[HN Gopher] Old vs. new growth trees and the wood products they ...
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Old vs. new growth trees and the wood products they make
Author : Timothee
Score : 338 points
Date : 2024-03-01 15:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hullworks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hullworks.com)
| nothercastle wrote:
| That's why for structural applications glue laminate are popular.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| This is also the case with guitars and other musical instruments
| (pianos, violins etc.).
|
| Old growth not only sounds better, it lasts longer and looks
| better.
|
| Salvaged redwood is one particular place that this really stands
| out. There is no VG Heart available these days. If you want good
| straight, heartwood, you have to salvage old lumber or scavenge
| the forest floor for old felled logs.
|
| When I see old houses in CA built from old growth redwood torn
| down and tossed into the landfill, it breaks me.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Guitars made with soaked logs that have been in the great lakes
| for the last 100 years sound especially well because the cells
| get hollowed out.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6EnWSwfQ7w
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| Yeah, Sunken wood. Mostly used on electrics. Personally I
| cannot hear any difference in these guitars. But people seem
| to like them. Probably for the look...
| brandall10 wrote:
| They're used in electrics? I've only heard about them in
| acoustics, ie. 'sinker' mahogany.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Tonewood for electrics is mostly a myth anyway. Extremes
| might play a role but 99% of the time its almost entirely
| down to the pickups and picking hand.
|
| Acoustic guitars are a totally different ball game of
| course.
| baerrie wrote:
| https://youtu.be/n02tImce3AE?si=YWEWhrFWbQFAQOS4
|
| Tone wood is bogus, don't let anyone fool you. It is very
| beautiful on the other hand :)
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah I had a Martin Guitar made from "Sinker Mahogany"
| harvested from a river in Belize. Amazing to think that these
| were so plentiful that the British just let the ones that
| didn't make it sink to the bottom of the water. Literally
| hundreds if not thousands of them. It's absolutely beautiful
| wood for a guitar though, especially if paired with red pine
| for the top.
| jorts wrote:
| There's a YouTube video from the 50s or so showing them cutting
| down old growth redwoods. I tried watching it but couldn't make
| it. Made me too emotional.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| With you on this one. It's impossible for me to fathom the
| thought of cutting down a tree that took 2000 years to grow.
| Let alone is so majestic!
|
| We humans are incredibly shortsighted. Today, we only have
| 2-5% of old growth trees left... and that's only because of
| people like you and me ( who care) fought to purchase them.
| Otherwise, someone would cut them down and sell them for a
| few bucks.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| <3 yamaha nippon gakki red label from the 60s/70s
| duffyjp wrote:
| Redwood is amazing. My dad has a picnic table with redwood
| boards he bought in the 1980s which is in basically perfect
| condition today despite living outside in Wisconsin the entire
| time.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Have a set of outside porch furniture as well - that my wife
| had at her parent's house even before she was born - so the
| set is at least 58 years old, and besides having weathered a
| bit in color - are as good as new.
| GenerWork wrote:
| >These old windows are structurally superior and can be restored
| instead of replaced.
|
| How do they deal with the superior energy efficiency of new
| windows? Even basic vinyl windows are better in terms of energy
| transfer, unless they're replacing the window frame with more
| modern equipment (factory made vinyl/aluminum) while keeping the
| original windows.
| sonar_un wrote:
| He made a video not too long ago about old-school windows and
| some of the ways that they can be still efficient and
| beautiful. But the kinds of projects that he works on are not
| really "passive house" type buildings.
|
| https://youtu.be/hLbTpa9uEoY
| VHRanger wrote:
| I mean, he puts vacuum-sealed glass on the performance
| version of the windows he makes.
|
| That's even better as a product than triple-glazed windows.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| It's a bit of a kludge but I've used exterior storm windows
| with old windows. It can make a big difference but doesn't
| compete with the efficiency of a modern vinyl argon filled
| double pane.
| VHRanger wrote:
| It actually does if your seals are good.
|
| Argon sealed double panes aren't magical in terms of
| R-values.
| anon291 wrote:
| I live in a 100 year old home with old windows. Storm windows
| work. Also, the panes are fairly easy to replace and if you
| want to put the money into it, I believe they make a double
| paned product you can replace the panes with. Despite the large
| initial investment, it's overall cheaper because you never need
| to replace. We've actually had a few panes broken, and it's
| dirt cheap since normal glass is cheap, and the pane
| replacement is a DIY-doable project (remove glaze, remove
| plane, place new pane, reglaze).
| bhickey wrote:
| When I renovated my old house I had the 1890s windows
| refurbished. To accomplish this, a carpenter cut the windows in
| half, replaced the glass with double pane glass and laminated
| it back together. I had new sash weights fabricated to
| compensate for the added weight. This was definitely more
| expensive than a rip and replace, but we were able to save
| about 90% of the original woodwork. Sills were replaced with
| synthetic because it was the best way to prevent water
| intrusion.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Nowadays there's a vacuum sealed glass product called
| Pilkington Spacia that's the same thickness as a single pane,
| but has about the R-value of a triple pane window.
|
| You could replace the glass with it yourself if you order the
| correct sizes.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Wood is a better insulator for the frame itself than either
| vynil or aluminum.
|
| For the glass itself, you update it to something better than a
| single pane. Or put a storm window as needed.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Adding a storm window is better. You don't want to replace
| the old glass if possible as it's very aesthetically
| beautiful.
|
| Although energy efficiency in these homes have other
| problems. The walls are probably not insulated (and probably
| shouldn't be without a vapor barrier added outside beneath
| the siding - otherwise you will get lots of mold over time)
| and the weight box for the sash's are not insulated and can't
| be unless you want the window to no longer function, which
| may be OK as you can seal around it then.
| VHRanger wrote:
| I'm going through insulation woes with my 1870 house right
| now, and people drastically overestimate how their
| uninsulated walls are the issue. Your walls are most likely
| at least something like R-9 if not more depending on the
| old house you have.
|
| The actual issues, in order of importance, are:
|
| 1. Air sealing the house. So yes, replacing and repairing
| windows. Not because double pane is so much better, but
| because your windows and doors are leaking unconditioned
| air into the house.
|
| 2. Roof insulation
|
| 3. Basement/crawl space insulation. Yes, this is more
| important than walls
|
| 4. Now you think about the walls. As you said, depending on
| the climate, from outside in may be safer (which can also
| be true for roof and basement depending on materials)
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| SF Fire famously still uses old growth for their wooden ladders.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/inside-san-francisos-fire-department-whe...
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| My initial reaction to your comment was "Why are they using
| wood ladders at all?". Luckily I clicked and it's the first
| question answered in the article:
|
| > Wood is resilient in ways which aluminum--now standard for
| fire department ladders--can't even compare. "You know if you
| take an empty coke can and bend it three or four times and it
| tears really easy? That's what aluminum ladders will do," Braun
| says. "They have a seven to eight year lifespan, after which
| they need to be replaced."
|
| > Wooden ladders, on the other hand, can last indefinitely.
| "You can stress wood right up to its failure point a million
| times; as long as you don't go beyond that, it will come right
| back to where it was. They can be involved in a fire for a
| pretty long time; after that, it's just a matter of sanding off
| the top coat of material then inspecting the wood. If it's good
| we'll re-oil it, revarnish it, and put it back in service."
| mikysco wrote:
| Loved reading this.
|
| Here's an archived version that still has the photos:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140713012712/https://gizmodo.c...
| sonar_un wrote:
| I absolutely love watching Brent Hull videos and I am kind of
| shocked to see his page on HackerNews. For those of us who are
| into aesthetic design and back-to-roots craftsmanship, this is
| the guy to watch.
|
| He had a video a couple of years back on this exact subject.
| https://youtu.be/cWX4PgCFk7c
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Came here to see if someone realized it was the same guy who
| did the videos. Love his stuff.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This hints that there is market space for managed forests with
| slower-growth trees that would yield wood better suited for high-
| end woodworking. Assuming a 3-to-1 ring density from current
| fast-growth to this slower variety, one could expect prices
| similarly higher accounting for the longer growth plus financial
| cost of the land.
| tivert wrote:
| > This hints that there is market space for managed forests
| with slower-growth trees that would yield wood better suited
| for high-end woodworking. Assuming a 3-to-1 ring density from
| current fast-growth to this slower variety, one could expect
| prices similarly higher accounting for the longer growth plus
| financial cost of the land.
|
| We're probably talking about trees that would _more than a
| human generation_ (and perhaps several) to reach marketable
| size.
|
| There's market demand for _consuming_ that kind of old growth
| wood, but it 's wager that it's _impossible_ for the market to
| produce it. As an institution, it 's just too short sighted.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| How does the wine industry overcome this with really old
| bottles of wine? Who are the people that are preserving
| bottles of wine for 30 years before selling them? And why
| wouldn't there be a market for a similar thing in the lumber
| industry?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| A bottle of wine doesn't require at least 50 sqft of open
| land
| tivert wrote:
| > How does the wine industry overcome this with really old
| bottles of wine? Who are the people that are preserving
| bottles of wine for 30 years before selling them? And why
| wouldn't there be a market for a similar thing in the
| lumber industry?
|
| 30 years is less than a human lifetime. Also, that's not
| the time you need for old growth, it's what you need for
| _regular_ timber:
|
| https://texasfarmbureau.org/timbers-a-crop-that-takes-
| years-...:
|
| > The industry is doing better now. Timber farmers plant
| trees, thin them out every few years to allow the better
| trees to grow and then harvest when trees are around 25-35
| years old. They then harvest, replant and start the process
| all over.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The wine (and also e.g. scotch) industry runs its core
| business on not-that-old product, on which it makes almost
| all of its money, and may keep a relatively tiny niche of
| really old stuff for sentimental (for the owner), PR or
| branding purposes. It doesn't work that way for commodities
| - a forestry or lumberyard selling a few really old oak
| logs doesn't help them charge a premium for their 20-year
| old lumber in a way that works for a winery or distillery.
| bluGill wrote:
| Wine is aged best around 20 years. 30 years you cannot tell
| a difference (remember that some years were better than
| others so you might be able to tell because of that). By
| 100 years the wine is clearly going downhill and probably
| isn't drinkable anymore.
| vonzepp wrote:
| Even pension funds can't think on that length of time. Really
| only institutions like university can. Lots of Oxford
| colleges are known to look at these time scales. It has been
| around for As someone said Harvard will probably be around
| longer than the united States.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Even pension funds can't think on that length of time.
|
| An interesting way to legislate conservation is to mandate
| pension funds to set aside a fraction of their portfolio
| for investments that take longer to mature, such as slow-
| growth managed forests.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > it's wager that it's impossible for the market to produce
| it.
|
| Where markets fail for being too shortsighted, we can always
| introduce governments or international bodies. Once you plant
| the trees, there is little upside in cutting them down and
| more upside in letting them reach maturity.
|
| OTOH, these boutique managed forests will be vulnerable to
| the development of cheaper alternatives (such as compressing
| multiple crappy logs into a good one).
