9 ms·

For the people saying "fire!"... Wood went out of fashion because of urban fires, resource (natural forest) depletion and long term maintenance (rot, termites.

• Fricken 8y ago
  > There is also, alongside the environmental and economic, an aesthetic-psychological case for wood cities. Clare Farrow, who is co-curating a current London exhibit called “Timber Rising–Vertical Visions for the Cities of Tomorrow,” wrote in Dezeen, Studies are showing that the presence, scent and touch of wood can have remarkably positive effects, not only on people’s wellbeing in a general sense, but more specifically on stress levels, blood pressure, communication, learning and healing.” A 2015 review in Wood Science and Technology supports her claims and also suggests that “specific aspects of wood such as colour, quantity, and grain pattern should be examined" Of course, I don't need a study to tell me that wood is nice.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
    You probably shouldn't be smelling or touching the wood frame of your home. If you do, there is a bad problem with your drywall.
    • Fricken 8y ago
      Here, just take a look at this Google image search for cross-laminated timber architecture, it'll help you guys to make comments that aren't so ill informed and off-base: https://www.google.ca/search?biw=1919&bih=947&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=DZ-8W5j8CMiG0wLg-qaQBg&q=cross+laminated+timber+architecture&oq=cross+laminated+timber+architecture&gs_l=img.3..0.15211.17212.0.17423.13.6.0.7.7.0.85.477.6.6.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.13.487...35i39k1j0i67k1j0i24k1.0.G7W5yRYk6dE#imgrc=_ https://www.google.ca/search?biw=1919&bih=947&tbm=isch&sa=1&...
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • mr_overalls 8y ago
        This reminds me of how beautiful properly-crafted wood can be, as well as functional. I'm reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright's & the Prairie School's emphasis on working "honestly" with materials.
    • EADGBE 8y ago
      You're generalizing. In my part of the States, EVERY home has a basement. That basement is usually unfinished. They'll leave exposed framing on half-walls and walk-outs. It's up to the buyer to determine whether more livable space is necessary (and therefor drywall).
  • kijin 8y ago
    You can easily achieve the same effect by adding wood panels to visible parts of the interior. No need to build the entire thing with wood.
    • theandrewbailey 8y ago
      Retro! I'm surprised that plastering every wall with wood paneling isn't a bigger thing with hipsters. (or is it and I haven't noticed?)
• simtel20 8y ago
  I recall talk recently about a shortage of sand appropriate for creating cement. It seems that this compressed wood turns that potential shortage into an opportunity.
  • jessaustin 8y ago
    Talk of sand shortages anywhere but in extremely remote and non-sandy locations is ridiculous. Sand is among the cheapest materials on earth. If it ever became difficult to procure, the price would rise.
    • rrego 8y ago
      Except that the price has risen. Easily procurable sand (typically from river beds) is being depleted, and no the desert sand isn't any good for construction. https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-threat-to-u-s-oil-drillers-the-rocketing-price-of-sand-1490266800 https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-threat-to-u-s-oil-drille... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPS1321 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPS1321
      • jessaustin 8y ago
        The price has risen slowly and steadily for decades? And it's still the cheapest commodity around? I don't see the problem...
  • Retra 8y ago
    Plenty of sand in the Sahara, last I checked.
    • DanBC 8y ago
      Concrete doesn't need "sand", it needs "sharp sand". You get sharp sand from river beds. You don't get it from deserts. The wind erosion causes round grains, and those are not useful for concrete.
      • 8y ago
• awkward 8y ago
  Using wood for building is a carbon sequestering process. Compare it to using cement, a process that massively releases carbon.
  • jessaustin 8y ago
    This is great; another way for warming enthusiasts to put their money where their mouths are. We should see new wooden cities just as soon as they sell their properties in Manhattan and Miami...
    • aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
      Hehe, don’t hold your breath!
      • jessaustin 8y ago
        Declarations of "whataboutism" incoming, I'm sure. "You can't use my investment decisions to impeach my religious beliefs!"
    • nerdponx 8y ago
      Most people who have the opportunity to build their own homes build them out of wood. It's not like I as a "warming enthusiast" can start rebuilding parts of Manhattan. Even if you are a property owner in New York City, it's unlikely that you will actually rebuild the buildings on your property.
      • jessaustin 8y ago
        Anyone who believes the predictions has already sold her property in NYC. Perhaps now she is buying up soon-to-be-farmed tundra? In any case we wouldn't expect much new development to occur at elevations near sea level. I'm not sure why people are unhappy to hear about this new opportunity to simultaneously profit from their knowledge and improve society's organization through their investment signals.
• fulafel 8y ago
  What about surviving fires without structural weakening? An average apartment building has to endure many fires over its lifetime. (Maybe it's a nonproblem and you can replace the damaged wood easily, or the fires don't typically do permanent damage, i don't know.)
  • leetcrew 8y ago
    as a layman, i assume that our wood techniques are not yet at the level where you can use it for twin tower scale buildings, but this raises an interesting question for me anyway. if such a building had all its structural elements made of wood, would it be likely to suffer the same catastrophic weakening in the event of a 767 strike?
    • miemo 8y ago
      ever played jenga?
  • nusq 8y ago
    Actually timber has a nice property of loosing strength gradually and slowly in case of fire, giving time for people to escape. Steel and concrete reinforced structures tend to collapse when a certain temperature is reached.
    • fjsolwmv 8y ago
      Steel and concrete buildings need a huge amount of time to get fires spread enough and hot enough to collapse, except in freak catastrophes like jet plane crashes.
