100% wood tall buildings

[newforest]

not quite a tree-planting question, sorry. heavy forestry forums seem unlikely for me until I am laid up or something.

was reading about wood laminate construction in Europe. They are starting to build 10 story buildings, and even taller, 100% out of wood. they use some new pre-fab glued pieces technique...like plywood on another level. I guess there has been some of this in BC and the very first ones are just appearing in the USA.

the article mentioned that in Europe they use Spruce for this mostly. Does it have to be Spruce?

it was a nice ray of hope for the wood industry I thought. and a pure wood building stores more carbon than steel+concrete+a little bit of wood.

thought y'all might like to contemplate this.

[photocopy]

I can put in some info here:

In British Columbia, the BC Building Code has 2 sets of rules for wood buildings. Part 9 of the building code allows builders to build wood residential structures without static analysis of up to three stories. That being said, municipalities issuing building permits may require an engineers stamp for larger structures.

By using the Part 4 of the Building code there is technically no limit on size or type of structure, so long as the engineer can provide sufficient calculations and stamp the document as safe and meeting the parameters defined by limit states design. By stamping the building the engineer is effectively assuming liability for the next 50 years in the case of structural collapse.

Currently wood buildings are going up to about 5-6 floors in Canada. This year I had the pleasure of attending the Canadian Wood Design Conference in Victoria and there were some very interesting presentations from Europe. BC Minister of forests Pat Bell also dropped in for a surprise guest appearance and announced that the BC Provincial Government was planning on building the tallest all wood structure in north america in Prince George in the coming years. The plan is currently for a 10 floor research center somewhere in town.

The big problem with building tall structures out of wood is that wood swells and shrinks with temperature and humidity. On a 10 floor building, this could be 7-8 inches across the entire height of the building, so environmental controls for temperature and humidity are very important. I could see why using glulams would be popular in Europe, as lamination changes the structural properties of wood in shear and bending. The presenters from Sweden had some fabulous wood products that they told us about and the lunch was fantastic.

Here is a link to a Vancouver sun article about the wood innovation centre
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/ ... story.html

Here is a link to the Canadian Wood Council website which is chock full of interesting wood construction tidbits
http://www.cwc.ca/index.php/en/home

[photocopy]

As for whether or not the wood needs to be spruce, the species of wood doesnt really matter -- though all different types of wood have different structural properties and react differently to lamination.

[The_Bearslayer]

The Japanese have been building large wooden buildings for a couple of thousand years. The stability and strength of the structures depends more on the joints used and the direction of the grain than the type of wood. Many wooden buildings in Japan have been in continuous use for hundreds of years. It's easy to overhaul them and replace load-bearing components at intervals.

[TheHamsterizer]

Good old newforest... Don't give him a reason to pipe up, and he finds one anyways. Seriously, people... Who. Fucking. Cares.

edit: lots of metals have been used with great success to build tall buildings. Look up... well, most of the world.

[salbrecher]

Good old newforest... Don't give him a reason to pipe up, and he finds one anyways. Seriously, people... Who. Fucking. Cares.

edit: lots of metals have been used with great success to build tall buildings. Look up... well, most of the world.

People care because planting jobs depends on the state of the forestry industry. The forest industry depends on people buying and using wood. If initiatives such as Wood First Act (http://www.jti.gov.bc.ca/woodfirst/), which also promotes the use of wood in other countries buildings, lead to greater utilization of wood as a building material then it will benefit the people on this forum, be it planters, contractors or foresters.

[photocopy]

The Japanese have been building large wooden buildings for a couple of thousand years. The stability and strength of the structures depends more on the joints used and the direction of the grain than the type of wood. Many wooden buildings in Japan have been in continuous use for hundreds of years. It's easy to overhaul them and replace load-bearing components at intervals.

Its interesting that you mention this. I know when they used to build castles and stuff like that in europe, the king would employ a forester whose job it was to ensure that there would be sufficient treese (to supply beams) in close proximity to the castle every 200 years. Its an early example of infrastructure life cycle management.

[TheHamsterizer]

Good old newforest... Don't give him a reason to pipe up, and he finds one anyways. Seriously, people... Who. Fucking. Cares.

edit: lots of metals have been used with great success to build tall buildings. Look up... well, most of the world.

People care because planting jobs depends on the state of the forestry industry. The forest industry depends on people buying and using wood. If initiatives such as Wood First Act (http://www.jti.gov.bc.ca/woodfirst/), which also promotes the use of wood in other countries buildings, lead to greater utilization of wood as a building material then it will benefit the people on this forum, be it planters, contractors or foresters.

It's been a couple of months, and nobody has cared enough about this to say anything. Except for a guy that talked about building castles in Europe for some reason. I just thought I'd point that out. On topic though, shoving wood down people's throats seems like a dumb idea too. Most new buildings I see aren't log cabin skyscrapers. I've done some renovation work, and in almost all cases we ripped out the old wood and replaced it with metal or plastic. We made buildings out of wood when we didn't have anything better that wouldn't rot. Now we do, so...