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Current "fast growth" lumber is already operating on a ~10-20
| year time frame.
|
| Getting to something old growth like will probably need like
| over 60 years at a minimal.
|
| Reclaimed wood (depends on your application) is currently only
| like <5 times as expensive as new growth product.
|
| While it's definitely true that the supply of reclaimed wood
| will dwindle, meaning that if you start such a project today,
| you'll probably be able to command a significantly higher price
| multiplier in 2090... I think that sentence alone explains why
| this doesn't happen at any significant scale.
| tunesmith wrote:
| The downside for that is that it would require growing the
| trees more slowly, which means, given the volume needed, we'd
| probably need more trees, probably responsibly grown within
| other existing forests that already have partial canopy cover,
| which means we'd need to have larger reforestation efforts,
| which would in turn have some sort of effect in terms of
| slowing down the pace of climate warming due to more carbon
| sequestration... I'm sorry, was I talking about downsides?
| gmuslera wrote:
| What about flammability?
|
| If "new" wood is somewhat less flammable because sap or something
| like that, replacing old forests with new ones, moving the
| operations of wood harvesting from forest to forest in a
| sustainable way may get a bigger time window for freshness and
| lower a bit the risks of the captured carbon by trees/forests
| burning down (something that is getting more probable as the
| world warms up, a positive feedback loop), while getting better
| quality wood in the process.
|
| Of course, a lot of uses of wood is burning it down for home
| heating, that won't be in the equation, but is something that may
| be phased down. And not sure how this goes for other uses of wood
| like making paper.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Old wood is much less flammable because of the wood density.
|
| Timber framed buildings are considered somewhat fire-retardant
| compared to stud-built buildings. As the exterior of a timber
| burns, the blackened part insulates the interior of the timber
| from the fire.
|
| That said, timber construction isn't as sustainable as stick-
| built. But we should preserve old growth wood wherever we find
| it.
| MiguelVieira wrote:
| It's interesting to point out that the wood has tighter rings and
| is more durable not necessarily because it came from old trees,
| but because the old growth trees grew in mature forests where
| they were in the shade of other trees, and thus grew more slowly
| and had tighter rings.
|
| Trees growing in full sunlight grow quickly and have more widely
| spaced rings. Balsa wood for example, which is very light and
| soft, comes from balsa trees that have evolved to grow very
| quickly in sunny gaps caused by fallen trees in tropical forests.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Great explanation of why certain species of trees are both fast
| growers and 'fast fallers'. Tulip Poplar trees for example are
| often first/second growth, and they are also often the trees
| that will break/fall during storms too. They trade that fast
| growth for durability it seems.
| grosswait wrote:
| In my observation, tulip poplars, get a bad rap. They do drop
| limbs routinely, but I don't see them getting knocked over by
| wind. I see pine trees blow over the majority of the time. Of
| course, different forest composition might change the odds,
| but for my area tulip poplars seem pretty strong
| njarboe wrote:
| The main reason old growth trees have tight rings is not that
| the tree is growing slowly (in mass) but that the diameter and
| height of the trunk is so large that the rings are very narrow.
| A 200ft tall tree with a 8ft diameter trunk with a 50 foot
| sunny top will put on a lot of mass but it is spread out over
| the surface of the truck. The added ring each year will be
| thin. Old growth forests are rare and I think people don't have
| a good idea of how big old growth trees can be. The old growth
| redwoods are admired for their size but other trees also get
| very large. At a small museum in the northern Sierra foothills
| I saw a photo of a 16ft diameter Douglas fir. It's too bad none
| of these trees survived (that I have found). Many pictures of
| logging trucks with just one log on them.
|
| You do definitely get thin rings when the trees are shaded but
| the monster old growth trees, the thin rings are usually due to
| the size of the trunk.
| mlsu wrote:
| I know nothing about wood but does this mean that the
| heartwood has relatively wide ring spacing (since it grew
| when the tree was low and small?
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| You see this in trees that have grown up in forest
| conditions. They sprout in a patch of sunlight, but then
| they eventually fill the space and can't grow as quickly
| anymore.
|
| In trees that are grown in more open conditions with
| plentiful sunlight, water, and nutrients, the growth rings
| are more even because there is nothing holding back their
| growth and forcing them to slow down.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > The main reason old growth trees have tight rings is not
| that the tree is growing slowly
|
| No, it really is. Old pine from and some hardwoods grew in
| densely populated forests and there was a fight for sunlight.
| This severely limited how quickly the trees could grow per
| year resulting in tighter rings and far superior lumber.
|
| Tree plantations are specced out to plant trees the perfect
| distance from each other so they can grow super fast. Spiked
| with fertilizers a pine can be harvested in year 15 for
| modern lumber. It's amazing how fast they can grow trees with
| enough sunlight and food.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| Larger trees grow more slowly due to increasing competition
| (especially for canopy space) with their neighbors.
|
| If trees are planted with sufficient spacing, an old tree's
| outer growth rings will be the same density as the inner
| growth rings. Trees grow to the water, sunlight, and
| nutrients that are available to them -- up until they become
| diseased or they grow so large that they struggle to support
| their own weight (at which point they start losing branches,
| which means they no longer get enough sunlight). To
| counteract the pull of gravity, older trees stop gaining
| height and instead focus on adding girth (i.e., thicker
| growth rings).
|
| Tree plantations achieve a higher wood output by
| progressively thinning the plantings as the trees mature.
| This allows the remaining trees to keep growing at a fast
| clip and results in more even grain in the lumber.
| ipqk wrote:
| Thank you! this was the information that was missing from the
| blog, and I scratching my head a bit.
| tehcodez wrote:
| There's a wonderful podcast, Shannon's Lumber Industry update
| that discusses this topic in detail, I can't track down exactly
| which episode. The point he makes is, yes, sure they are "better"
| lumber, but lumber can also be a sustainable resource. We've done
| a MUCH better job producing construction lumber (what those two-
| by material is used for in the vast majority of cases) in a
| sustainable manner. That old framing lumber came from just
| demolishing old growth trees. You can still find comparable
| lumber, this is what fine furniture makers do.
|
| https://www.lumberupdate.com/about/
| thekid314 wrote:
| Thanks, I never expected to subscribe to a lumber podcast, but
| I am now.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| Pretty interesting to see the difference in the grain. I do
| notice the softness of the wall studs when I hang anything in my
| newer place. Still "they dont build em like they used to" is a
| bit... wrong. Nimby's or "old heads" as we call em, badmouth new
| builds for their quality. I've lived in extremely well-built 18th
| century homes, and now one that is less than a decade old and I
| greatly, greatly prefer the latter.
|
| Newer features I appreciate are engineered joists (stronger, less
| creaking floors and noise transmission), doors and double pane
| windows that seal out air and noise, good insulation, central
| HVAC, PEX plumbing, neutral wiring, and the fact that if I need
| to fix or replace anything, it can be easily ordered if not found
| at a hardware store.
|
| Yeah, maybe some of these materials are not as "sturdy" to the
| touch and maybe they have a shorter life-span, but I am positive
| they work better and are cheaper/easier to maintain.
| eropple wrote:
| _> Yeah, maybe some of these materials are not as "sturdy" to
| the touch and maybe they have a shorter life-span, but I am
| positive they work better and are cheaper/easier to replace._
|
| They are cheaper, they are easier to replace, and at the moment
| (wood nerd hat on) we genuinely _do not know_ if they have a
| shorter lifespan. But it 's very likely that they do not, in
| part because of the construction around them. These concerns
| are not, in my experience, something that you really hear
| people who spend much time around structural work bring up.
| It's mostly a "back in the day" thing.
|
| For _furniture_ , on the other hand--things are different. But
| dimensional lumber as practiced today is a modern miracle.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| I'm definitely no wood nerd but, yeah, I wouldn't intuit that
| a softer, new-growth wood would just disintegrate in 100
| years time, or much more, for that matter.
|
| As you allude to the material around it, we now have
| engineered, weather resistant sheathing, house wrap, and
| vinyl or metal siding, or some such very weather-proof stuff.
|
| Most of the issues I have had with "old growth" wood in my
| 17th century homes were just due to water penetrating where
| it should not, rotting that wood, and then causing me a
| headache trying replace it with a similar material.
| thekid314 wrote:
| Here's a story about Old Growth forests in New England that I
| shot for Smithsonian Magazine. The most interesting part was
| seeing archive photos of New England when it was basically clear
| cut for firewood and pasture. Today we think of it as wooded, but
| that is relatively recent:
| https://www.daviddegner.com/photography/discovering-old-grow...
| soperj wrote:
| It was wooded before the clear cutting.
| beastman82 wrote:
| Is this true in NH/ME/VT as well? I see western MA in your
| article. (btw it's cool thanks for sharing)
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Very much true. Just look at the undergrowth, and the types
| of trees.
| peteradio wrote:
| Very beautiful shoot. Some of those trees were rather huge!
| Wonder what the biggest looked like in the old growth.
| nemo44x wrote:
| They looked like this:
|
| https://ravenwhimsy.tumblr.com/post/174022634675
|
| And to think, they were just used for any old thing back
| then. This lumber doesn't really exist anymore other than
| reclamations.
| grosswait wrote:
| That's a Douglas for - not native to New England
| klyrs wrote:
| Sadly, this lumber _does_ exist in Canada. And I wish I
| meant "tree" and not "lumber" but here we are
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sitka-old-
| gr...
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I love this shoot, thank you for sharing.
| hfghfgh wrote:
| That banner is so bad I can't read the article at all.
| anon291 wrote:
| I live in a 100 year old home in the PNW and I've broken dozens
| of 'wood' rated drill bits trying to drill. It can take upwards
| of 10 minutes to drill through a single 2x4 stud in my house.
| It's honestly insane that they're considered the same material.
|
| I do a lot of hobby wood working and the old growth pine seems to
| have more in common with ipe wood and the like rather than the
| stuff you buy in the stores. I'm holding on to all that old wood
| like it's gold.
| icameron wrote:
| Same here, I gave up trying to use a spade bit for drilling
| that old wood. It's impact driver and speed bit or auger bits,
| or bust. Nothing quite like the smell of old lumber!
| Aloha wrote:
| There is also another survival bias factor.
|
| Wood continues to cure and harden (and shrink) when it's put
| into place in construction - in 70-80 years, It'll be just as
| hard as the wood in a house from 1890.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Incorrect. As the OP post shows, if you cut down a 300 year
| old tree it won't cure the same as a young-cut SPF piece of
| wood.
|
| It simply can't - it's effectively not the same material.
| Just in terms of growth rings, wood density, heartwood
| content, etc.
| VHRanger wrote:
| I have a 1870s house in Ontario, lots of old growth red pine.
|
| This stuff is really heavy and resistant, you keep it indeed.
| specialist wrote:
| Are those spade bits? Meaning flat with two cutting edges.
|
| My home's framing is mostly old growth. I bought an auger bit
| for rewiring. It's looks like a corkscrew. I won't ever use a
| spade bit (for making holes in framing) again.
|
| My son then brought over his hole hog (?) power drill. It's
| scary powerful. Mosdef practice with some scrap wood first.
| anon291 wrote:
| I've lot both spade bits and smaller normal bits. Best is an
| auger bit and being careful to keep the drill straight.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| Since you mentioned the hole hawg, and this is HN, I thought
| I'd post this classic for anyone who hasn't seen it before:
|
| Unix, the Hole Hawg of operating systems:
| http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If you have used finger jointed wood, you see the effects of
| new vs. old wood. Starting in the 1970's lumber manufacturers
| began using finger-jointed wood to compensate for poor wood
| quality; the warping, twisting, and knots in their new growth
| wood. They took a board of wood, cut out the defects and then
| rejoined the pieces with finger joints. Finger joining wood in
| doors windows, moldings, and framing lumber is necessary because
| the new growth wood quality isn't as good. Old growth timber is
| generally free of knots while plantation grown wood is riddled
| with them.
|
| For normal construction tasks, I don't care one bit about this
| one bit. And you shouldn't either.
|
| We've found more sustainable ways to quickly grow trees and use
| machines to turn them into usable construction lumber. This is
| amazing! Basic construction doesn't need to have the finest,
| densest, knot-free lumber. It just needs to work and hold up for
| a useful lifetime. We don't use this lumber for windows or
| weather-exposed areas. It's placed neatly inside of your dry home
| and protected from the elements.
|
| Combining multiple boards into a single, more stable board isn't
| unique to cheap new growth lumber. It's a technique that is even
| used with more expensive woods to produce a hybrid board that has
| better properties than could be easily achieved with a single
| board. Modern adhesives can be stronger than the wood itself, so
| the existence of a joint shouldn't scare people.
|
| If you're doing a high end woodworking project, you're generally
| not using this type of wood anyway. You're picking a hardwood or
| one of the fancier softwoods.
|
| I love old growth lumber and its properties, but modern
| construction lumber and the processes that produce it are a great
| accomplishment. Regardless, it doesn't matter because old growth
| lumber is a very finite resource and it's not repeatable to
| reproduce forever anyway.
| coldbrewed wrote:
| Modern building construction is cheaper and doesn't demand old
| growth timber, but it's also much less resilient during a house
| fire. We use smaller dimensional lumber, it has less densely
| packed tree rings causing it to burn faster, and we use I beams
| made out of 2x3s and OSB instead of solid lumber. A house made
| in the 30s could survive a long time before collapse in a fire;
| what we have now collapses much faster.
|
| There are definite benefits to modern techniques that are less
| resource intensive and protecting our remaining old growth
| forests is important, but we're sacrificing a lot of valuable
| properties as well.