      • wahern 8y ago
        It's a well known and not uncommon failure mode: https://youtu.be/8XMTALBYRNA?t=40 https://youtu.be/8XMTALBYRNA?t=40 https://youtu.be/LB9wwTmrMYA?t=15 https://youtu.be/LB9wwTmrMYA?t=15 Fireproofing steel beams has been practiced since the 1950s. (https://www.asbestos.com/products/fireproofing-fire-prevention-materials https://www.asbestos.com/products/fireproofing-fire-preventi...)
• senorjazz 8y ago
  > Generally, it's a bit of a solution searching for a problem. err, the little something called the environment?
• roel_v 8y ago
  Modern wood for building storied buildings is not like 'wood' people think about when they hear the word. It's a laminated material, the strenght of which very much depend on cutting edge expoxy technology. I don't know how environmentally friendly it is, but this is not a log cabin we're talking about.
  • jaclaz 8y ago
    Yep, and it's not like "modern" glues/resins have been proved to last for centuries and/or be totally harmless for the humans living in the houses. Think of formaldehyde based glues (widely used): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea-formaldehyde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea-formaldehyde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea-formaldehyde#Health_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea-formaldehyde#Health_conce...
• Tharkun 8y ago
  > Imo.. what is missing are clear advantages, a reason to bother. There are quite a few actual advantages. Speed of construction is one. The ability to prefabricate large elements (like entire walls) off site is another. In some areas of the world there's a lot of cheap excess timber after some kind of pest (I'm thinking a beetle?) killed entire forests. It insulates really well out of the box, especially when it comes to noise insulation. Wooden buildings are more earthquake resistant than stone/concrete. There's also quite a number of disadvantages with concrete. Lack of sand. Implication climate change. Requires rebar reinforcements which ups the price and turns the whole thing into a giant radiator. CLT is a pretty awesome building material, really.
  • escape_goat 8y ago
    > In some areas of the world there's a lot of cheap excess timber after some kind of pest (I'm thinking a beetle?) killed entire forests. Dead wood isn't even useful as firewood. You can't just pick dead trees up off the forest floor and saw them up into lumber. Even if you could, no government would let you transport that timber out of the immediate vicinity in which it was found, due to the aforementioned pest. Perhaps there is a surplus of cheap excess timber in some areas of the world, but there isn't much chance of that having anything to do with any kind of pest.
    • hutzlibu 8y ago
      "Dead wood isn't even useful as firewood" Sure it is. You mean degraded, rotten dead wood .. but "fresh" dead wood is firewood.
      • escape_goat 8y ago
        That's a fair distinction to make. When a tree is killed by a pest such as the emerald ash borer, it dies because the boreholes allow fungus and bacteria into the core of the tree. By the time the tree is visibly dead, very little of the wood is 'fresh'. It cannot be used as lumber, or even firewood.
    • Tharkun 8y ago
• nerdponx 8y ago
  Who knows, maybe the sand shortage will get severe, driving concrete prices up to the point where people start looking for alternatives.
• bliblah 8y ago
  How about natural disasters such as hurricanes in the east, earthquakes in the west and flooding elsewhere? I'm not a structural engineer so I would like to know if there are some possibilities here that I may not be seeing.
  • peterwwillis 8y ago
    Pick a building material, you can construct it with modern methods to resist natural disaster. Even wooden homes can resist hurricanes and earthquakes now. The biggest concern for wood is still fire, but we have much better ways to manage it and make the wood fire-resistant.
• tangue 8y ago
  > Imo.. what is missing are clear advantages, a reason to bother. Sand depletion [0], recyclability [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-global-sand-crisis-180964815/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-g...
• repolfx 8y ago
  A lot of people are saying sand shortage, but surely weight savings matter more? If your building is 6x lighter your foundations can presumably be a lot cheaper?
  • logfromblammo 8y ago
    In that case, you should be comparing engineered wood with concrete that includes basalt fiber composite rebar [0] and weight-cutting aggregates like expanded polystyrene beads [1] and loose (basalt|carbon|glass) fiber. In small-building construction, a no-steel concrete wall could be just 2 inches thick where steel-concrete building code might mandate minimum 8 inches just to prevent swelling rebar from destroying the wall from the inside. Also, basalt rebar is trivially bendable, so curved shells can add strength from geometry where straight steel rebar would be limited to using rollers to bend every bar to the correct curvature or to use doubly ruled surfaces like one-sheet hyperboloids and hyperbolic parabolas. And more non-sand aggregate means sand shortage has less impact, right? There are a lot of ways to save weight on buildings, but not all of them translate well to building codes that can be used by building contractors without having a staff engineer on site to determine whether the equations work out to acceptable structural strength or not. And all the building codes out there for wood are going to be for standard dimension lumber, and not specific types of engineered wood. Until the codes are updated, the building inspector will look at your cross-laminated composite wood beams, look them up in his book, and tell you that your plans don't conform to code. Not to mention that once your houses are light enough to blow away in a strong wind, now you need to anchor them to the ground with cables and hooks, and wind forces and the stresses at the anchor points become a whole new engineering problem. Cities aren't going to be made of "wood". They'll have to be made of ANSI/ISO-standard-X-conformant structural members and ANSI/ISO-standard-Y-conformant processes. We'll get there. Slowly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_polystyrene_concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_polystyrene_concrete
• briffle 8y ago
  When wood burns (at least CLT Beams) it has a much longer time until failure than steel. When steel gets hot, it quickly loses its structural strength, and can collapse.