[HN Gopher] The Era of the Wood Skyscraper Is Arriving
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The Era of the Wood Skyscraper Is Arriving
Author : jseliger
Score : 23 points
Date : 2021-03-25 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reasonstobecheerful.world)
(TXT) w3m dump (reasonstobecheerful.world)
| parched wrote:
| A couple of years ago a fairly large, multi-storey apartment
| building was put up in my town. It was constructed entirely of
| wood. While the roof was being finished, a worker who was putting
| in some overtime on a sunday accidentally started a small fire
| which quickly got out of control. It ended up taking the entire
| building out, costing millions of dollars, but thankfully no
| lives.
|
| Wood is great, but it does have downsides. I wouldn't like to see
| a real-life sequel to The Towering Inferno.
| nick_kline wrote:
| How about conventional building materials, surely they would be
| safe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
|
| I don't want to assume that a wooden building under
| construction would be less safe than multiple conventional
| buildings. Grenfell was a particular error in cladding choices,
| but still. Remember https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fire-
| breaks-out-dubai-sky...
| cwdegidio wrote:
| We had the same exact thing happen in Houston. The lot it sat
| on is now a big eye sore since, I assume, the owners of the
| building and insurance companies are probably still duking it
| out in court.
| khrbrt wrote:
| Was it balloon timbered with plywood walls? I've seen those
| popping up quickly, and they look very flammable, with thin
| support frames and walls, and a high surface area to volume
| ratio.
|
| The wooden building in this article looks different, with much
| thicker wooden posts and flooring. The article said a test
| structure lasted four hours at 1000C temperature flames.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| England just went through an unfortunate lesson in approved
| materials being used in apartment buildings that in fact were
| flammable (cladding.) I think they had 2 major fires as a
| result.
|
| Hopefully this isn't a repeat of that, but it sounds similar.
|
| Note the wikipedia article says it did not comply, but I've
| read other articles that said it did:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Were the interiors in yet?
|
| My understanding is much of the fire rating comes from interior
| materials that protect the wood from fire.
| sounds wrote:
| It still uses concrete, from the article.
| ttfxxcc wrote:
| How long until it burns down?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It still amazes me that some of the best materials we can obtain
| have to be grown by living organisms, and cannot be synthesised.
|
| Lumber, leather, wool...
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Wood used in these construction is usually treated with chemicals
| to improve its properties. What are the health effects of living
| in such buildings?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| The most common fire retardant for wood framing is borate,
| which is slightly more toxic than table salt.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| and how ungodly is it when it burns?
| fy20 wrote:
| Wood can actually resist fires more than other building
| materials such as steel. Yes it does burn, but it also
| doesn't lose it's structural integrity when heated:
|
| https://youtu.be/G-J86Ka9MkQ
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Yes it does burn, but it also doesn't lose it's
| structural integrity when heated:
|
| It does, and by a lot. This is why wooden houses collapse
| during fires, and bury people trapped in them in a fiery
| grave.
| q_andrew wrote:
| Laminated wood basically doesn't combust, so the fire hazard
| is comparable to most modern construction materials. Also,
| the way it's processed makes it extremely structurally sound.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Excuse me, but you were succesfully made to swallow the
| coolaid.
|
| No construction technique out there can make wood a safe
| construction material, no way, and no how.
|
| The wood still burns no matter how much fire retardant you
| soak in it, and it will inevitable rot, warp, and slip off
| fasteners.
|
| The vodoo cult of "wooden skyscrapers" is bizarre, and the
| way they slip past building regulations is even more.
|
| In BC, the wood lobby effectively managed to undo a fire
| safety testing for building materials, and rewrite a big
| part of fire code to make wooden skyscrapers possible.
| voisin wrote:
| Source for any of your claims here?
| q_andrew wrote:
| In many situations, you are right. For instance, the
| five-over-ones being built in basically every city in the
| US exist because of a regulation loophole for building
| wooden structures (that constructing a fireproof barrier
| between two wooden structures allows you to build large,
| multi-story apartments with it). They are infamous for
| burning down during construction because they don't have
| sprinkler systems yet:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-
| ameri...
|
| Cross-laminated timber has a "char layer" that keeps the
| other layers from burning through, and is even known for
| withstanding higher temperatures than steel:
| https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/crosslam-
| timber-...
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