| xnx wrote:
| Do new building codes account for this? Even given the worse
| materials, I would expect a house built today to be much
| safer (from fire, hurricane, tornado, etc.) than one built
| 100 years ago.
| foofie wrote:
| > Do new building codes account for this?
|
| Yes. Survivability to fire is explicitly listed as a
| requirement, and different classes of buildings have strict
| requirements on survivability (i.e., how long a structure
| must remain safe while subjected to a fire).
|
| > I would expect a house built today to be much safer (...)
|
| It is, but there are nuances. For example, modern houses
| have additional requirements on energy efficiency, which
| mean thermal insulation. Elements used in thermal
| insulation applications are regulated, but it turned out
| that some assumptions regarding flammability ended up not
| being met under some circumstances. Consequently, we've
| started to see a few incidents such as the Grendell tower
| fire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
|
| Another event was the much recent fire in a Spanish
| residential complex.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Valencia_residential_com
| p...
| softfalcon wrote:
| Comparing homes today with that of 100 years ago ignores
| the fact that in many ways housing quality has been on a
| decline since the 1970's due to cost cutting and lazy
| workmanship from large scale contractors.
|
| In my city, we have entire communities of the city that
| people avoid buying homes in because of shoddy workmanship.
|
| Greed corrupts and it has hit like a plague in many large
| neighbourhood projects over the decades.
|
| You can have all the codes in the world, it doesn't matter
| if no one follows them.
| bluGill wrote:
| The 1970s were about the worst of that. While cost
| cutting has continued, engineering is more involved in
| standards and so the cost cutting is not possible unless
| engineering determines that the cost cutting doesn't
| effect something important.
|
| Note that what you think is important to lay people and
| what engineering thinks is important are very different
| things. Engineering cares about fire safety, insulation,
| and your house standing up to wind. Engineering doesn't
| care if you kick a hole in your walls - that is your own
| stupid fault (engineering cares that you cannot get
| pushed through the walls cartoon style, but a small hole
| is not a problem). Laypeople often reject great
| engineering because the marketing on bad engineering is
| better - old houses is one of those cases.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I don't think it's just the marketing. As you said in
| your earlier comment, old houses overengineer things that
| are visually obvious to the homeowner but not of actual
| safety importance. Humans are very susceptible to this
| visual bias. As you say, they're not inspecting fire
| stops, insulation standards, sprinkler placement, etc.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| In some places, the problem is that scammy builders are
| not building homes to spec.
|
| I'm talking about very serious flaws: not like drywall
| being thin, but more like joists that are thinner than
| the engineer specified or incomplete flashing that lets
| water leak into the insulation whenever it rains.
|
| A few years ago, I worked in a brand new building, and we
| had issues like windows being installed inside out, pipes
| not being connected together, and rainwater trickling
| down walls under the paint.
|
| These builds are poorly engineered -- not by the
| engineers and architects, but by the builders ignoring
| the engineers and architects. You can see numerous
| egregious examples here, for example:
| https://m.youtube.com/@Siteinspections
| softfalcon wrote:
| Yeah, this is what I'm referring to. It doesn't matter if
| you have codes if people don't follow them because of
| laziness and corruption.
|
| I'm getting down voted, I guess I touched a nerve of the
| civil engineering folks.
|
| I came to the knowledge I have from having discussions
| with my civil engineering friends. They were immediately
| disenfranchised a few years into their careers when they
| saw the corruption of the "construction cartels" in my
| city.
|
| I'm sure it's not true of every city, but it is in the
| city I live in here in Western Canada. Also common
| elsewhere in the world.
| VHRanger wrote:
| > Do new building codes account for this?
|
| Yes, we have code about fireblocking, minimum insulation in
| wall cavities, etc. for that.
|
| Structural code also updates with wood quality testing. In
| structural charts I've seen, old growth is around 3x
| stronger for the same size as newer SPF. It's about on par
| with an LVL product.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes. We now use engineering standards to design houses.
| Looking at 100 year old houses as an engineering is
| enlightening (you don't even have to be a good engineer,
| just look and think). Old houses are often way over built
| in places where there is no stress and so paper would work
| - but those places are visible. Meanwhile places that do
| matter are often under built and it is amazing they are
| still standing at all - but those places tend to be not
| easily seen. Which is while people say modern houses are
| built from cardboard - in many ways they are - but those
| are all places where strength isn't needed so why waste
| money.
|
| What you won't see in the above is things that are hidden.
| Modern code requires you to have a firestop in all walls
| every 10 feet - old houses were often balloon framed which
| means the inside of the walls becomes a chimney in a fire
| and will help feed the fire. New houses the inside of walls
| do not become a chimney because of that fire stop.
|
| Modern houses also are insulated to much better standards.
| Something else that often isn't seen but makes a big
| difference. Even when it is seen nobody thinks about it -
| those old windows the article is singing the praises of are
| universally single pane windows that should have been
| scrapped 40 years ago. Sure there frame is still like new,
| but the standards for new back then are not acceptable.
|
| The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to
| last too long. What people want out of a house changes over
| time, and you never correctly anticipate what people will
| want in the next decade. Eventually that old house will
| have enough things "wrong" that cannot be retrofitted and
| the best thing to do is tear down and rebuild from scratch
| to modern standards.
| xnx wrote:
| > The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build
| to last too long. What people want out of a house changes
| over time, and you never correctly anticipate what people
| will want in the next decade.
|
| Probably even more applicable to software projects!
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe, but most software projects isn't designed for as
| long as things will last (I'm not sure we even know how
| to do this!). It is best to think of software as under
| continuous remodels. Very few houses survive for 40 years
| without a major remodel - adding rooms, moving walls.
| (much less "minor remodels" like replacing the kitchen
| cupboards - and the paint will not last for 40 years no
| matter how hard you try).
|
| If you continuously remodel your house like software is,
| then by the time it is 50 years old there should be zero
| original walls left. But software is a lot cheaper to
| make changes to.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Even something as simple as granite countertops are a
| good example of that. A stone countertop is hundred of
| thousands or millions of years old. They would likely
| last until the planet itself was swallowed up by the sun
| as it swells with age.
|
| But, granite countertops installed in the 90's and 2000's
| are considered "old" and "dated" and are being torn out
| for a different stone often at great expense.
|
| It was a waste that they were ever installed to begin
| with. Could have installed a laminate countertop that
| would last 5ish years and look good for 1/10th the cost
| and then swapped it out 5 times in the same time period
| for a fraction of the cost and essentially no permanent
| waste.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Granite countertops sit on top of wooden frames. They're
| as long lasting as the wooden frames underneath.
| VHRanger wrote:
| > The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build
| to last too long.
|
| Disagree.
|
| Build to last long, but accomodate modification.
|
| Old houses are built to last a very long time, because
| they weren't commodities being bought and sold on a 10
| year timeframe. But old houses are also very difficult to
| modify. As you noted, no structural engineering, also
| lathe & plaster walls are a nightmare to take down, etc.
| etc.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I don't know which houses you're referring to... or maybe
| you're conflating survivorship bias with quality... but
| old houses most definitely weren't built for "a very long
| time". Even fancy mansions from 100-200 years are all but
| falling apart in most countries across the world.
|
| I live in a house built before structural codes were made
| mandatory(1964) - and just yesterday we had to replace a
| third of the true 2x4s because they were rotten and a
| corner of the house was liable to just come crumbling
| down.
|
| If you want more proof - look at the remains of
| civilizations that built primarily from wood... but there
| isn't much to look at at all!
| turtlebits wrote:
| Water intrusion is a maintenance problem, not a quality
| problem. The old growth framing in my 1950's house feels
| like it will last forever.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| If you have to replace your siding wholesale every 20
| years to prevent water intrusion - you're not building
| for "a very long time".
| oooyay wrote:
| You commented further down mentioning "siding", but if
| I'm following this conversation correctly many of y'all
| are talking about different periods of construction as if
| they're all the same, or even linear in quality over
| time.
|
| For instance, timber framing is a very old practice and
| the beams used are so thick they do indeed last hundreds
| of years. However, timber framing refers to the
| structural beams themselves, not fascia like siding. You
| could still use OSB and new growth finger boards to do
| the non-structural framing, and many modern houses do.
|
| Then there's houses like mine from the 1950s. They use
| solid maple beams, but oak and elm are also common to
| that time period. They're structurally more load bearing
| that way. Unlike timber framing they take advantage of
| both proper joints _and_ things like hangers.
|
| More modern construction doesn't really do much jointing
| from what I've seen, but I may be wrong or have a
| limitation of exposure here. They rely mainly on
| structural forms like hangers.
|
| I'm not sure that any one is better than the other. They
| do have different considerations though. A timber frame
| is going to be tough to modify once it's stood up. A
| house like mine will probably also be tough to modify,
| but they could by introducing forms. The newer homes are
| probably the easiest to modify, but probably are somewhat
| weaker than the frames of my house. Strength like that
| doesn't really matter until it does, though, imo.
| bjt wrote:
| Selection effect here. Plenty of old houses weren't built
| to last. You just don't see them anymore because they're
| gone.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Modern wood houses have very poor noise insulation. I
| grew up in a brick house. When I came to Canada, and I
| found I had to keep my voice down at night, while
| speaking in a closed room was news to me. Not only can
| other people in the house hear, but so can the neighbors!
| I don't know how people live like this.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Modern wood houses have very poor noise insulation
|
| I agree, but this doesn't have anything to do with the
| woodenness of the construction. Virtually all interior
| walls in your typical North American single-family home,
| built with wood or not, are lacking insulation. Code
| doesn't require it, people don't want to pay extra for
| it, and builders don't want to convince people to spend
| the money for it.
| xnx wrote:
| Noise isolation is mainly about adding mass. Thermal
| insulation is mainly about creating a continuous skin and
| filling the void with something as close to a vacuum as
| you can get.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Home insulation doesn't work by making walls close to
| vacuum. You insulate walls by stuffing _more_ (but not
| too much) of stuff into them, not by pumping out air or
| anything silly like that.
|
| Vacuum is a great insulator, because it blocks two
| fastest ways of heat transfer, conduction and convection,
| leaving only radiation. House insulation tries to do the
| same thing: filling up the wall with fluff blocks air
| from moving around, which impedes convection. Fluff
| itself is made from materials of low thermal
| conductivity, like cotton or mineral wool. At the end of
| the day, though, filling walls with fluff makes them
| _less_ like vacuum, not more.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| That is mostly wall mass and engineering, not anything to
| do with the use of wood. I have lived in very quiet wood
| buildings.
| turtlebits wrote:
| > What people want out of a house changes over time.
|
| Hard disagree. At it's essence, a house is a shelter from
| the environment. The need for walls and a roof doesn't
| change.
|
| Engineering a house for longevity isn't hard, all that
| really matters is water/moisture management.
|
| Any "wrong" things with a house can be fixed. There are
| very few houses that are unsafe to inhabit and require a
| rebuild.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| A house is so much more than a shelter from the
| environment. If it were, people would live in garages
| made of metal plate.
|
| > Any "wrong" things with a house can be fixed.
|
| Fixing anything can be done / is possible. That doesn't
| mean it is the brightest idea to always do so.
| mannyv wrote:
| "The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to
| last too long"
|
| In the world of the Rich Third World, houses are almost
| always torn down after they're bought. It's actually
| pretty bad, because those houses are always built to
| last...but they only really last for about 8-15 years on
| average. Then it's almost always easier to rip and
| replace again instead of renovate, because they're built
| with concrete.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Metal brackets and hangers required in new construction
| make new houses much stronger
| doubled112 wrote:
| Do those brackets and hangers make up for the particle
| and pressboard my stairs are made out of?
|
| Seriously, they could have come out of a flatpak. I
| assumed cost cutting, because the risers are a different
| board than the tread.
| RyanCavanaugh wrote:
| Using the same material for load-bearing and non-load-
| bearing parts seems like the definition of
| overengineering.
| bombcar wrote:
| Those metal things they use to hold prefab trusses
| together are hated by firemen, because once it starts
| burning they just curl off and the strength is gone.
| bombcar wrote:
| Iirc sprinklers are now required in homes in many areas.
|
| And homes are much more resilient to other forms of damage,
| like actually having to be bolted to the foundation instead
| of just resting on it, etc.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > but it's also much less resilient during a house fire
|
| Mass timber and other new engineered products should be good
| for this.
