 90s. But homes are far more complex today, and it’s fun to see the creativity, too. But we miss the good old days when it was really, really busy, yeah.