6 ms·

It would be pretty interesting to see super fast growing Douglas Fir used to crank out mass timber.

• codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
  Supply-side solution to housing problem?
  • ch4s3 4y ago
    No, mass timber is just already cheaper than steel and concrete for some buildings so it seems like an interesting avenue for greening up some construction on the cheap.
  • kube-system 4y ago
    The housing supply issue is: available land in desirable locations with water and power. Materials in North America are cheap: https://homenation.com/home/mhe-mansion-mini https://homenation.com/home/mhe-mansion-mini
    • nine_k 4y ago
      Sometimes it's not even the land, but a permission to build something sufficiently large on it. Perverse tax incentives may also prevent development of perfectly good, prized land: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/5/whats-with-that-empty-lot-in-the-heart-of-the-city https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/5/whats-with-that...
      • kube-system 4y ago
        Right, I meant "available" in a broad sense.
• wombat_trouble 4y ago
  We're already harvesting less than we can or should, essentially for political reasons. faster-growing varieties on the loose seem like a way to make the PNW even more flammable.
• refuse 4y ago
  We've already got super trees (genetically improved). These are selectively bred trees, not GMOs; stuff that gets super site-specific, like 'north side of a hill within 100ft of a stream'. IIRC Weyerhauser pioneered the work in this area...I want to say back in the 60s. They've reduced the time from planting to harvest substantially, something like ~80 years to ~30, and the new stuff is just growing faster. The main problem is that the growth rings get huge, the lumber is technically stronger, but it's much denser and not well suited for all applications. If you look at old growth, you see sub-mm growth rings in Doug fir, and it's very light. Super trees can be quite substantial, like 1/8 to 1/4 inch. I've heard they burn hotter and more readily too. In my personal experience, old growth will burn all night in your stove but the younger stuff won't last half as long. Been a while since I've poked my nose into forestry, I've probably got some of the details wrong but that's the gist of it anyway.
  • robbiep 4y ago
    I think you have the new = denser, old = lighter backwards? Old growth is denser, new growth is lighter
    • refuse 4y ago
      I seem to recall the fatter growth rings they put in on spring/summer increasing the density of the wood. You could be right though, I'm having trouble finding it on Google tbh. The main thing is that the wood quality is different because they want to maximize quantity over quality.
      • RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
        it's absolutely the other way. the dense rot resistant wood from older forests was basically mined away by companies, like wyerehauser and others, over the previous 3 centuries.
        • ipcress_file 4y ago
          My 100-year-old house in British Columbia was built entirely of Douglas Fir. At this point, you can barely pound a nail into the studs and joists. The density is incredible. New lumber feels insubstantial in comparison.
• fasthands9 4y ago
  I think the real awesome tech would be if you could get super fast growing hardwoods, like Walnut. By boardfoot something like Walnut may be 10x the price of pine. Pine has a lot of good attributes but the main one is that it is cheap and plentiful. I'd imagine if higher quality woods could ever be grown as rapidly then youd get some interesting new construction materials. Or, at the very least, you could get Ikea style furniture but of super high quality wood instead of particle board.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • eropple 4y ago
    Walnut isn't difficult to source because it grows slowly, though it doesn't grow fast; a walnut tree can grow upwards of a foot a year given good conditions. The problem is that most varieties of walnut are scraggly and actually getting decent boards out of them is difficult.
    • walnutclosefarm 4y ago
      North American Black Walnut, when grown in it's preferred conditions, is anything but scraggly. Getting good, straight timber from it isn't hard, but it does take good soil, rainfall, and time - from nut to harvestable high quality timber takes something on the order of a human lifetime. Walnut is basically a weed on my farm - I cut down 25 as saplings for every one I leave to grow to maturity - as it's preferred habitat is in colonizing grassy and weedy areas, where it's huge seed, and rapid growth as a young tree, allow it to get ahead of and above weeds, brush, and many other hardwood species.
      • eropple 4y ago
        Getting good straight timber from black walnut (or most walnuts) is absolutely doable (as evidenced by...us doing it for centuries!). At the same time it's more difficult than you're giving it credit for, though--"its preferred conditions" is a really load-bearing statement! It's not just soil and rainfall, though those of course matter a lot--as I understand it the biggest blocker to quality American walnut production is spacing. Those huge walnut trees have space to grow, and walnut trees grown under natural conditions tend to fight for sunlight. When they grow in natural distributions, they do tend to be thinner and have odd kinks in the trunk. Like you say, they're scrub trees. You can make them not be them, but it's work! Contrast this to other hardwoods like maples or (most) oaks, which don't really care much about being relatively tightly packed. Silviculture is very much about strategizing how to grow trees in effective ways to get the outcomes you describe, and it's pretty fascinating stuff.
• Haga 4y ago
  [dead]