| RyanCavanaugh wrote:
| We've more than compensated for this in other building
| materials, processes, and codes. Your odds of dying in a
| house fire are far lower than they were even in the 1970's,
| let alone the 50's or 20's.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Perhaps, but I'm not sure I live swimming through an
| invisible ocean of fire retardant chemicals that are in all
| home furnishings and most clothing and so forth. I'm not
| exactly a California Prop 65 fan, but I do wonder if those
| are anything any sane person wants near them.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Your odds of dying in a house fire are far lower than
| they were even in the 1970's, let alone the 50's or 20's.
|
| I am very surprised by this.
|
| I'm sure that building codes ensure that the actual houses
| are more fire resistant. And fire fighting has probably
| come a long way.
|
| But the typical home is full of processed plastic fabric.
| Which burns a whole heck of a lot faster than either cotton
| or wool. Carpet, curtains, clothes, furniture, etc.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I am sure smoke alarms make a big difference and people
| not smoking. Circuit breakers instead of fuses. Plus all
| the for fire exits and fire doors in apartment blocks.
| tlavoie wrote:
| That's probably more because of smoke detectors (and
| perhaps fewer smokers) than anything else. I'd love to get
| a sprinkler system retro-fit though, as that would make an
| impressive difference.
|
| All the lighter-weight joists made with OSB burn far faster
| than the 2x8s or whatever they replaced, and home
| furnishings are made with large amounts of flammable
| synthetics.
|
| At a live-fire course I was on, the scenarios we worked on
| were fueled by stacks of wooden pallents, lit by an
| instructor's tiger torch. One of the instructors asked us
| if we knew the fuel equivalent of a typical love seat with
| synthetic foam, in pallets. We all figured it was lots, but
| not the real answer: NINETY.
| RyanCavanaugh wrote:
| They've done the research and, well, the newer houses
| really are just better at having fewer fire deaths. I
| suppose it's possible the fires that do occur are worse,
| but on net your death rate is lower in a newer house.
|
| https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-
| prioriti...
|
| > As expected, the coefficient estimate for the
| percentage of houses built after 1989 (pctpost89) is
| negative and statistically significant. This implies
| that, in counties with newer housing stock, all else
| equal, the fire death rate is lower. Interestingly, when
| identical regressions to model 1 were run using different
| cutoff points for new stock, such as the percentage of
| houses built after 1979 or 1969 or 1959, the coefficients
| were of roughly similar size, were always negative, and
| the associated t-statistics were at least as significant.
| tlavoie wrote:
| Interesting paper, thanks. It does make some of the same
| distinctions I did, around smokers and smoke alarms.
| Another thing mentioned about newer construction is the
| improved blocking and stopping. For example, one old
| style of framing was "balloon frame" construction, where
| you would have gaps that might run vertically from
| basement to attic. That gave fire a channel to rip
| vertically through a structure, and is clearly a
| terrifying idea once it catches. [Edit] Oh, I forgot to
| mention, it also discusses what conclusions can't be
| inferred. "Regrettably, much of the available data is not
| helpful. For example, no data are collected on the age of
| the structure where a house fire death occurs, despite
| the obvious link between the two."
|
| The starting point of this though, was the idea that the
| materials in the house are actually better than in the
| past. To the extent that they'll tolerate fire longer
| before collapsing, they aren't, and the gases from the
| foam cushions, carpets and drapes are more toxic than
| ever. The reason this was drilled into our heads is that
| it means less time to get into a fire, and someone out,
| before we all have to leave for our own safety.
| liquidpele wrote:
| I mean, by the same logic, you could say every house should
| be built from steel. Of course old growth is stronger, just
| like steel is, but using them for the majority of cases would
| be simply ridiculous at scale.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Also, in Japan, they are requiring old growth timber for home
| construction in certain northern areas for earthquake
| resilience.
|
| The reasoning is that old growth lumber handles repeated
| compression better as they are denser, harder, and firmer.
| New growth timber is squishier due to it being softer with
| less tightly grouped growth rings.
|
| At first I thought that made no sense, then I realized
| building a house out of sponges is not ideal. Fighting
| collapse is sometimes more about rigidity in the correct
| place rather than absorbing all shakiness everywhere.
| huytersd wrote:
| Old growth lumber takes longer to start burning but once it
| takes, it going to be a hotter more resilient fire.
| bertil wrote:
| As a European, I was confused to read that wood was considered
| structural enough that they needed this...
|
| Of course, there are new mass timber builds, but those use wood
| that is heavily processed. I guess the lighter wood would need
| to be pressed more, to match the same resistance, but I suspect
| the costs are cheaper with wood grown faster.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Old growth is on par with LVL/Glulam in terms of structural
| strength.
|
| But to be honest the rot resistance is more important. Most
| wood buildings fail because of rot issues, not because the
| wood wasn't strong enough.
| bertil wrote:
| Would treating the wood (presumably with chemicals you
| might not want inside your house) be enough to avoid the
| rot?
|
| Traditional wood houses in Scandinavia have tar and seem
| well preserved: is that usually enough, or did they survive
| because it's so cold to six months a year that bugs don't
| even try?
| bluGill wrote:
| Houses survive because they tend to be dry enough that
| the wood doesn't rot. Let the roof fail and soon the rest
| of the house will rot away. Similar for let the siding on
| the outside fail and the house will soon rot away (not as
| fast as when the roof fails). Keep those in good shape
| though and the inside is dry enough that wood won't rot.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Yes, treating wood does work, but what use to treat
| depends on the application.
|
| For instance railroad ties were treated with creosote or
| tar. Similar for the underground part of telephone poles.
| There was a Copper-Chromium-Arsenic mix also that would
| kill bugs and mold but is extremely toxic, so isn't EPA
| approved anymore.
|
| I would not want creosote or tar-treated wood in a house
| I live in, though. It's all toxic.
|
| In the exterior-treated SPF (think what we use in America
| for a deck or exterior staircase) there's a durability
| limit to the rot resistance. And the wood is tough to
| restore.
|
| Better woods (not necessarily old growth, just white pine
| or high quality cedar) are easier to restore. They also
| look nice, so people are more inclined to take care of
| them.
|
| In the end, nothing lasts forever without maintenance.
| jnellis wrote:
| Sure temperature is big factor but water is always the
| enemy of wood, regardless of the treatment. You can slow
| it down with chemicals but bugs and microorganisms find a
| way if water is present. Humidity is water. Primers and
| paint do wonders against it. But the wood has to be dry
| first. Tar is pretty darn good at keeping out water but
| also good at trapping it in.
|
| Old growth and just 'old' wood is naturally termite
| resistant because wood gets harder as it ages and the
| bugs just don't like to chew on it, they will look
| elsewhere. You don't see many 60+ year old houses getting
| new termite infestations unless it was in areas of recent
| repair (fascia boards, brick moldings). But if it's wet,
| it's softer to chew. It's always comes down to water.
| nf3 wrote:
| Some species of wood are naturally resistant to rot:
| black locust, chestnut, cedar, cypres, Douglas fir.
|
| Other methods of preventing rot exist such as charring
| the end of a post before sticking it in the ground,
| protecting end grain from contact with water, etc.
| hattmall wrote:
| Unless you have major water issues, like roof leaks or
| something where water is accumulating consistently up
| against wood. For example a deck that slopes toward the
| house or something, rot isn't really an issue. Termites
| can be an issue, but it's not super common.
| not_the_fda wrote:
| Yep its called a [Permanent Wood
| Foundation](https://www.nachi.org/permanent-wood-
| foundations.htm) I had a house with it, had no problems
| with it.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Water management is more important than rot resistance.
| Wood will easily last for 100 years if let it dry. (you'll
| never be able to keep any part of your house 100% dry).
| MarkMarine wrote:
| There are some old ideas about water management that are
| A LOT different than the modern techniques. I live in a
| 120 year old house framed with old growth redwood. As
| wood goes, it's rock solid, but also everything in it
| breathes. It's painted with linseed oil paints, the lathe
| and plaster walls breathe moisture, and frankly it's not
| sealed well anywhere, including my original double hung
| windows.
|
| If this was a modern house, it would be covered in 5
| different layers of plastic with the intent on keeping
| any moisture out, then sheathed in OSB that basically
| sees water and just melts away. Like you said, there is
| no way to keep it all the way dry, but energy efficiency
| (and cheap materials and quick building techniques) have
| also driven a housing design that is so tight that if
| there is moisture intrusion, it's got no good way to vent
| out.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Do you have any good sources of info for your any my type
| of home; old and wood? I'm worried that some of the
| upgrades and paint done to this house is preventing as
| much "breathing" as it was designed for, and I don't want
| my house to rot away. It's really wet here!
| VHRanger wrote:
| Check out stuff by Joe Lstiburek (build science expert)
| and Brent Hull (linked in OP, historic restoration
| expert, has YouTube channel)
| MarkMarine wrote:
| https://linseedpaint.com - This is where I get my paint,
| lots of information about why latex paint (and generally
| wrapping in plastic) ruins the wood of a house.
|
| Past there, I really like a timber framer who does
| YouTube called Mr. Chickadee, guy was a Marine who
| decided to live a simple life. He hand makes everything,
| but don't let the old timey hat and pants fool you, he's
| spent a ton of time thinking about how the old methods
| work and why, and picking through multiple cultures that
| have had old wooden structures that last hundreds or even
| thousands of years for the techniques he's using.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I love watching Mr chickadee. Thanks for the paint link!
| turtlebits wrote:
| Misconception - you don't want your house to breath (ie
| outdoor <-> indoor air mixing). You want it to be as
| airtight as possible, while allowing the exterior
| surfaces to dry if they get wet.
|
| However, leaky houses probably contribute to their
| longevity as those areas are able to dry from the outdoor
| air flowing indoors instead of rotting.
| ok_dad wrote:
| There ain't no way my house is getting airtight, I open
| the windows every day, and in the summer most of the
| night. I am very careful about leaks and such so the wet
| tends to stay outside except for some condensation
| occasionally which I can't avoid.
| danans wrote:
| > I open the windows every day, and in the summer most of
| the night.
|
| Then you shouldn't have an issue since you are basically
| living outdoors most of the time.
|
| As long as there is enough air movement, it should dry
| things out.
|
| The problem is condensation inside the walls. To deal
| with that, your wall has to be vapor-open to either the
| inside or outside, so it can dry. Standard interior paint
| is usually breathable.
|
| Also, if you are leaving your windows open that much in
| winter you probably consume a lot of heating fuel and
| therefore generate a lot of heat, which also dries things
| out. That's how it worked with old wood houses - you
| generated a ton of heat to dry them out.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Modern techniques include rainscreens behind cladding, so
| air can flow behind siding and/or roofing as well as
| dimple mats to allow drainage for your foundation.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Yeah, and those rain screens have a million staple holes
| in them right? Unless you seal every fastener hole with
| some sealant that will last 100 years, which I'm pretty
| sure would be a magical product, I sincerely doubt a
| modern house will be standing as long as mine is.
|
| Modern plastic paint, modern plastic building wrap, all
| these ideas of basically living inside a plastic hamster
| cage, they suffocate the living material (wood) that
| needs to breathe, and that allows rot and mold. The water
| eventually finds its way in because rain screen tape
| can't hold up for 50 years, the water gets in and has no
| good way to get out.
| sarchertech wrote:
| You know there are buildings built with OSB and wrapped
| in Tyvek that are older than 50 years and are still
| standing right?
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Do you think these houses will last hundreds of years? I
| don't.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Depends on maintenance. If a house can last 50 years it
| can probably last 100.
|
| Also remember, the vast majority of houses built in 1824
| didn't survive either. For the ones that did it's mostly
| down to maintenance.
| coryrc wrote:
| Lots of houses were built using poor techniques you
| reference. Nowadays, we're back to emphasizing breathable
| homes. Vapor barriers are out, vapor retarders are in.
| You use an air barrier because air movement is far more
| effective at moving moisture into a wall than vapor
| drive. We actually _engineer_ the amount of drying to be
| optimal in your climate and reduce the amount of energy
| the home uses.
| danans wrote:
| > those rain screens have a million staple holes in them
| right?
|
| Rain screens are mostly holes (empty space). That's how
| they allow drying of the exterior wall assembly.
|
| > Unless you seal every fastener hole with some sealant
| that will last 100 years, which I'm pretty sure would be
| a magical product, I sincerely doubt a modern house will
| be standing as long as mine is.
|
| Standing for 100 years isn't the sole metric of success
| of a house's envelope. There are many others: how much
| did it leak? how much energy did it consume to stay
| comfortable? how good was the air quality? what was the
| cost to maintain it? All of these have to be balanced and
| building science provides frameworks to achieve that.
|
| Using modern materials while adhering to building science
| results in very long lasting buildings, far longer than
| most homes built in the last 50 years.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| You can use traditional materials with a modern
| understanding and make a much better house, it just takes
| longer to build so this cheap, throwaway culture we're in
| looks down on it.
|
| Solid wood, not using latex paints or wrap, allowing the
| house to breathe where it needs to, and you can still
| have an R60 wall.
| danans wrote:
| > You can use traditional materials with a modern
| understanding and make a much better house, it just takes
| longer to build
|
| Agreed that you can, but as you imply, at a very high
| cost, especially when you don't use modern sheet goods
| like plywood that not only impede air movement, but
| provide sheer/racking resistance unmatched by traditional
| nailed solid board walls.
|
| > so this cheap, throwaway culture we're in looks down on
| it.
|
| Few can afford a custom built home, much less one with
| artisanal walls. If anything we have a culture that looks
| up to such artisanal buildings precisely because they are
| not accessible. Scalability is essential to any impactful
| building technology. The fact that plywood and OSB can be
| made at scale from low quality laminates and scraps was
| game changing.
|
| > Solid wood, not using latex paints or wrap, allowing
| the house to breathe where it needs to, and you can still
| have an R60 wall.
|
| An R60 wall perhaps, but one that leaks like a sieve. The
| leaking air will bring a lot of moisture and
| unconditioned air with it, which will in turn require a
| lot of energy to condition.
|
| Sure, solid wood will be more resilient to that moisture
| than plywood/OSB, but the swelling and contraction will
| create more leaks.
|
| There is a reason that for centuries people filled cracks
| in walls with any goopy substance they can find (mud,
| sap, tar, stucco). It's to stop those leaks. Modern vapor
| permeable but airtight house wraps (not latex) are just a
| continuation of that.
| hattmall wrote:
| Well the fundamental difference is that homes today are
| expected to be climate controlled year round. That
| negates pretty much any issues with normal moisture
| control. That being the case efficiency is a much larger
| concern.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| It matters where the cold condensing surface is in your
| wall, and what you do with that moisture.
|
| If you took a cross section of wall, and you have
| interior temp (20c) on the inside face of the wall and
| exterior temp on the outside face section of wall,
| somewhere inside that section you're hitting the dew
| point and condensation will form.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I hope longer because my house is 70 years old and all
| wood. It's single wall construction, also. I'm really
| enjoying not having to worry about plaster wallboard or
| anything since the wall boards are all actually wood,
| too. I do see boards that need to be replaced soon in the
| eaves but I live where it rains a lot so that's expected.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| As a European in US owning homes on both sides of the
| Atlantic - we are too fast to judge wood frame construction.
| After all the wood frame construction techniques came to the
| US from Europe.
|
| I can safely say that there's little difference between a
| good wood frame and masonry house, today. Modern concrete
| isn't as long lasting as Roman concrete from 2000 years ago.
| Modern concrete doesn't play well with water.
| sfn42 wrote:
| Modern concrete is what you need it to be. We know much
| more about concrete production today than the Romans did.
| We make compromises, it's not all about quality. If you're
| building a garage you're fine with it lasting 100+ years,
| you don't give a shit about 1000+ years. So you don't pay
| for the stuff that will last for ever. If you're a civil
| engineer designing a huge dam you go for the good concrete.
| You also test the concrete before pouring to make sure it's
| up to spec. Because your budget and priorities make that
| make sense.
| mannyv wrote:
| And yet, Frank Lloyd Wright made the wrong concrete
| choices at Falling Water. If he couldn't get it right
| then the average Joe won't get it right either.
| coryrc wrote:
| His buildings are known for being high-maintenance. I've
| had houses with 70-year-old concrete foundations that are
| perfectly functional.
| defrost wrote:
| Classic architect|designer fubar .. this is why they're
| great at conceptual design and mostly much weaker than
| they'd admit at pragmatic functional structural
| engineering.
|
| Not _all_ architects, to be clear, some really know their
| foundations but...
| JohnAaronNelson wrote:
| Don't blame Wright. The builder changed the design and
| didn't pick the right concrete.
| sfn42 wrote:
| I never claimed Frank Lloyd Wright knew more than the
| Romans..
| coryrc wrote:
| Steel-reinforced concrete does not perform well in salt
| water.
|
| You can use modern concrete without steel and build things
| about as good as Roman concrete. You'll pay a whole lot
| more than reinforced because you'll use at least 3x more
| concrete and limit the shape -- only arches. Compare
| Prague's Charles bridge[0] to Seattle's West Seattle
| bridge. Or compare the windows of the Roman Pantheon (uh,
| none) to those in any skyscraper.
|
| You won't have as much self-healing in salt water as some
| Roman concretes. But modern concretes also have far more
| compressive strength.
|
| You can still buy lime mortars and build brick masonry
| houses, if you want to pay for the labor; the materials
| themselves have never been cheaper.
|
| [0] Yes I know it isn't Roman nor especially made of
| concrete but there's a lot of good information on its
| construction and it's basically the perfection of Roman-
| style bridge building, and without reinforcement you need
| to build just like that.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > After all the wood frame construction techniques came to
| the US from Europe.
|
| As did the musket.
| hx8 wrote:
| > there's little difference between a good wood frame and
| masonry house, today
|
| The wood frame will do better in an earthquake. The masonry
| will do better in a flood or high winds. Consider the
| natural disaster risks of your local area when picking a
| home.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'm puzzled why would anyone make windows out of wood when
| PVC exists.
| woah wrote:
| It's required by law in San Francisco
| scotty79 wrote:
| Good to know. Wow. Just wow.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Because PVC windows last ~15 years, are massive, and are
| not structural, unless there are steel supports.
|
| Wood lasts a shit tonne longer, assuming you maintain it.
|
| The only thing really thats better is the thermal
| performance, and price.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Because PVC windows last ~15 years,
|
| It's completely untrue. I have PVC windows that after 30
| years are as good as new. Before that there were two
| glaze wooden windows that after 10 years were horrible.
| Not sure how bad they were from the start.
|
| > are massive,
|
| I see you might make smaller window out of wood (or pvc)
| but you'd have to sacrifice thermal isolation quality to
| do it. They are large because they have air pockets in
| them for isolation.
|
| > and are not structural, unless there are steel
| supports.
|
| Load bearing window? That's insane idea as well.
|
| > Wood lasts a shit tonne longer, assuming you maintain
| it.
|
| Yeah, so not really, because people don't maintain things
| on average.
|
| > The only thing really thats better is the thermal
| performance, and price.
|
| Which are the two most important qualities for a window,
| plus the ease of use which is better for pvc and stays
| better.
| JCM9 wrote:
| Provided it's kept free of moisture wood is an amazing
| construction material and super strong relative to weight.
| Provided it's harvested in a sustainable way it's also quite
| "green" relative to other products considering it's made
| primarily from CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > As a European, I was confused to read that wood was
| considered structural enough that they needed this...
|
| Another variable is how much the building moves. Being in an
| earthquake zone here in New Zealand makes me look at
| elaborate brick and stone buildings with a degree of
| nervousness.
| foofie wrote:
| > For normal construction tasks, I don't care one bit about
| this one bit. And you shouldn't either.
|
| I agree, and I'd go as far as to say that the author is a bit
| confused and showing some confirmation bias. Let me explain.
|
| Engineered wood indeed creates elements from imperfect timber
| that are free from defects and exhibit the same engineering
| properties, if not better.
|
| This has absolutely zero to do with old vs new growth trees. It
| is exclusively due to the need to maximize the amount of wood
| you can take out of a tree. Old growth trees might have more
| wood to pick and choose from, but nothing stops anyone from
| using the exact same techniques with timber from old growth
| trees.
|
| The only reason why you don't see as much old growth trees in
| this process is the fact that there aren't that many anymore.
|
| Another reason why you see new growth trees being used
| extensively in engineered wood products is that you can put
| together massive structural elements from smaller lumber
| elements, and they are far cheaper and plentiful.
|
| There's a story on how the renovation of Oxford's dining halls
| required massive oak trees which were hard to come by, but it
| turned out those who built Oxford's dining halls had the
| foresight of planting oak trees when they built the structure.
| They did so because they knew the beams would eventually have
| to be renovated.
|
| https://longnow.org/ideas/humans-and-trees-in-long-term-part...
|
| With engineered lumber you do not need to plan centuries ahead
| to have your structural elements. You just build the elements
| you need from the timber you have at your disposal.
| VHRanger wrote:
| > I agree, and I'd go as far as to say that the author is a
| bit confused and showing some confirmation bias. Let me
| explain.
|
| The author mostly cares about rot resistance in a window,
| though?
|
| New engineered wood products rarely help with this. We have
| treated wood, but if someone is making an exterior window
| they'll generally resort to using a rot resistant species
| (white oak, sapeeli, cedar in budget applications) that isn't
| the SPF we use in engineered lumber.
|
| I see this with my wooden windows from the 1990's - they're
| rotting and will have to be replaced wholesale. My wooden
| windows from pre-1960 on the other hand are restorable.
| bluGill wrote:
| And in both your 1990s windows and your pre 1960s windows
| modern windows are so much better that you should replace
| those windows just for the better insulation value.
| VHRanger wrote:
| You replace the glass for the insulation value. You don't
| need to (and shouldn't!!) replace a wooden frame.
|
| Replacing good wooden windows with vynil/aluminium
| windows is basically signing up to a subscription to the
| window company. You can't really restore that vynil crap,
| and the lifespan has a hard limit at 15 years when the
| double seal breaks.
|
| I'm just replacing the panes and restoring the wood. On
| the parts where the wood rotted out, I'm replacing the
| crappy cheap wood with rot resistant hardwoods.
|
| Modern windows aren't that much better. Window companies
| have good marketing.
|
| A 200 year old single pane window is R-1. Double pane is
| R-2, and with argon maybe R-3 or R-4.5
|
| Triple pane is R-3 to R-6 depending, and vacuum sealed
| glass is R-4 to R-14(!!! But no one buys that).
|
| Changing an old window to a new one is often a stark
| difference because the old window leaked air. Not because
| the R-value is much lower. You can fix that with
| reglazing.
| jajko wrote:
| Not sure where you buy from but good quality plastic
| windows have definitely more than 15 years durability. Ie
| ours are 20 and no sign of weakening isolation.
|
| We have cca proper winters (maybe not this year) and
| thermal+humidity sensors in most rooms so a badly
| insulating window/door would be noticed quickly.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Can you explain what CCA is?
|
| I live in Ontario, I also have proper winters. It's not
| so much the plastic windows I bought than the ones
| previous owners did.
|
| The argon seal eventually fails with enough cold/hot
| cycles, or wear on the silicon seal, etc.
|
| If you're a diligent homeowner, you probably minimize the
| temperature cycles and take care of the seals, they might
| last 25-30 years (especially if it's good quality units).
|
| If I'm buying a new window I want something that I can
| repair and maintain for a long time. So it's wood frame
| for me, and specifically a rot resistant wood species if
| possible (not old growth, unless it's reclaimed)
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Do you not realize how long is 15 years? Or how long is
| 25-30?
|
| The windows in our house, Hudson Valley(NY), are at least
| 30 years(all mechanical parts are labelled as "pre-1994")
| - they are not showing much wear... considering that we
| get -20C to +30C swings every year.
| VHRanger wrote:
| If you're paying $20k every 20 years, that averages out
| to a $80/month "window subscription" when itemized
|
| That said, my property is really old and has effectively
| all window types in one place or another. Because it had
| 15years of lack of maintenance I can see which are
| repairable, which aren't, and how fast each degraded.
|
| The really old windows aren't much of an issue (as OP
| said). Reglaze, reseal, performance is decent.
|
| Cheap wooden windows are more of a problem, but
| repairable and upgradeable.
