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The Era of the Wood Skyscraper Is Arriving
- ttfxxcc 6y agoHow long until it burns down?
- sounds 6y agoIt still uses concrete, from the article.
- abdullahkhalids 6y agoWood used in these construction is usually treated with chemicals to improve its properties. What are the health effects of living in such buildings?
- hprotagonist 6y agoand how ungodly is it when it burns?
- fy20 6y agoWood can actually resist fires more than other building materials such as steel. Yes it does burn, but it also doesn't lose it's structural integrity when heated: https://youtu.be/G-J86Ka9MkQ https://youtu.be/G-J86Ka9MkQ
- baybal2 6y ago> Yes it does burn, but it also doesn't lose it's structural integrity when heated: It does, and by a lot. This is why wooden houses collapse during fires, and bury people trapped in them in a fiery grave.
- q_andrew 6y agoLaminated wood basically doesn't combust, so the fire hazard is comparable to most modern construction materials. Also, the way it's processed makes it extremely structurally sound.
- baybal2 6y agoExcuse me, but you were succesfully made to swallow the coolaid. No construction technique out there can make wood a safe construction material, no way, and no how. The wood still burns no matter how much fire retardant you soak in it, and it will inevitable rot, warp, and slip off fasteners. The vodoo cult of "wooden skyscrapers" is bizarre, and the way they slip past building regulations is even more. In BC, the wood lobby effectively managed to undo a fire safety testing for building materials, and rewrite a big part of fire code to make wooden skyscrapers possible.
- voisin 6y agoSource for any of your claims here?
- q_andrew 6y agoIn many situations, you are right. For instance, the five-over-ones being built in basically every city in the US exist because of a regulation loophole for building wooden structures (that constructing a fireproof barrier between two wooden structures allows you to build large, multi-story apartments with it). They are infamous for burning down during construction because they don't have sprinkler systems yet: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s-new-apartment-buildings-all-look-the-same https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-ameri... Cross-laminated timber has a "char layer" that keeps the other layers from burning through, and is even known for withstanding higher temperatures than steel: https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/crosslam-timber-fire-resistance-and-rating/ https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/crosslam-timber-...
- nate_meurer 6y agoThe most common fire retardant for wood framing is borate, which is slightly more toxic than table salt.
- rich_sasha 6y agoIt still amazes me that some of the best materials we can obtain have to be grown by living organisms, and cannot be synthesised. Lumber, leather, wool...
- CyberDildonics 6y agoThat would be fascinating it were true, but it isn't. Wood isn't the best material, it is the cheapest, because it is already made and just waiting to be harvested.
- m463 6y agoBalsa wood is pretty amazing. Took us a long time to come up with a good carbon fiber tech tree.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoBalsa wood is extremely fragile. > Took us a long time to come up with a good carbon fiber tech tree. I don't know what this is supposed to mean
- canadianfella 6y agoHe played civilization. Doesn’t mean much at all.
- m463 6y agoBalsa wood is extremely durable for its weight. > carbon fiber I think the "tech tree" of wood products has been around for hundreds of years. It's only been the last few decades where we have developed synthetic materials that were strong AND light. I would say carbon fiber and other composites have really only come into their element maybe since the 80's so with cost-insensitive projects like military jets.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
- parched 6y agoA couple of years ago a fairly large, multi-storey apartment building was put up in my town. It was constructed entirely of wood. While the roof was being finished, a worker who was putting in some overtime on a sunday accidentally started a small fire which quickly got out of control. It ended up taking the entire building out, costing millions of dollars, but thankfully no lives. Wood is great, but it does have downsides. I wouldn't like to see a real-life sequel to The Towering Inferno.
- khrbrt 6y agoWas it balloon timbered with plywood walls? I've seen those popping up quickly, and they look very flammable, with thin support frames and walls, and a high surface area to volume ratio. The wooden building in this article looks different, with much thicker wooden posts and flooring. The article said a test structure lasted four hours at 1000C temperature flames.
- redis_mlc 6y agoEngland just went through an unfortunate lesson in approved materials being used in apartment buildings that in fact were flammable (cladding.) I think they had 2 major fires as a result. Hopefully this isn't a repeat of that, but it sounds similar. Note the wikipedia article says it did not comply, but I've read other articles that said it did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
- SkyPuncher 6y agoWere the interiors in yet? My understanding is much of the fire rating comes from interior materials that protect the wood from fire.
- cwdegidio 6y agoWe had the same exact thing happen in Houston. The lot it sat on is now a big eye sore since, I assume, the owners of the building and insurance companies are probably still duking it out in court.
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- simonblack 6y agoThey've been around for hundreds (thousands?) of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagoda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagoda
- anonAndOn 6y agoThere should be a (738 CE) year on this article.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Ddai-ji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Ddai-ji
- aaron695 6y ago> What’s more, its material saved over 2,400 metric tons of carbon emissions. This is not true, part of that is a carbon sink "That stores an impressive 1,753 metric tons of carbon dioxide and avoids production of 679" It houses 400 people. The average person uses ~17 tonnes per year. The inhabitants using 6800 tonnes per year. People who live in units uses far less carbon than people who don't. So we don't want to save on carbon emissions making units, it's not a lot comparatively. We want to maximise on people living in units. We need to keep the prices down, make it liveable and make planning permissions easier. This is great for rich students, but we need all options, including tall concrete buildings.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI was hoping for some more information on the engineering behind these wooden structures. Primarily, how do they construct wooden columns and beams that are strong enough to bear the load.
- turtlebits 6y agoLook at glulam or lvl, which are both essentially veneer layers of wood glued together.
- airhead969 6y agoThe Era of the Wood Skycraper Termite Is Arriving. Other problems: - Fires - Humidity management: wood cracks if too dry, changes shape with humidity levels, and fails if too high - Variance in strength I don't think they thought this through. Steel is better. If I hear next "let's make skyscrapers out of rice paper," I'm going to think "The Onion."
- Doxin 6y agoTurns out that a wooden beam of the same dimensions as a steel beam tends to be safer in fires. Steel has a tendency to suddenly collapse, whereas with wood you've pretty much got a guaranteed minimum time until beams start burning through. Wood cracking turns out to not be much of an issue either because most of the cracking happens before installation: you can just not use the beams with the worst cracks. Even if beams do crack they do so lengthwise which doesn't affect their structural support much if at all. Steel is better in a lot of ways than wood, but simultaneously wood is better than steel in a lot of ways as well.
- yummypaint 6y agoI was a little surprised to see claims about being the worlds tallest and worlds first without any mention of Japanese architecture. There are some very tall wooden pagodas and structures in Japan that are over 1000 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji