
The Surprisingly Innovative Future of Wood - curtis
http://gizmodo.com/these-gorgeous-buildings-showcase-the-surprisingly-inno-1757398349
======
jacquesm
I've been looking for an hour for an image to post here, it is a end-on view
of the long bell sawmill log drying facility. The logs are so large that it
takes a while to realize the scale of the image, the people are tiny compared
with the logs. Just a few hundred years ago large parts of the US and Canada
were covered with forests of giant white pine and other trees that are now a
rarity. With 'giant' I really mean giant, logs 5 meters or more in diameter
were not exceptional. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate the image,
the closest that I've found is this one, which gives you a tiny little taste
of what was lost:

[https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/8c/1f/a68c1f38c...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/8c/1f/a68c1f38c9af15985248f63ae895a516.jpg)

~~~
dredmorbius
Not sure if this is what you had in mind:

[http://www.ralonghistoricalsociety.org/images/mill2.jpg](http://www.ralonghistoricalsociety.org/images/mill2.jpg)

[http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/media/uploads/O-A_Lumber_C...](http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/media/uploads/O-A_Lumber_Co_long_side_carriage.jpeg)

[http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/rick_marty/_...](http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/rick_marty/_forumfiles/miscpicts/IMG_0002.jpg)

[https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0c/4d/0f/0c4d0f8c2...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0c/4d/0f/0c4d0f8c24785eb4ce5725eb2ab6f540.jpg)

[https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/236x/01/2d/23/012d232fb...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/236x/01/2d/23/012d232fb83981a4fdb697de80cf6ae6.jpg)

[http://www.american-rails.com/images/Log_Car.jpg](http://www.american-
rails.com/images/Log_Car.jpg)

~~~
jacquesm
I'm going to have to find that image now, just to show you the scale of it.
Thanks for finding these!

------
cmsmith
The wood technology mentioned in the article isn't particularly new, but has
certainly been getting more attention recently in the push towards more
sustainable construction practices. In the bay area, most new mid-rise (3-8
story) residential construction goes up as a concrete pedestal parking garage
with a wood structure on top - wood has a great strength/weight ratio and so
reduces the earthquake forces you have to design for.

The biggest issue in going taller and to other occupancy types is fire.
Buildings over a certain height (related to the height of fire truck ladders)
are designed to burn out entire floors completely[1] without collapsing[2].
This is easier with steel and concrete, which lose strength at temperature but
don't actually add fuel to the fire. What's been found more recently is that
if you put the right additives in engineered wood products and make it a
stocky enough shape then the wood will burn itself out even in a very large
fire. But that information is new, and building codes are necessarily
conservative. These things can also get awfully political, considering that
there are separate trade organizations for the wood, concrete, and steel
industry who all have a vote and want the code to say that their material is
the safest.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Meridian_Plaza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Meridian_Plaza)

[2] [http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/03/11/san-francisco-mission-
ba...](http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/03/11/san-francisco-mission-bay-fire-
lessons-learned)

------
shaneofalltrad
I wonder if this is a good or a bad thing. When it becomes mainstream and the
process becomes common and cheap, will every building use this process? If so,
how do we sustain it and be competitive. We could do everything to grow new
stock, but poor countries can use slash/burn techniques to win contracts on
wood stock. It would continue the deforestation's we are already seeing. I
would like to see local wood farmers who are doing it right, lobby for laws
that make this movement a green path as well, then I am all in.

~~~
jessriedel
World forest coverage has almost stablized, and is increasing in wealthier
countries. Presumably, it will finish turning around in the next decade or so
as developing countries become less poor.

Wood that is grown, cut, and then used in a way that resists decomposition
contributes as a non-negligible carbon sink.

~~~
pedalpete
Have you got a source for this? My understand is that it may have slowed, but
we are yet to reverse hectares lost per year.

~~~
jessriedel
That's what I mean by "almost stabilized". Global forest coverage is still
decreasing, but at a rate that is clearly slowing. And since we see that
coverage increases in rich countries, we tentatively conclude that the rate of
global decrease will not equilibriate at some negative value, but rather will
continue flattening and then turn upward as poor countries become rich.
Furthermore, the low point of this process is not particularly bad; it forms a
trough that bottoms out at ~4% decrease compared to current levels.

This is the best I could find:

[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS/countries...](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS/countries?display=graph)

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matiketo
Wood is such a great material and seems to be making a comeback of sorts all
over the place. Recent big bestseller nook in Norway/Sweden was about
chopping, drying and stacking firewood: [http://www.amazon.com/Norwegian-Wood-
Chopping-Stacking-Scand...](http://www.amazon.com/Norwegian-Wood-Chopping-
Stacking-Scandinavian/dp/1419717987)

------
spyder
I was curious about the fire-resistance and found these videos:

Cross laminated timber barbecue (loud music!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbvxQDTfhzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbvxQDTfhzk)

CLT fire performance testing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRIPQ_q2iyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRIPQ_q2iyY)

------
nobody_nowhere
Mind was blown first time I learned that gluing wood together along the grain
is often as strong a bond as the wood itself.