|
| Cheap plastic windows have not fared well all. The
| plastic frame isn't in place due to heat/cold/UV exposure
| and they're a full replacement. They leak tremendous air
| and let bugs in.
|
| The aluminium windows have fared a lot better.
| jajko wrote:
| I guess Swiss quality is simply Swiss quality. If your
| windows after 15 years _leak bugs inside_ than my friend
| previous owner bought the cheapest of the cheapest
| possible from aliexpress of last decade(s), not even
| ultra cheap eastern European stuff is that bad that
| quickly.
|
| Overall, some folks love repairing old broken stuff (or
| need to due to financial circumstances). Most of us, our
| life satisfaction lies very much elsewhere and to spend
| our valuable remaining free time to just to learn
| properly and maintain such stuff that doesn't matter much
| in long run seems... unwise. Investing into relationships
| and intense experiences work generally better here.
|
| I see plenty of older folks who maintain their houses and
| garden around themselves (I mean proper gardens with
| fruits and veggies etc, not those uniform fugly mandatory
| US lawns). It takes so much of their energy that they
| have little time nor energy for some other serious
| hobbies, travel etc. Eventually in old age they can't
| keep up and its extremely depressing for them, since
| their effort is usually lost to their kids and they just
| get rid of that ol' house.
| VHRanger wrote:
| I don't doubt Swiss made stuff is much tighter and has
| better detailing than North American builder grade crap.
|
| For the "leaks bugs" part - ladybugs here will find a way
| in as soon as you have a 1.5-2mm gap. They find them all.
| It can be between the frame and the siding, the silicone
| caulk cracking, a mechanical window that doesn't quite
| close tight, or anything else. It's a nice confirmation
| that your window has failed and leaks air.
|
| With that said, I mean no offense to your beautiful
| country, but Swiss weather isn't as rigorous as Canadian
| weather. In the last week we've had a 36hour period with
| both +14c and -19c outdoor temperature. Our weather puts
| a lot of expansion stress on any outdoor facing material.
|
| > Overall, some folks love repairing old broken stuff (or
| need to due to financial circumstances).
|
| That's true. There's also a philosophical position that I
| don't like buying new when repairing isn't that hard.
| I've done it for TV's, computers, windows, etc. It's fun
| to learn how things work around you as well.
|
| > Investing into relationships and intense experiences
| work generally better here.
|
| I don't think they exclude each other at all
|
| > I see plenty of older folks who maintain their houses
| and garden around themselves
|
| For what it's worth, it's one of the better hobbies for
| retired people. It gets them outside and moving. Being
| close to nature is good for you as well.
|
| Ideally they'd have hobbies that would keep them close to
| other people (the best thing for you), but all in all
| it's much better to be out gardening than on Facebook
| rotting their brain.
| bluGill wrote:
| I consider leaked air part of the r-value, but you are
| correct that is the real problem. It isn't just the
| windows, it is the seal between the window and frame, and
| the frame itself that are also problems.
|
| If you can fix old windows to be good - then good. I
| fully agree modern windows are not great, but R-2 is
| still better than 1.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > the double seal breaks
|
| That's the seal between the panes of glass that make up
| the cartridge, has nothing to do with what the frame is
| made of. Replacing it when the seal fails is pretty
| trivial.
| VHRanger wrote:
| You're correct. But that's also the point at which people
| generally realize the plastic has cracked or bent and is
| leaking air, etc. etc.
| shagie wrote:
| > Engineered wood indeed creates elements from imperfect
| timber that are free from defects and exhibit the same
| engineering properties, if not better.
|
| Tangent - some research from the '60s that shows the impact
| of the computer age on the timber industry:
|
| CROMAX - A Crosscut First Computer Simulation Program to
| Determine Cutting Yield (1963)
| https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA134223.pdf
|
| Development of a Computer Method for Predicting Lumber
| Cutting Yields (1967)
| https://www.nrs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/rp/rp_nc015.pdf
|
| Veneer Recovery Prediction and Analysis Through Computer
| Simulation (1969)
| https://wfs.swst.org/index.php/wfs/article/view/398/398
|
| Note that these are not frequently referenced PDFs and I
| occasionally had difficulty with the first click for them.
|
| ---
|
| > There's a story on how the renovation of Oxford's dining
| halls ...
|
| https://longnow.org/ideas/humans-and-trees-in-long-term-
| part...
|
| > In all likelihood, the story is a blend of myth and
| reality. While the College, in keeping with standard woodland
| practices in Britain, has always kept groves of oaks intended
| for construction purposes, it isn't clear that any particular
| set of trees was officially designated to replace the beams
| of the College dining hall
|
| Another example (more grounded in modern times and less
| myth)...
|
| https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-manages-its-
| own...
|
| https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2020/11/constitution-grove-
| the-n...
|
| https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2015/05/11/the-wooden-
| wall...
| Arrath wrote:
| > For normal construction tasks, I don't care one bit about
| this one bit.
|
| The only thing about it that I care about is the sheer amount
| of time wasted as a kid standing around the lumber yard as my
| dad rummaged through the entire bin grumbling about how shit
| wood was these days, full of knots, not a straight board in
| sight, etc.
|
| Well, yeah, dad, you (literally, he was a logger) cut down all
| the good shit!
| ChoGGi wrote:
| The wood is shipped wet, you have to let it dry out while
| strapped, or it'll be hockey sticks.
|
| Good shops will buy better grades and store it inside a
| warehouse instead of a yard. That's how you can get straight
| 20' 2x4s for making forms (or whatever).
| VHRanger wrote:
| Yeah, drying wood in the sun in one big reason for warping.
|
| Big box stores sell you wet wood - when you have it on the
| construction site it'll start warping and checking as it
| gets exposed to sun
| mapt wrote:
| I don't think they sell a lot of green (fresh) lumber. At
| my big box store on the East Coast:
|
| For indoor structural construction, they're selling "kiln
| dried, 19% or below" Southern-Yellow-Pine or Spruce-Pine-
| Fir categories, specified in #2 quality grade or better.
| This SYP KD19 #2BTR mark or SPF KD19 #2BTR mark is
| lumber-industry-standard. It's stamped on the wood.
|
| For outdoor construction like decks, they'll sell you
| copper-compound pressure treated wood which is indeed
| rather wet, and dyed green.
|
| And then in a tiny section at the back, they'll sell you
| a single, large doug fir board green, as well as two SKUs
| of engineered LVL boards for bearing beams. Mostly you
| see Doug Fir more on the West Coast.
|
| You can tell green / wet / fresh wood with a moisture
| meter, but you can also just pick it up - it will be up
| to four times as heavy.
|
| KD19 is a maximum rating for structural uses. In reality
| they're often taking it significantly further than that
| in the kiln depending on the distributor (10%, 12%), but
| not quite as dry as the indoor of a house either. Drying
| distortion with KD19 is nonzero, but usually something
| small enough that you can ignore it with typical
| construction techniques. Large 2x12 SYP boards generate
| the most complaints, because the wood likes to warp more
| than others, and 2x12 is so large you're not going to get
| it sawn with a clean grain pattern.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Ah right it was decking 6x6 that warped in the sun.
|
| How do you prepare those after buying before building?
| jugg1es wrote:
| Big box stores do not sell green wood. They sell kiln
| dried wood. The wood warps at the construction site if it
| is stacked without proper air flow around all sides. It
| takes years to dry wood without a kiln.
| jplona wrote:
| My local big orange store sells both, there's a green
| pile and a KD pile.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Eventually, you do find yourself caring, when you can't find a
| single decent bit of construction lumber in the country.
|
| Wood in Portugal is laughably bad - they cut down all of their
| domestic stock of commercially viable construction lumber
| decades ago, and the domestic lumber industry feeds pulp and
| pellets exclusively, as there's not much other use for
| eucalyptus and soft, twisted white pine.
|
| Where this then leaves one is with imports - and it appears
| lumber producing companies sell their waste to Portugal to be
| sold as the only product available - honestly, everything has
| huge bark inclusions, pith, rotted out chunks, knots that
| bisect the entire piece, you name it. Can't dry it either -
| leave it loose and it twists through 180 degrees. Strap it and
| it splits into splinters. Do it slow and it grows mushrooms.
|
| I ended up importing everything from Estonia, where they know
| how to manage slow-growing forestry reserves. People literally
| came from the local villages to come admire the wood like it
| was an alien spacecraft - Baltic pine, but nice tight stuff
| that hasn't flinched in 40 degree daily cycles.
| porknubbins wrote:
| One thing about advesives- they are not stronger than original
| materials against all types of loads. Break an 8 ft 2x4 in half
| and glue it back together, then jump on it, where will it break
| next time? Right in the glued spot. I'm no engineer but have
| seen this lots of times because the original failure is usually
| at the point of maximum stress so glue there is not a fix.
| logical_proof wrote:
| Glueing endgrain to endgrain is not the proper way. Try a lap
| joint and you'll be surprised at the strength of the face to
| face glue bond.
|
| Disregard: I misread what you were saying. Shoulda had a v8.
| perrygeo wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that old growth timber operations and
| lumber products ARE actually reproducible forever with
| intensive management on a small scale. With what some might say
| is proper respect for the forests. You will get wildlife, and
| recreation, and cultural values, and food gathering, and
| hunting, and strategic timber harvest that provide
| physical/monetary value. You may not get the volume of 2x4s out
| of Home Depot, but it is is, technically and ecologically, a
| forever sustainable source of wood. Until the sun stops
| shining.
| earthwalker99 wrote:
| so it's possible but not under capitalism
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not possible under any system where the median
| American house is over 2,000 square feet. In a system like
| say colonial India, you can build things out of old growth
| hard woods (but the majority of the population lives in a
| hut).
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| Hell, why build with wood at all when other materials
| like bamboo are around? Because nobody is trying to sell
| you bamboo. Our use of wood has everything to do with
| market effects run amok.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Because bamboo is really bad at many things we do with
| wood.
|
| Wood is different. Each type of wood has its advantage
| and disadvantage. A pine tree is more different to a
| Maple tree than you are to a great white shark in the
| evolution chart.
|
| If bamboo could be easily used to make SPF studs we'd be
| all over it - it's a $100B industry and bamboo grows
| extremely easily.
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| > Because bamboo is really bad at many things we do with
| wood.
|
| This is simply not true for use as a material for
| buildings, which is why it's used as a replacement for
| wood all across east asia.
| navi0 wrote:
| This: https://rizomebamboo.com/
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Not in practice. It only takes one economic downturn, or one
| opportunistic local governement to loosen the reigns, for
| that forest to be gone in months. This is what has been
| happening all over Europe over the last decade.
| perrygeo wrote:
| > one opportunistic local governement to loosen the reigns
|
| Absolutely true, which is why I emphasized "intensive
| management on a small scale". This is rather unlike current
| forest governance schemes which are mostly "industrial
| management on a large scale".
|
| Honestly, to do this right, you'd need a huge cultural
| shift towards living and working in a rural forest, along
| with direct local control and long-term strategic
| management. Which describes some forest-dwelling cultures
| of the past but very few today.
| marttt wrote:
| Overly intensive forest management is a huge problem in my
| country these days. Nonetheless, the general progress in wood
| processing technologies does feel remarkable. I remember
| discussions on somehow pre-processing softer wood like alder or
| aspen (or maybe it was still birch) to make it stronger, and
| then and then using it for building structures. This is
| interesting for sure (considering how quickly these species
| grow), even if one would philosophically side with the
| environmentalists.
| singlepaynews wrote:
| Can this line of thought be extended to MDF board, which I have
| a revealed preference for? (revealed preference == I notice
| that I keep choosing to use MDF board in my projects,
| regardless of my opinions on wood)
| cfn wrote:
| There are different grades of MDF each with a specific
| density. I suppose that a denser MDF will last longer, it
| certainly is heavier and stronger.
| Bluestrike2 wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with MDF for certain applications. You
| just have to recognize the tradeoffs and how they affect the
| piece. Anyhow, to answer your question, there are different
| grades and qualities of MDF. If you go to a local plywood
| supplier, you'll find they tend to source higher-quality MDF
| than you'll get at a home improvement store like Home Depot.
| The same goes for plywood and even the small selection of
| hardwoods home improvement stores carry. If you can find a
| wholesaler who doesn't have minimum order sizes, it can even
| be less expensive. Just don't expect them to break the sheets
| down to fit in a car.
