by Web Editor | Mar 7, 2016 | News
DR Johnson Lumber Co., based in the small Oregon town of Riddle, is poised at the forefront of what could be a revolutionary use of wood as a building material in the Northwest.
Don R. Johnson founded the mill in 1951. Following his death in 2010, his daughters Valerie Johnson and Jodi Westbrooks decided they needed to move the millworks company in a new direction. Their father had been quick to jump on laminated beam products early on and the millworks had manufactured them for decades. Following the lead of their father’s eye for innovation, Valerie and Jodi decided to expand the mill’s manufacturing through a division called Riddle Laminators to include a new product they had heard about.
They have since invested millions of dollars in machinery that is allowing DR Johnson to become the first manufacturer in the country certified to produce cross-laminated timber panels – a new take on existing technology and products in the wood construction industry. What makes their product so progressive is the use of new-growth softwoods like Douglas fir to produce lighter, stronger, more flexible panels in sizes able to make the construction process much more efficient. They also offer a replacement to typical steel or concrete framing.
“We’re limited to 10-foot-by-32-foot panels because of transportation issues, but we can go larger if we need to,” said Todd Black, DR Johnson sales manager. “We have computer-controlled router systems that can pre-cut door and window openings, so the panels come prefabricated, labeled (for point of installation) and ready for immediate installation. Because they’re stronger and lighter than steel or concrete, we’re not limited to three or four stories as wood-frame construction would be.”
CLT is starting to capture attention in Portland. A 12-story structure under construction in the Pearl District will be the tallest all-wood building in the U.S. The technology has already been used successfully in Europe, where buildings up to 22 stories have been constructed with the same type of panels.
From DJC Oregon: https://djcoregon.com/news/2016/03/03/newsmakers-2016-dr-johnson-lumber-company/
by Web Editor | Feb 22, 2016 | News
Oregon wood researchers hope to bring a new type of engineered lumber to market after tests to make sure it meets state building codes. Oregon State University has been notified that it will receive a $447,000 grant from the federal Economic Development Administration for the testing of cross-laminated timber, or CLT.
The testing will allow the development of manufactured wood products that meet state building codes so the products can be approved for the construction of large buildings, said Geoff Huntington, director of strategic initiatives for OSU’s College of Forestry.
“Our objective is to make CLT and other innovative uses of mass timber products technically feasible, economically viable and accessible alternatives for architects and developers seeking to use Oregon products to meet growing consumer demand for healthy, sustainable buildings,” he said. Plans for Oregon’s first cross-laminated timber buildings already are on the drawing boards.
CLT is composed of large wooden panels made with hundreds of pieces of wood, typically 2-by-4s or 2-by-6s laid perpendicular and glued together, Huntington said. The wooden panels are large, ranging from 10-feet-by-20-feet to 20-feet-by-40-feet. They can be used for walls, ceilings and floors, typically in buildings several stories tall, he said.
The product has been used in multistory buildings in Europe and Canada for several years, but the engineered wood hasn’t been approved for construction purposes in the United States, Huntington said.
From The Register-Guard: https://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/34077270-75/oregon-researchers-tout-potential-of-new-manufactured-wood-in-building-industry.html.csp
by Web Editor | Feb 17, 2016 | News
A new kind of engineered lumber is being tested at the University of Maine. This new “plywood on steroids” could compete with other construction materials like concrete and steel, and this new industry may help add value back into Maine’s forests.
“It would be a new market, it would be a new factory, sort of like making furniture, except it’s really big pieces,” said Steve Shaler, director of the School of Forest Resources at UMaine.
The new market would be for cross laminated timber, an engineered plywood created and tested at the University of Maine. CLT is made with different types of wood from Maine’s forests. It’s then pressed into a strong construction material, ready to use at construction sites.
“They come out as large panels, solid panels with windows and door openings pre-cut, maybe utility locations pre-cut, and they’re swung into place and connected together and they go up very very quickly with very little cutting on site, very little waste on site,” said Bill Davids, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“This is for taller structures, four stories, 10, there are buildings now that are made out of wood that are 10 stories tall,” said Shaler. The blocks of spruce, pine and fir were stress tested and broken under 10,000 pounds of force, which is stronger than normal lumber, but lighter than other building materials like steel and concrete.
From WCSH 6 News: https://www.wcsh6.com/news/plywood-on-steroids-changes-lumber-industry/41656511
by Web Editor | Feb 10, 2016 | News
Last month we saw cross-laminated timbers installed at the Albina Yard project in Portland. It was the first use of U.S.-produced CLT in a building-wide structural system.
The first level of CLT (4,000 square feet) on Albina Yard went up in fewer than four hours. Last week, the second level was installed by a crew of seven in under two hours. Pretty remarkable, considering the contractor says it would have taken at least twice as many people two days or more to frame the same amount of floor space using traditional methods. Albina Yard is a four-story, 16,000-square-foot creative office project in north Portland. Besides its snazzy design by LEVER Architecture, the project is most notable for being tangible evidence that the U.S. CLT industry is officially off the ground.
There’s been a lot of buzz around CLT and mass timber in general over the past several months in Oregon and around the country — and rightly so. Besides drastically improved speed of construction (and the savings that go with that), mass timber offers significant environmental benefits. This includes tremendous carbon-storing capacity. Half the dry weight of wood is carbon. It got there when the trees were growing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That carbon remains locked up for as long as the wood remains in use (a nine-story wood structure in China is now 959 years old—nearly a millennium). The new trees planted to replace those that were harvested start the carbon cycle all over again.
According to a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation, Albina Yard, which is small by commercial construction standards, stores about 80.5 metric tons of carbon. That’s equivalent to offsetting 295 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
A larger Portland mass timber building, Clay Creative (60,000 square feet), stores more than 1 million pounds of carbon. Its total of 457.5 metric tons offsets 1,678 metric tons of CO2 emissions. “An additional 3,574 metric tons of CO2 emissions were avoided by using wood rather than concrete and steel,” says Dr. Jim Bowyer, an expert on the subject at Dovetail Partners, Inc.
From the Oregon Forest Resources Institute: https://oregonforests.org/blog/mass-timber-rising
by Web Editor | Jan 13, 2016 | News
The American Wood Council says the International Code Council (ICC) Board of Directors approval of the formation of a Tall Wood Building Ad Hoc Committee.
The committee will be made up of stakeholders, code officials and other interested parties. The committee will study tall wood construction and may develop code changes to be submitted for the 2021 International Building Code. Tall wood is an industry term to identify the use of cross laminated timber (CLT) and other heavy timber manufactured wood products in building heights greater than six stories.
“Other nations have already seen the benefits of tall wood construction – from the low carbon footprint, ease of construction and reduced construction time.
“Wood products are made from renewable resources found abundantly in North America. AWC petitioned ICC for creation of the committee to research the building science of tall wood buildings, and are pleased that it is moving forward. This is an important step toward the advancement of tall wood in the United States, a carbon-sequestering alternative in construction.”
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/tall-wood-building-committee-will-work-2021-global-building-codes
