by Web Editor | Oct 24, 2018 | News
From October 21-27, 2018, we celebrate the value of America’s forests and recognize how vital they are to our well-being and national prosperity during National Forest Products Week. This week is recognized each year by a Presidential proclamation. At the USDA Forest Service, we work year round to create new opportunities for wood products that contribute to diversified rural economies and support sustainable forest management.
By supporting forest products markets, we have the opportunity to create safer communities by reducing wildfire risk, supporting rural economic development, and contributing to a more sustainable building sector. The Forest Service is working to develop the U.S. market for cross-laminated timber, or CLT, and other mass timber technologies.
CLT is a made from several layers of dried lumber boards stacked in alternating directions, glued and pressed to form rectangular panels. These panels have exceptional strength and stability and can be used as floors, walls and roofs in building construction, replacing or used along with traditional building materials such as concrete and steel. In fact, the International Code Council is examining whether or not tall wood buildings up to 18 stories will be included in the 2021 International Building Code. A final decision will be made later this year.
The state of Oregon has already adopted the proposed provisions for the International Code Council under its Statewide Alternate Method, and Washington State legislation already embraces mass timber construction. The U.S. Department of Defense is already using CLT in some of its on-base housing because of the incredible resiliency of the materials and their resistance to explosive forces.
We are on the precipice of major momentum in the marketplace with mass timber, with four factories in production, including two making architectural grade CLT; five factories coming online (either under construction or just completed); and three more factories recently announced in eight states. Compounded with the upcoming code decisions, we expect to see many more mass timber and CLT buildings in the near future.
From the USDA: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2018/10/22/forest-service-celebrates-cross-laminated-timber-during-forest-products-week
by Web Editor | Aug 22, 2018 | News
Wood Construction Pushes Forward On Both Sides Of The Border
Mass timber construction is making waves on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, but factors in each country mean a different pace of progress.
The state of Washington is rapidly moving forward on both green construction and use of advanced wood products, but Washington State Department of Commerce forest products sector lead Brian Hatfield said the state isn’t necessarily ahead of its Canadian neighbor. “In some ways, British Columbia is ahead of us in terms of low carbon building materials,” he said.
In 2017, the Washington State Department of Enterprise Services oversaw a pilot project that built 20 kindergarten through Grade 3 classrooms using cross-laminated timber (CLT) in five school district sites in Washington. “We had a pilot district for five school districts, all single-story schools, and those have gone pretty well. They went up quickly and everyone was impressed,” Hatfield said.
The state’s 2016 supplemental capital budget included $5.5 million for the pilot project, which also measures the efficiencies of using engineered wood products through the construction process.
While Washington is taking steps to increase wood use in construction, the Province of British Columbia has pushed for mass timber and wood-focused design for the previous decade. In 2009, the Province of British Columbia put the Wood First Act into practice, which requires provincially funded projects to use wood as a primary construction material. The B.C. building code was also modified in 2009 to allow for wood buildings of up to six stories.
From Journal Of Commerce: canada.constructconnect.com.
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by Web Editor | Aug 6, 2018 | News
The state legislature earlier this year called on the Washington State Building Code Council (WSBCC) to adopt rules for cross-laminated timber (CLT) use when building residential and commercial buildings. The move represents ongoing efforts to bring CLT into mainstream use for residential and commercial construction, which would create commercial value for the small-diameter trees that are contributing to poor forestland health in Washington state.
For state and federal officials, as well as private stakeholders, that change could hasten restoration work by making tree thinning a profitable endeavor rather than a costly project requiring government funding.
The potential CLT offers was articulated by U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Vicki Christiansen at the 2018 Pacific NorthWest Economic Region Summit in Spokane on July 24. “We can use new opportunities for forest product delivery to help us to improve forest conditions, while also creating jobs and sustaining rural communities. We can implement these new practices by working together and being a good neighbor.”