~~~
Gravityloss
Yes, but it's heavier.

Also it's a moisture barrier. This could cause problems for buildings in the
long run (100 years).

~~~
wishinghand
Why is that? I don't know anything about wood in construction.

~~~
Gravityloss
If wood gets wet, it's not necessarily a disaster, as it can be dried. But if
there's a moisture barrier surrounding it, it might never dry. Think about a
log is wrapped in plastic. Moist wood will be eaten by mold.

During a house's long lifetime, it's likely that there are problems and some
structure gets to experience some moisture at some point. It should be able to
recover.

A friend told that a house expert had a quote.

"There's two kinds of houses: 'if' houses and 'despite' houses."

The 'if' houses stay in shape if everything works correctly. The 'despite'
houses stay in shape despite there being occasional maintenance lapses. The
key takeaway is robustness to real life events.

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CydeWeys
Those photos of wooden architecture are absolutely beautiful. I'd love to live
in a house that looked like that. It's even environmentally friendly so long
as you're only using farmed wood, and there's no reason you wouldn't when
you're using engineered wood products.

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creeble
A friend just turned me on to acetylated wood:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylated_wood](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylated_wood)

A supposedly more eco-friendly way to make (e.g, ground-contact) wood rot-
resistant. Sure beats cyanide, methinks.

~~~
worik
Do you want to live in a building soaked in acetic anhydride?

~~~
Bluestrike2
Compared to some of the alternatives? And it doesn't really matter. You don't
really use treated lumber indoors, and you don't really have direct contact
with it to begin with.

~~~
worik
People _do_ use treated timber indoors, all the time.

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pmorici
Anyone have any idea about the safety of the chemicals and adhesives they use
to make these things? I'm curious if the glue will last indefinitely and more
importantly if we aren't going to find out in 50 years that the stuff they
treat all this wood with is killing us like seems to happen with so many
things.

------
RamshackleJ
American forestry and wood products is a national treasure. It really does
embody what sustainable use of natural resources should be.

Shout out to any one working for/with the forest service. keep it up!

------
zck
I wonder how much "thinner" the building can look. If other kinds of support
need to be covered, that adds thickness to walls, supports, and pillars. If
the wood doesn't need to be covered, would the buildings look noticeably
leaner?

------
quietplatypus
Haven't people (e.g. Japanese) been doing this for thousands of years?

~~~
VLM
Its a peculiarly composite article in that the first half is about the cool
advantages of several new technologies that conceptually boil down to
extremely high quality and strength bulk plywood, so you can have a 12 inch
structural beam that's 40 feet long, etc. This is new technology and it
usually takes building codes awhile to accept new technology. Every line of a
building code was written on a stack of dead bodies, changing codes is a very
serious business.

The second half of the article is completely unrelated, just interior
decorating fashion is going thru its periodic fascination with finished wood
a-la knotty pine wall paneling mancaves in the 1970s. There's nothing wrong
with it although all those interior finishes could be done with veneer on
metal or various faux processes having nothing to do with the first half of
the article.

~~~
officialchicken
> This is new technology and it usually takes building codes awhile to accept
> new technology

You just need a UL rating (or UL assembly rating) to integrate new technology
into your building... you can look it up in the IBC. Usually manufacturers are
required to UL rate their building products. The only time I've had a client
willing to pay for it was one who wanted to do a building made of shipping
containers they had for free and that was at least 10 years ago. The
containers were never tested, but UL was able to supply enough docs to satisfy
the reviewers prior to permitting.

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amelius
I wonder what some of the outdoor applications of wood look like after, say,
5-10 years.

~~~
pavlov
There are wooden churches in Norway that date from the 12th century:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stave_church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stave_church)

That's as harsh a climate as any. A 500-year-old wooden building can look
better than the average 50-year-old concrete building.

~~~
cardamomo
It's important to keep in mind with very old wooden structures such as these
that they are often rebuilt over the centuries, plank by plank, as it were.

From the Wikipedia entry you cited:

> A very important problem in dating the churches is that the solid ground
> sills are the construction elements most likely to have the outer parts of
> the log still preserved. Yet they are the most susceptible to humidity, and
> as people back then reused building parts, the church may have been rebuilt
> several times. If so, a dendrochronological dating may be based upon a log
> from a later reconstruction.