[salbrecher]

The points below are from the link above that you obviously didn't look at. Keep on keeping on, thinking that wood buildings look like big log cabins... Funny how most steel buildings don't look like a Frigidair stainless steel fridge, weird eh?

1)Using wood can limit climate change due to the reduced energy required to create wood building products and through carbon storage in the wood itself. Every tonne of wood material used in construction saves about 5.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into
the atmosphere.

2)Wood is strong, lightweight and flexible. Wood building systems have been proven to be seismically safe.

3)Wood is organic, sustainable, natural, and renewable.

4)Wood requires less energy to manufacture than any other building material.

5)Wood is cost-effective and easily sourced locally. Building with wood supports our economy and local communities. Wood is visually appealing, warm and inviting.

6)Wood buildings are easy to renovate, expand and adapt to changing uses.

[mwainwright]

shoving wood down people's throats

ha!

[salbrecher]

Good old newforest... Don't give him a reason to pipe up, and he finds one anyways. Seriously, people... Who. Fucking. Cares.

edit: lots of metals have been used with great success to build tall buildings. Look up... well, most of the world.

People care because planting jobs depends on the state of the forestry industry. The forest industry depends on people buying and using wood. If initiatives such as Wood First Act (http://www.jti.gov.bc.ca/woodfirst/), which also promotes the use of wood in other countries buildings, lead to greater utilization of wood as a building material then it will benefit the people on this forum, be it planters, contractors or foresters.

It's been a couple of months, and nobody has cared enough about this to say anything. Except for a guy that talked about building castles in Europe for some reason. I just thought I'd point that out. On topic though, shoving wood down people's throats seems like a dumb idea too. Most new buildings I see aren't log cabin skyscrapers. I've done some renovation work, and in almost all cases we ripped out the old wood and replaced it with metal or plastic. We made buildings out of wood when we didn't have anything better that wouldn't rot. Now we do, so...

I'm not sure if you get news in your cave Hamster but here is an interesting and informative article called "Wooden Skyscrapers" from the Economist that was posted today on the benefits of building tall buildings with wood. I don't mean to shove wood down your throat as you are probably gagging on steel and concrete as I type.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/ ... -materials

[TheHamsterizer]

People care because planting jobs depends on the state of the forestry industry. The forest industry depends on people buying and using wood. If initiatives such as Wood First Act (http://www.jti.gov.bc.ca/woodfirst/), which also promotes the use of wood in other countries buildings, lead to greater utilization of wood as a building material then it will benefit the people on this forum, be it planters, contractors or foresters.[/quote]

It's been a couple of months, and nobody has cared enough about this to say anything. Except for a guy that talked about building castles in Europe for some reason. I just thought I'd point that out. On topic though, shoving wood down people's throats seems like a dumb idea too. Most new buildings I see aren't log cabin skyscrapers. I've done some renovation work, and in almost all cases we ripped out the old wood and replaced it with metal or plastic. We made buildings out of wood when we didn't have anything better that wouldn't rot. Now we do, so...

I'm not sure if you get news in your cave Hamster but here is an interesting and informative article called "Wooden Skyscrapers" from the Economist that was posted today on the benefits of building tall buildings with wood. I don't mean to shove wood down your throat as you are probably gagging on steel and concrete as I type.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/ ... -materials

With a condescending lead in like that, how could I NOT read the article? I didn't notice any benefits to using wood in that article, other than 'there's shitloads of it'. I have shitloads of used porn and empty king cans in my 'cave' right now, but that doesn't mean that any of it would be good in a sandwich, even though meat and bread is more expensive.

[salbrecher]

I didn't notice any benefits to using wood in that article, other than 'there's shitloads of it'.

You can lead a horse to water...

1) "Not only can the panels be made from BKP, hiding the worst-stained wood, they are actually robust, rigid and fire-resistant enough to replace the pre-fabricated concrete panels used in many commercial buildings."

2) "Using engineered wood for commercial construction could unlock 3 billion board feet of demand for BKP. It would also help to reduce the construction industry's reliance on concrete, which today accounts for around 5% of global carbon emissions."

[TheHamsterizer]

I didn't notice any benefits to using wood in that article, other than 'there's shitloads of it'.

You can lead a horse to water...

1) "Not only can the panels be made from BKP, hiding the worst-stained wood, they are actually robust, rigid and fire-resistant enough to replace the pre-fabricated concrete panels used in many commercial buildings."

2) "Using engineered wood for commercial construction could unlock 3 billion board feet of demand for BKP. It would also help to reduce the construction industry's reliance on concrete, which today accounts for around 5% of global carbon emissions."

fire resistant ENOUGH... COULD unlock 3 billion... HELP to reduce... All sounds pretty desperate to me.