|
| High quality MDF tends to be denser, has a more consistent
| surface quality, and the composition of the wood fibers tends
| to be finer and more consistently distributed throughout the
| board. You'll get finer quality cuts (though 99% of the time,
| you'll want to edge band the MDF anyhow), for example. That
| said, you don't really go and get a stock list ordered by MDF
| density (beyond normal and lightweight MDF, anyhow). It's
| more just a characteristic of the better quality MDF, with
| relatively minor density differences between brands/product
| lines.
|
| The bigger benefit is that they're much more likely to stock
| certified low and no-added-formaldehyde MDF, which make a big
| difference in formaldehyde off-gassing. Some people are more
| sensitive to it than others, and the last thing you want is
| for a beautifully veneered furniture piece to have to be
| returned because it's irritating the hell out of someone's
| eyes and nose.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| For windows, specifically, you _do_ want the characteristics of
| old growth lumber. The stability matters a great deal for a
| window. You don 't want your windows to stick because the
| sashes are warped, and the increased rot-resistance of the
| heartwood helps ensure durability despite imperfections in the
| paint job.
|
| Everything you've said is true for general construction, but
| the fine article is addressing windows specifically.
| creer wrote:
| I recently ran into nice furniture for local traditional asian
| use that used finger jointed wood stock throughout - and looked
| perfectly nicely, carefully done and finished as one might
| expect. I was surprised but there it was. (I don't know if it
| was made in Japan). When used deliberately, even visible
| finger-jointed engineered wood stock can look perfectly fine in
| a carefully made item.
| waltbosz wrote:
| I group up in an area where all the houses were built in the
| 1930s. All old growth lumber. At one point, the University of
| Delaware was buying up houses on my street, including one
| directly across the street from mine. A crew came along an took
| the house apart and loaded the lumber onto a flatbed truck.
|
| I'm not sure where the lumber went to, but it was pretty cool to
| watch.
|
| They just left the lot empty with grass and a few trees.
| User23 wrote:
| The sad thing is there's no good reason not to have 100 year wood
| readily available.
|
| Suppose you have 100 acres. Every year you harvest one, replant
| it, and move on to the next. In a century you'll have an annual
| harvest of excellent wood. But what will happen instead is
| whoever ends up with the land will clear cut it, take the big
| payday, and plant fast growing junk if they replant at all.
| ejb999 wrote:
| worse yet, there is a very vocal set of people (many on HN)
| that want to force you to develop your land in order to build
| more housing by imposing unaffordable land taxes on undeveloped
| land - very short sighted.
|
| for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38276883
| bluGill wrote:
| If you have land in a city then you are wasting it by not
| developing it, and that harms the city. If you have rural
| land though there isn't any reason not to grow something for
| long term.
| ipqk wrote:
| Yeah, so short-sighted that we now live in the worst housing
| crisis in history, with rampant homelessness due to lack of
| housing and people barely being able to afford to live.
| ortusdux wrote:
| In my opinion, living old grown trees >> old growth wood > new
| growth wood.
|
| Modern 'new growth' forestry is very sustainable, but old growth
| poaching still happens quite often in the US. I have friends on
| the regulatory side of logging and I've see illegal activity
| first hand.
|
| I know that this article is not advocating for the logging of old
| growth trees, but focusing on the idea that 'old growth is
| better' can cause customers to value it enough that the extra
| profit incentivizes illegal harvesting.
|
| Personally, I would like to see densified wood become a viable
| option. Even lightly densified new growth meets or exceeds the
| qualities of old growth wood.
|
| https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/new-densified-wood-...
|
| https://jwoodscience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s1008...
| joshspankit wrote:
| My takeaway was not that we should harvest old-growth (doing so
| is inherently unsustainable), but that we should not throw out
| old growth wood when we find it (say for example when tearing
| down a house)
| ortusdux wrote:
| I know that was the spirit of the writeup, but I think it's
| important to be mindful of the big picture.
|
| It reminds me of the struggle with the ivory trade. If you
| want to stop ivory poaching, the logical step is to ban the
| sale of ivory. Unfortunately, if the demand is still there,
| this new scarcity will drive up the price and incentivize
| more aggressive poaching.
|
| The solution is to also target the demand. When billiards had
| a boom in popularity during the 1860's, a firm put out a
| $10,000 reward for anyone that could make a better
| alternative to ivory billiard balls. This led to the
| invention of the first synthetic polymer. The firm was able
| to corner the growing billiards ball market while
| undercutting the demand for ivory. The invention, for better
| or worse, also created the synthetic/polymer/plastic
| industry.
|
| The problem is that old growth wood _is_ better. This is why
| I would like to large scale densified wood product production
| take off. In theory, you can take a cheap sustainable product
| and turn it into a superior, stronger, longer lasting
| alternative.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Glulam is rocketing in popularity, though.
|
| It's a good product, carbon-negative, strong, fire
| resistant, etc.
|
| Northern Europe already uses it a lot, it's starting to
| come to North America slowly.
| amenhotep wrote:
| I looked up glulam and it was immediately recognisable as
| the giant wooden structural beams I've noticed in my
| local Tesco, so yes, can confirm :) very interesting
| thing to learn, I'd been struck by how massive they were
| but never really thought any deeper about it.
| robocat wrote:
| Recovering the wood from old houses costs a lot - mostly crew
| time. Demolition crews do recover the most valuable wood
| (large beams, planks and panels of rarer wood species that
| are no longer available). Safety and speed also matter.
|
| Meanwhile the market for the recovered wood is limited. I've
| never seen someone use second hand wood for framing
| commercially (and I would suspect trying to do so would cause
| code or inspection issues). People building for themselves
| might - but they also often recover the wood themselves too.
|
| Just my observations from watching many houses get demolished
| (still happening over a decade after earthquake here in
| Christchurch).
|
| Recovered wood of nice old wood (particularly Rimu) does get
| used in furniture.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I caught up with an old friend a few weeks ago that just
| started a new career as a reclaimed wood salesman. Thanks
| to Pinterest, home improvement shows, etc, demand is at an
| all time high.
|
| According to my friend, the largest seller of reclaimed
| wood in the US is a subsidiary of a fencing company that
| happens to have a significant number of government
| contracts to fence in federal grazing land. They replace
| their fencing every ~5 years and then sell the wood as
| reclaimed at a significant markup. It is technically
| reclaimed, but he said that they have to spend a lot of
| time removing those stapled on lumber yard price tags.
|
| Less reputable operations force age lumber in the sun or
| use hydrogen peroxide, and then just lie about it being
| reclaimed.
|
| His company mostly sources their wood from the demolition
| of old barns and warehouses. The senior sales people that
| trained him said that their job use to be much easier as
| they could just offer demo companies free removal. Now the
| DIY crowd is going around offering to buy boards off
| structures, and owners are starting to view that old
| eyesore of a barn as a cash cow. They had to bring on more
| sales people just to do the leg work and negotiate with
| owners.
|
| Anyway, that convo is what was on my mind when I reacted
| negatively to the main post.
| njarboe wrote:
| It is not inherently unsustainable but practically so. You
| can cut down one thousand year old tree per year for every
| thousand trees of similar size. I have not done the
| calculation but maybe a few trees per square mile per year.
| ivm wrote:
| _> Modern 'new growth' forestry is very sustainable_
|
| It is not, I live in southern Chile, my house is right next to
| a _Radiata Pine_ plantation. The ecological damage of pine and
| eucalyptus plantations is immense - the loss of biodiversity,
| the excessive water consumption, the poisoning of other types
| of vegetation, the degraded state of the soil after clearcut
| logging, etc.
|
| Plus the social damage, lots of those plantations are on
| indigenous lands stolen by various machinations in the past.
|
| Plus the heightened fire risk because of the pyrophoric nature
| of pine and eucalyptus trees. Native forests show much greater
| resistance to the propagation of wildfires which have become a
| yearly catastrophe in Chile in the past decade.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| > Plus the social damage, lots of those plantations are on
| indigenous lands stolen by various machinations in the past.
|
| How is this "social damage" the fault of the forestry company
| and not the folks who took the land 200 years ago?
|
| All land is stolen, as I'm sure the indigenous tribe in Chile
| who lived there took it from someone else who was already
| there. I'm not asking the modern ancestors of the Normans to
| give me back my ancestor's Anglo Saxon lands in
| Northumberland. Nor am I blaming them for it 1,000 years
| later.
| julianeon wrote:
| I think your time factor is off. It's not 1,000 years ago,
| or 200 years ago. In Brazil for example, it's often closer
| to 'yesterday' - it's happening right now. Imagine a mix of
| forgery, assault and theft, all of which is blatantly
| illegal.
|
| See this link from Yale:
|
| Piaui is what Brazilians call a grileiro, a land-grabber --
| someone who invades Indigenous or public land, or land that
| simply does not belong to them, before claiming it as their
| own. They frequently use fake documentation to carry out
| activities such as illegal logging, mining and real estate
| speculation.
|
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/land-grabbers-the-growing-
| ass...
| ornel wrote:
| "All land is stolen" is a very lazy statement. Lots of land
| in this planet is occupied peacefully. It's just that
| Europeans have been doing it to each other and the rest of
| the world
| rmah wrote:
| In fairness, _everyone_ has been doing it to each other
| for millennia.
| kyleee wrote:
| Ahh yes, Europeans are the only ones who've done conquest
| through history. Sounds credible
| ivm wrote:
| As the other person said, these events are often much
| closer. For example, the Selk'Nam genocide happened in the
| first decade of the 20th century, the company owners behind
| it were never prosecuted, and the generational wealth have
| carried on to the present day. Then you have 20th century
| Latin American dictatorships that also redistributed the
| lands to their cronies.
|
| According to the World Bank, "indigenous communities
| safeguard 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity and
| forests on their land are better maintained", and with less
| and less unoccupied land available, there are a lot of
| forces interested in displacing them.
|
| _> All land is stolen, as I'm sure the indigenous tribe in
| Chile who lived there took it from someone else who was
| already there._
|
| Not necessarily, many tribes in the southern part of South
| America were first to settle here in the past 12,000 years.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Indigenous people still exist and are actively trying to
| regain control over lands they never ceded title to.
|
| So ongoing logging and resource projects which preclude
| indigenous use of the land is active current day
| colonialism.
|
| It's not some thing that happened 200 years ago it's active
| current day choices that persist the status quo.
| yborg wrote:
| There was actually a company that specialized in salvaging sunken
| logs from old lumber operations in Lake Superior.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/24/us/with-timber-scarce-old...
|
| Company went out of business (ran out of logs?) in 2015.
| c6400sc wrote:
| There's a movement to leave new growth trees in the ground longer
| for additional carbon capture:
|
| https://www.sightline.org/forest-long-rotation-harvests/
|
| I wonder what impact this has on the final product.
| amluto wrote:
| > The value of old growth lumber is the reason we should NOT
| throw out old windows.
|
| Your 100 year old window probably has single paned glass, lead
| paint (which is an unmitigated disaster on a double hung window,
| possibly exceeding the degree of hazard from every other lead
| painted part of a house combined), and is likely installed in an
| uninsulated wall without a proper sill flashing.
|
| That last point is worth some consideration. Essentially every
| window ever made either leaks or will leak. A small leak from a
| protected window [0] into an uninsulated wall cavity may not be
| terribly damaging. Add insulation and it's a different story.
| Fortunately (per code! although many contractors completely
| ignore it for residential construction), newly installed windows
| are installed over a sill pan or other flashing that collects the
| water that leaks through the visible sill and directs it toward
| the outside.
|
| So, sure, _maybe_ it's worth the money to remove a double hung
| window, carefully and safely remove all the paint, retrofit an
| insulated glass unit into it, and reinstall it with proper
| flashings. Or you can buy a new window and trash the old one.
|
| [0] Old architecture was generally much better than new
| architecture at having little details that direct rain away from
| walls, windows and doors.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > lead paint (which is an unmitigated disaster on a double hung
| window, possibly exceeding the degree of hazard from every
| other lead painted part of a house combined),
|
| I'm drawing a blank; why is lead more dangerous there than
| elsewhere?
| amluto wrote:
| Because you end up with lead-painted surfaces that rub
| against each other when you open and close the window, which
| can turn the paint into a fine airborne powder.