Forest Service Region 6 covers Washington and Oregon and includes 28 percent of all forestland across Washington. In recent years the federal agency has struggled to conduct forest health work due to “fire borrowing” in which those portions of its budget are used to pay for the high cost of firefighting. During last year’s wildfire season USFS spent $2 billion on wildfire fighting, more than half its budget. There were 50 large fires on USFS land and over 411,000 acres burned, costing the agency $130 million. Over 90 percent of those fires were human-caused. In April, federal legislation sought to end the practice of fire-borrowing by allocating additional long-term funding to USFS to the tune of $2 billion starting in 2020.
A 2014 analysis by The Nature Conservancy and USFS concluded that half a million acres of forestland managed by the federal agency in Eastern Washington were in need of thinning and prescribed burns. Along with the new funding, Christiansen said that they can also “align our best practice policies and guidance with the changing markets that are certainly emerging in the Pacific Northwest.”
Read more on this from The Lens at https://thelens.news/2018/07/31/cross-laminated-timber-as-forest-management-strategy/.
by Web Editor | Mar 23, 2018 | News
Washington State legislators changed building codes in new legislation, a move expected to increase in the use of mass timber products in commercial and residential construction.
The Washington Forest Protection Association says the move will boost business for rural communities and forest landowners and will lead to an increase in the use of mass timber products in commercial and residential construction.
Mass timber products like cross-laminated timber (CLT) have been on the upswing in Washington in recent years, with Vaagen Brothers Lumber of Colville. Wash., and Katerra, a California company both announcing CLT factories in Eastern Washington. The material is increasingly being used in buildings around the state, according to the Washington Forest Products Association.
For Katerra, founded in 2015, CLT is an element in a broader strategy for resetting the building and construction industry. The company announced $865 million Series D funding round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund to fund its new plant in Washington, and it has already accumulated more than $1.3 billion in bookings for new construction, spanning the multi-family, student and senior housing, and hospitality sectors. It already has a fully operational manufacturing facility in Phoenix.
“The $12 trillion construction industry is extremely fragmented with tens of thousands of companies using minimal levels of technology. While labor-productivity growth has skyrocketed in the overall global economy, the construction industry has averaged only 1% annual productivity growth over the past two decades,” said Jeffrey Housenbold, managing partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers. New investors in Katerra’s latest the round include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), a private investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management LLC, Tavistock Group, Navitas Capital, DivcoWest, and others.
Read more on this from Woodworking Network at https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/washington-state-wil-revise-building-codes-okay-mass-timber.
by Web Editor | Jul 27, 2016 | News
Vancouver-based real estate developer PortLiving and world-renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban have unveiled plans for an upcoming hybrid timber structure said to be the tallest in the world. If so, this would mean it will be higher than other CLT wood structures, such as the 34-story design planned for Stockholm.
The residential high-rise Terrace house, which will be located in Vancouver’s Coal Harbor neighborhood, may set a new standard for urban luxury in design, sustainability and engineering innovation. The high-rise will feature a cross-laminated timber frame supported by a concrete and steel core. Wood for the project will be locally sourced from British Columbia, minimizing its carbon footprint.
Cross-laminated timber has been gaining popularity as of late, due to its lightness, sustainability, and ease of use. Planks of timber are glued and orientated at 90 degrees to each other, and are then crosslaid in layers. Those pieces are then shipped to construction sites and can be assembled by just a few workers, even for large buildings.
Its use in tall wooden buildings has also been growing. London, Stockholm, and Quebec are just a few of the cities who either already have large timber towers or have one in the works. Recent plans include a Swedish firm’s 436 ft. residential wood skyscraper in Stockholm, while a 12-story mixed wood high-rise is planned for construction in Portland, Oregon.
Building codes are being adjusted in Oregon and Washington State to permit the tall wood structures. But CLT hasn’t gone without opposition.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/canadian-high-rise-will-be-tallest-timber-structure-world?ss=news,news,woodworking_industry_news,news,almanac_market_data,news
