The environmental advantages of wood frame construction

Wood frame construction: Although steel has been the most widely used building material since the mid-twentieth century, wood has been utilized to assemble structures for quite a long time. In any case, recently, we’ve seen to some degree a wood frame building renaissance, particularly in a society where cost and time efficiency are of great importance.  Additionally, wood frames are economical, absorbs carbon, and eject greenhouse gasses.  In the pre-assembled housing sector, this construction technique is, in the meantime, one of the most prevalent variations. The explanation behind this is the various advantages of wood frame construction which include:

As much as it is the only available renewable building material today, wood still has numerous advantages over different materials. It requires less energy because wood frames are light in weight and consequently do not need cranes and other huge machinery for the erection procedure in this manner, thereby leading to reduced costs of construction and easier transportation. However, for business applications, steel and concrete has displaced wood.

The lifecycle of steel and concrete results in 26% to 31% more greenhouse gas emissions than that of wood. According to research by the CORRIE (Consortium for Research on Renewable Materials).

Essentially, the wood-frame building is a measure that can help battle climate change, provided that an equivalent number of new trees are planted. By absorbing the carbon around them and giving up an end product, which is oxygen (the procedure of photosynthesis), trees help to diminish greenhouse gas emissions.  

What’s more, trees can absorb and store large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere as they need carbon to grow and function. Therefore, the carbon content makes up half the mass of the wood, which stays in the wood much after it has been cut down. It has, in this manner, been discovered that utilizing one square meter of wood in wood frame house construction expels 0.9 tons of CO2 from the air.

That implies that an ordinary wood-frame building estimating roughly 2,400 sq.ft. Absorbs and contains approximately 29 tons of carbon, which is similar to the amount of CO2 created by the public transport vehicle over five years (around 12,500 liters of gas). Also, one square meter of wood utilized in wood frame house construction eliminates the emission of 1.1 tons of carbon when used in place of various other building materials.

Moreover, wood has a long life expectancy, under the condition that it is well kept and guarded against dampness, which may damage the wood and pests such as carpenter’s ants. Wood substantially weighs less than concrete, making it a suitable material for light-frame construction.

Due to these apparent advantages, wood has over other building materials. Architects are currently placing focus on the expertise for timber frame building, and a few associations are explicitly advancing the utilization of wood for house framing, remodeling, and in some other business applications.

 Facts about fire resistance and structures:

The capacity of a building’s framing material to burn does not have much to do with fire security. Research data from structural engineers show that the danger of fire is not greater in wood frame house construction than for structures built with other auxiliary materials.

The capacity of a fundamental component to oppose fire relies upon the characteristics of its parts when exposed to high temperatures. However, charring at a rate of 0.7mm/minute (4.2 cm every hour), wooden structures stay stable regardless of whether a fire keeps burning for quite a while.

Structural engineers usually prescribe the use of Insulation protectors.  Gypsum board (drywall) may likewise be utilized to shield wooden structures from heat. And wood frame construction components can be planned to guarantee a minimal degree of susceptibility to fire extending from 45 minutes to 2 hours, contingent on the structure type and choice of materials.

Multi-story wood frame construction:

Until this moment, the Stathaus timber frame building in London, otherwise called the Timber Tower, is the tallest wood-frame house construction on the planet, comprising of 8 wooden floors and one concrete floor on a reinforced concrete platform. It was built utilizing a structural design idealized by KHL (Austria).  

The cross-laminated timber was pre-assembled utilizing designed wooden tongues, whose expanded thickness endow the structure with phenomenal soundproofing. As indicated by the architects’ estimations, the use of wood in the wood frame-house construction project averted the discharge of more than 310 tons of carbon in contrast with different materials.

 Wood: underutilized and over-exploited:

There is a ton of potential in improving the measure of wood utilized in both private and non-private wood frame house construction. New wood products and imaginative structures are expanding the utilization of wood. Be that as it may, the acknowledgment of structurally engineered materials by construction standards could likewise add to the increased use of wood-frame house construction.

An extra advantage of particular types of engineered wood items is the capacity to utilize smaller units of wood, which may be in the form of sawdust or wood scrapings that would somehow be viewed as waste. This can help decrease the weight of landfills and our forests.

An increase in the utilization of wood additionally requires the protection of forests and sustainable management practices to prevent deforestation and depletion of wildlife. The Forest Stewardship Council, as of late delineated a new timber guideline set up by the EU, who wish to ban and stop illegally reaped timber. Both imported and locally produced from the market, expressing, “From 3 March 2013, any operator who places timber or timber products on the EU market for the first time must ensure its legal production.