Comment by melenaboija

Comment by melenaboija 5 days ago

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Ok, since I moved to the US from Europe a few years ago my perception of wood has changed a lot, especially for construction. Seeing this reinforces my view.

Wood lasts for fucking ever under the proper conditions. Old construction in Europe often only had the beams made of wood, and I always thought that was orders of magnitude more durable than wooden houses, like thousands of years vs decades. I don’t think that’s true anymore.

And this might be one of the few environmentally friendly decisions that Americans got better than Europeans, I guess. Wood is still prevalent in construction here, and as far as I know concrete and cement production are quite bad.

BTW, I’m a total ignorant about all this so just intuition and probably wrong

NoImmatureAdHom 5 days ago

It's not totally a "decision" on the part of the Americans to use a lot of wood in construction. It's just that America has tons of space, including space useful for growing Douglas Fir and Southern Yellow Pine, which then can be turned in to 2x4s and other construction lumber.

Most of Europe long ago exhausted easily accessible natural forest resources, and where it's not densely populated tends to prefer using land to do other stuff (like grow food). Hence, stone and concrete and similar materials in European construction.

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  • bdamm 5 days ago

    While some lumber production happens in the United States, most lumber is imported from Canada. That's because while the USA does have good tracts of land on which lumber is grown, Canada has much, much more. This is why you see "Made in Canada" stamped on quite a lot of plywood and plenty of timer used in residential construction.

    The part that I don't quite know how to make sense of is why Canadian producers seem to have a near monopoly on sandpaper products.

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    • jjk166 5 days ago

      The US imports about 30% of its lumber. Canada is the largest source of imported lumber, but it's still less than a quarter of all lumber consumed in the US. Surprisingly, the limit on US production is not trees but sawmill capacity.

      Sandpaper requires specific grades of corundum; Ontario happens to have several notable large deposits of extremely fit-for-purpose corundum. The Canadian deposits were also a conveniently close source for what would become America's largest abrasives products producer, 3M, after its attempt to mine corundum in Minnesota failed (3M stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company).

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  • tehjoker 5 days ago

    My understanding is the UK exhausted most of its old forests in the quest to smelt enough metal for a navy. Smelting is incredibly energy intensive...

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barbacoa 5 days ago

>concrete and cement production are quite bad.

Modern concrete construction uses iron rebar liberally. That means every concrete structure built today will crack and crumble in a few hundred years at most, as the iron absorbs oxygen, it swells from the rust. Which is a shame, roman concrete buildings without rebar will still be standing 1000s of years from now.

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  • foxglacier 5 days ago

    Roman construction was also much less efficient because they had no material (besides wood) capable of carrying load in tension. Rebar allows us to make cheap practical structures that are impossible with just concrete - roman style or not.

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    • bdamm 5 days ago

      It would be quite fascinating to see what kind of structure we could produce if we decided to make the longest lasting cement structures we could create with modern technology, and assuming minimal maintenance over the lifetime of the building. A one-and-done kind of structure.

      I bet we could do fairly well. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. We've learned a lot about how to form exceptionally long lasting cement. We just choose not to do it that way, most of the time.

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  • nashashmi 5 days ago

    How about petrified wood? Would that also crack and crumble in the long run?

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    • dredmorbius 2 days ago

      Petrified wood is stone. The stone matrix has formed around a wood structure, but the properties which remain are those of stone, not wood.

      Wood is a composite material, strong under both compression and tension. It's the fibres in wood (lignans) which provide the latter. Stone (and unreinforced concrete) lack such fibre elements, and are strong only under compression.

      With stone it's necessary to build compression structures such as arches and domes for heavy load-bearing, and taller structures must be significantly flared out at the base (or utilise buttresses, as with gothic cathedrals) for stability. Structures under tension can be far more lightweight and compact.

      Steel-box construction and reinforced concrete both offer tension-based strength, but are also susceptible to metallic oxidation (rust), which limits the life of such structures. A nonmetallic fibre (natural or synthetic) might offer an alternative to this, and I've seen some work investigating this, though there may be other issues (e.g., depolymerisation of plastics over long periods of time).

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globular-toast 4 days ago

There are wooden framed houses built in the UK now, particularly in Scotland. The problem with a lot of American houses is the piss poor insulation which leads to energy usage 2-3x that of equivalent European houses. Maybe that's changing now.

A big problem with houses is we never rebuild. It's kind of crazy. We replace almost everything else eventually, including commercial buildings. Skyscrapers only last a few decades. But we expect houses to last forever. But they're only getting older. Is it possible to strip a wood building right back to the frame and start again?

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  • dredmorbius 2 days ago

    There's no intrinsic reason balloon-framed housing has to be poorly insulated, and properly-insulated (and wrapped) balloon-framed construction is actually far better insulated than the "well-insulated" thick-walled structures based on stone, packed earth, brick, etc., which traditional half-timbered or masonry structures offer.

    There is of course a large stock of extant housing which pre-dates best-standards insulation practices, though much of this can be improved dramatically at relatively low cost, especially by improving siding ("wrapping") and insulating attics. Thicker walls (nominal 2x6 rather than 2x4, or greater) can also be retrofit, either extending the exterior or interior wall dimension, though at considerably greater cost, and with trade-offs to either exterior or interior dimensions (lot size, environment, or reduced interior volume).

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fragmede 5 days ago

You have to balance that with how shitty all-wood construction makes it to live in cities near other people, and the toll paid by the environment by people choosing to live in suburbs (and drive ICE vehicles) over living in cities.

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