by Web Editor | Jan 29, 2018 | News
New mass timber products are becoming more widespread and encouraging builders, designers, and engineers to search for the best applications for mass timber initiatives. A few of the mass timber building products available today include:
• Cross-laminated timber
• Nail-laminated timber
• Glue-laminated timber
• Dowel-laminated timber
As they test the capabilities of these materials, designers are looking to existing mass timber buildings around the world for examples and inspiration.
Canadian and European researchers and architects began experimenting with the design of mass timber buildings in the 1970s. European timber projects have shown that weight matters with structural systems, and mass timber structures weigh up to one-third as much as their concrete counterparts. This fact has made wood construction a viable prospect in places where building height and weight are limited, such as city utilities, subway tunnels, and underground rail yards.
Due to their lighter weight, mass timber buildings are more resilient in seismic zones. They carry less inertia, so the possibility of destructive swaying goes down. This approach was recently applied in the Brock Commons tower, an 18-story college residence designed for the University of British Columbia by Canadian firm Acton Ostry Architects.
The 173-foot-tall tower combines glue-laminated columns, cross-laminated timber floor slabs, dual concrete cores, and steel connectors. The cores help to counteract wind-generated and seismic forces while anchoring the mass timber building in place. It meets structural and fire-safety regulations by utilizing a specially designed set of interdependent finishes and building materials.
From CRL: https://c-r-l.com/content-hub/mass-timber-buildings-credibility/
by Web Editor | Oct 30, 2017 | News
Oregon and Southwest Washington are well-positioned to become a manufacturing hub for cross-laminated timber — an innovative building product sometimes called “plywood on steroids” — according to a new study prepared by Oregon BEST.
The 110-page analysis found Oregon has the potential to create 2,000 to 6,100 direct jobs making cross-laminated timber and related mass timber products, which use adhesives and layered wood to create massive panels used as walls, floors and roofs, or beams. Mid-rise office and residential buildings are now being made with CLT, providing a dramatically lower carbon footprint than buildings using concrete and steel. Some high-rise projects using CLT are in the works.
Studies show CLT also cuts costs, mostly because construction takes less time. That cost advantage is projected to grow. “The cost of wood as a building material and as the raw material for CLT is expected to stay stable in the near future, while concrete and steel prices are forecast to raise with their relative energy prices and carbon costs,” the report states.
Oregon BEST, which commissioned the study along with partners, is a state-supported nonprofit that works closely with academia to nurture the state’s clean-tech industry.
CLT was developed in Europe, and European and Canadian companies got into the field before their U.S. counterparts. But D.R. Johnson became the first U.S. company certified to manufacture CLT in 2015, and is making it at its Southern Oregon plant in Riddle.
From Sustainable Life: https://pamplinmedia.com/sl/376727-262480-plywood-on-steroids-holds-great-potential-for-oregon-economy-environment
by Web Editor | May 15, 2017 | News
Mass Timber: The Next Great Disruption Of Construction, Wood Products Industries
The seeds of Andrew Waugh’s great disruption were planted in 2003. “Back then, people were saying we could ‘fix’ climate change by putting a solar panel on top of everything we built,” he remembered. “But we knew that wasn’t even close to enough.”
So Waugh’s East London architectural firm started studying mass timber, knowing it was the truly renewable building material – albeit largely unknown and untested in large-scale developments. “We were entranced by the opportunities this new material could provide,” he said.
It took five years for Waugh Thistleton Architects to hone their ideas – “so we could talk about the economic benefits of this kind of building” – and to bring that vision to reality in the world’s first mass timber tower, Murray Grove. The nine-story apartment complex in London’s Hackney borough was made from cross-laminated timber manufactured by KLH, an Austrian company.
Spruce strips were stacked crosswise three layers thick and glued together, producing horizontal beams and vertical structural wall boards that were harder than steel or concrete, with none of the associated carbon loss. The economic savings came at the construction site. Murray Grove was built in 27 days by four men, without a tower crane.
Using wood saved 1,150 tons of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere – the equivalent of running a wind turbine on top of the building for 210 years. And 29 families moved into new homes in a country with an overwhelming housing shortage.
From Treesource: treesource.org.
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by Web Editor | May 8, 2017 | News
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative Inc. (SFI) announced today that SmartLam, LLC, is the first U.S. manufacturer of cross laminated timber (CLT) to be certified to the SFI 2015-2019 Chain-of-Custody Standard. SmartLam is also the first manufacturer to produce CLT in the U.S.
SmartLam manufactures CLT for a variety of applications, including floor, roof and wall systems. SFI’s Chain-of-Custody Standard helps companies address the growing demand from governments, customers, and consumers for responsibly sourced forest products.
CLT is the next-generation of engineered wood products. Extensively tested and already widely used in Europe, CLT has vast applications for construction, industrial matting and bridging. Architects and builders choose wood because it looks great, has numerous environmental characteristics – including renewability – and it’s easy to work with. In addition, trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, sequestering and storing the carbon while producing oxygen which reduces greenhouse gases and improves air quality.
“At SmartLam, we make CLT, but we like to tell our clients what we really sell is time. CLT increases construction speed and reduces a project’s cost and carbon footprint. Now, with certification to the SFI Chain-of-Custody Standard, we can also offer our clients supply chain assurance that our products are sourced from well-managed forests that are third-party certified to SFI’s rigorous standards,” said Casey Malmquist, President and General Manager at SmartLam.
SmartLam produces CLT at its Columbia Falls facility in Northwest Montana and is part of a global movement to use wood in tall buildings. Advances in technology are producing more engineered wood products and mass timber products that increase the capabilities of building with wood.
From PR Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smartlam-is-first-us-clt-manufacturer-to-earn-sfi-chain-of-custody-certification-300452619.html
by Web Editor | Nov 21, 2016 | News
WoodWorks, a proponent of large-scale wood construction in the U.S., launched an updated version of its free carbon calculator, adding more options for buildings made from cross-laminated timber (CLT) and other mass timber products. The addition reflects rising interest in large scale wood building construction.
WoodWorks, which receives finding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as timber companies and forest products manufacturers, promotes use of wood products as a means to store carbon, instead of building materials such as cement and steel that require fossil fuel energy to manufacture, a move that can help reduce greenhouse gases.
“The carbon calculator is a useful tool for building owners and designers who’d like to gain insight on the environmental value of alternate designs,” said Bill Parsons, Senior National Director of the Architectural & Engineering Solutions Team at WoodWorks. “It also provides information that allows them to express the carbon benefits of their wood building projects.”
To calculate the carbon benefits of a wood building, users access the carbon calculator at www.woodworks.org/carbon-calculator and enter nominal wood volume information. The calculator then estimates:
• How much time it takes U.S. and Canadian forests to grow that volume of wood
• The amount of carbon sequestered in the wood products, and
• Greenhouse gas emissions avoided by not using more fossil fuel-intensive materials.
• It also uses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator to equate the total carbon benefit to number of cars off the road and home operational energy.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/free-carbon-calculator-shows-how-much-co2-wood-construction-saves?ss=news,news,woodworking_industry_news,news,almanac_market_data,news