|
| Other than that, lead and its common compounds as used in
| paint are solids and are ordinarily pretty good at staying
| put. Unless you chew on the wall or the paint is damaged,
| lead painted surfaces may not be immediate hazards if you
| leave them alone.
| ipqk wrote:
| Paint can flake off in other areas too (like corners where
| pets & humans brush constantly against it). For adults,
| this is not a big deal because we'll just eventually sweep
| it or vacuum it, but for babies or pets, they may eat it
| which is very bad.
| VHRanger wrote:
| The problem with the new window is that people are most likely
| to buy a window that is unrepairable and will fail in 15 years.
|
| So changing a wood window for vynil/plastic/aluminium is
| signing up to a subscription to the window company.
|
| Also, the nice thing is that everything you described above is
| easily DIY'able (yes, even the lead paint).
| amluto wrote:
| For the amount of money you'll pay a competent contractor to
| strip, re-glaze, repaint, and replace the sash in an old
| window, you can buy a _nice_ new window. With an engineered
| and tested sealing system that will keep drafts out a _lot_
| better than whatever you retrofit into your old window.
|
| Also, in cold climates, you're up against physics. The inner
| surface of the glass, especially around the edges, gets cold.
| If you keep your interior air at a comfortable humidity level
| on a cold night, water will condense onto the glass. Some of
| it will drip onto the frame. Over the course of a few years,
| even really nice wood will not really appreciate this.
|
| So maybe don't get a window with wood around the glass in a
| cold climate.
| VHRanger wrote:
| My point is you can DIY that strip/reglaze work. If you
| contract it out it will be expensive, yes.
|
| Wood windows on the old property have fared much better
| than plastic or aluminum. Plastic fared the worst.
|
| Condensation will happen, but wood won't rot unless it
| can't dry out. It can dry out because you heat the house
| for one.
|
| That said any material will take damage if you let water
| intrusion (plastic frames too!)
|
| If water gets behind paint in painted wood, it'll rot.
|
| Some windows have better details for this - the trim and
| sill are sloped so that any water will naturally drip out
| instead of gathering.
|
| The windows that survived a long time tend to have those
| trim details that seem esthetic but are really functional.
| amluto wrote:
| The condensation issue isn't necessarily water intrusion
| -- the cases I've seen on windows in otherwise good
| condition were repeated wetting of the inside surface of
| the wood at the bottom of the glass.
|
| This won't rot most wood, especially in cold weather. But
| it's terrible for the finish and the appearance, and it
| can cause brittleness and splitting.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Yes, these things mostly happens because people get
| important details wrong.
|
| It might be bad flashing on the exterior, bad trim
| details on the interior, or not heating the windows
| appropriately in the winter, etc.
|
| Seeing these sort of issues as I renovate houses I've
| owned made me realize the difference between bottom
| dollar and paying for quality. And also stuff that
| masquerades as quality but is overpriced junk.
| amluto wrote:
| I've seen this in a nice, well-constructed, fairly well
| insulated, fairly well-sealed house. The outdoor
| nighttime temperature would be 0F or down to -10F or so
| on an ordinary winter night.
|
| At 65F, 50% RH inside, the dew point is 46F. If you like
| sleeping warmer, 72F, 50% RH has a dew point of 52F. Most
| people like sleeping with shades or blinds closed, so
| somehow the inner glass surface, hiding behind window
| treatments, needs to be kept above the dew point or
| condensation needs to be tolerated. There's a ~20 degree
| difference permitted between room air and the glass
| surface and the remaining 50-60 degrees between glass
| surface and outside. That's a tall order to avoid
| condensation.
|
| One can maintain a lower humidity (which is easier to do
| on a poorly sealed house). 30% RH at 72F pushes the dew
| point below 40F. Lower humidity also reduces the _rate_
| of condensation and speeds up drying in the daytime.
|
| > bad flashing on the exterior
|
| I don't see how exterior flashing affects this. It's an
| interior problem.
|
| > bad trim details on the interior
|
| Well, yes, I guess? If you make whatever interior surface
| touches the glass be impervious to water (fiberglass,
| vinyl or aluminum, for example, although aluminum has its
| own thermal issues), then maybe you don't care about
| condensation. If you use very very well-insulating
| windows (triple paned with warm spacers, for example),
| you can actually reduce condensation.
|
| > not heating the windows appropriately in the winter
|
| The only houses I've seen that heat the windows either
| have forced air vents or radiators by the exterior walls.
| This is a somewhat outdated practice to help compensate
| for poorly insulated walls. Old houses may also have very
| low interior humidity, further reducing the problem.
|
| I'd rather have a comfy house with comfortable humidity,
| built to tolerate a comfortable humidity. If that means
| aluminum-clad or fiberglass windows, so be it.
| VHRanger wrote:
| > That's a tall order to avoid condensation.
|
| Oh, indoor condensation absolutely will happen. Even in a
| new build that's up to "passive house certification"
| levels of well-insulated.
|
| You just have to design around this truth.
|
| > I don't see how exterior flashing affects this. It's an
| interior problem.
|
| It's a much bigger problem than what you're talking
| about. Water and moisture come between the window frame
| and the wall frame.
|
| > I'd rather have a comfy house with comfortable
| humidity, built to tolerate a comfortable humidity.
|
| But any decent wood DOES tolerate humidity. It won't if
| you do stupid things, like put latex paint on the
| interior side.
|
| The problem you'd see with wood windows not tolerating
| the minuscule amount of water you're mentioning with
| condensation is simply because someone messed something
| up. They built a frame out of SPF wood. They painted over
| it with latex. Or both.
|
| A window frame made out of any decent wood will last a
| century of the condensation moisture you're mentioning.
| I've renovated more than one century houses and I see the
| difference. The wood windows that rotted were either
| because of exterior issues, or latex paint on the
| interior, or wood that should simply not be used to make
| a window.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I never seen failed pvc window after decades of zero
| maintenance. I own maybe 25 window panes and can't imagine
| wanting to own a single wooden one.
| VHRanger wrote:
| You probably don't have the same definition of "failed" as
| I do.
|
| If it leaks air, it failed. There are easy ways to test
| that.
|
| Most people only think of mechanical failure, or the double
| glaze popping as failure.
|
| You can do simple tests to see if your windows have failed,
| and I'm sure after "decades of zero maintenance" most of
| yours have.
| scotty79 wrote:
| In Europe apartments are pretty much air tight. Any
| source of air in there are window and door "leaks". If
| you don't have enough of them then pressure of the
| ventilation can be high enough to suck the air through
| the p-traps in your plumbing. So PVC windows have built-
| in "leaks" in form of slightly opening them so that seals
| on them are no longer sealed. Or even separate holes with
| filters and regulated (non-airtight) barriers that allow
| adjustable (but never down to zero) air intake.
|
| Because of that I don't consider any window that can't be
| made air-tight to be a failed window because otherwise
| I'd have to consider some of them to never be working by
| design because they have separate holes in them exactly
| to prevent air-tightness.
|
| All of this is necessary because in general PVC windows
| can be way more air-tight than wood windows and stay air-
| tight way longer. Which is harmful to homes with
| ventilation that doesn't have dedicated air intake.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| A historic home [c1920] in my neighborhood had an elevator
| installed; I ended up fishing out four 3ft 4x12 segments, and
| they're absolutely fantastic (color, density, rings, smell).
|
| No clue what I'll ever do with these, but they seemed too cool to
| just garbage.
| netcoyote wrote:
| I experienced the decrease in wood quality firsthand when I
| worked for my dad's business building custom wine cellars. I
| worked in the factory building wine racks for a couple of years
| after graduating high school in the 1980's, and then infrequently
| helped install cellars until he retired in the 2010. (It was a
| great opportunity to travel the world and install cellars in
| exotic places like Japan, Singapore, & etc.)
|
| The early cellars were all constructed using redwood, which was
| at that time plentiful and inexpensive ($0.20/lineal foot for
| 1x2). Redwood is easy to work with because it's harder than pine
| but softer than walnut and oak, so easy to saw and pin. "Clear
| heart" wood from the center of the tree doesn't warp much if
| stored well. It's also absorbent and so takes glue well.
|
| We particularly liked using redwood for wine cellars because it's
| resistive to mold due to the high tannin content. Wine cellars
| are susceptible to mold because the cellar's refrigeration is
| designed to keep a high humidity level (70-80%) so as to prevent
| "ullage" (loss of liquid due to evaporation). Corks are semi-
| permeable, and so wine evaporates through the corks due to
| osmotic pressure.
|
| Because I visited my dad's factory infrequently, I found the
| changes in wood noticeable -- the same way it's surprising how
| much my friend's kids have grown since I last saw them, unlike my
| kids who I see daily!
|
| Over time redwood became increasingly expensive, and the quality
| lower, with more "A grade" wood containing sapwood instead of the
| clear heart wood we preferred, and fewer tree rings. Wine racks
| use quite a large number of small pieces -- lengths of 1x1, about
| 0.75" x 0.75" -- and at that small size the lower quality of the
| wood meant more pieces were unusable due to issues with the
| grain. It's important to select for good wood grain so that folks
| don't stick their hands in a wine rack and pull back a bleeding
| stump filled with redwood splinters, which are nasty because the
| tannin in the wood also prevents the body from disolving them
| easily.
|
| Over time we switched to other sustainably-farmed wood like
| jarrah and mahogany, though those woods were super hard to work
| with -- they chewed up saw blades and were hard to get pins
| through.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| Is this true for wood that's from the same species of tree? How
| much of the wider growth rings are attributable to increasing co2
| levels? I'm really curious what the mechanism is.
|
| Like, I'm half inclined to assume the new growth tree is a pine
| (they grow really fast ) and the old growth is some hardwood.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Yes, it is for the same species.
|
| I have old growth red pine and modern pine in my property, the
| old growth stuff is so much heavier and stronger it's comical.
|
| As said in the OP, it's largely because the old trees are much
| older, so the wood is simply denser.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I don't believe they are. I don't believe it because I've
| removed "new" Douglas fir trees and enjoyed the tight grain
| lumber. The growing conditions and age are important, not
| when they were grown. Old growth is just old trees grown in
| natural forest conditions. That still happens all over
| Oregon.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Yes, growing conditions are certainly most important. Old
| growth had particular growing conditions - a very high and
| dense canopy for once.
|
| Species is also more important FWIW! If you're making a
| window you should get a rot resistant species, not old
| growth stuff.
|
| The point in OP is that if you find old growth stuff, hey,
| try to keep it because it's probably really good wood.
| brianm wrote:
| I'm not sure how this applies in softwoods (like the hemlock &
| fir type stuff usually used in construction), but it is not
| really so obvious that slow growth (tight rings) is better than
| fast growth (wide rings) in hardwoods. The fast growth wood is
| usually much less likely to shatter or split under strain --
| which for some purposes (anything delicate, or with staked
| construction such as Windsor chairs, basically stuff which needs
| to bend some under use) is preferable.
|
| I'd need to break out my
| [Hoadley](https://www.tauntonstore.com/understanding-wood-2nd-
| edition-...) to confirm, but my belief is that you are trading
| modulus of elasticity for modulus of rupture.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is pretty convincing. We should all cut down the old trees
| for homes. The new stuff isn't very good.
| deutz_allis wrote:
| I live in a 'century home'. Old growth is really neat and
| something to be cherished. At the same time modern engineered
| lumber products like LVL's, OSB with insulation and
| weatherproofing and other innovations should be respected for the
| purpose they help serve. A lot of older homes in my area are
| using these new methods and products to keep older structures
| alive for the next century, with improvements in moisture control
| and insulation/energy usage along the way.
|
| Everything in a good balance.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _Sixty years ago, timber companies began to grow Radiata Pine
| in countries like New Zealand and Chile. Grown for quick
| production, these trees produce very little heartwood and these
| trees have fewer growth rings per inch._
|
| So is the difference between old growth and new growth primarily
| in the type of trees? Or are there other factors that contribute
| to speed of growth?
| JCM9 wrote:
| One of the many reasons older homes (especially pre WWII) are way
| better built. Older homes use bigger timber of old growth. Newer
| homes used smaller diameter timber of new growth. There's no
| comparison. Provided it was taken care of I'd take a pre WWII
| home over something much newer all day long. You can always
| update cosmetic issues but you can fix the inferior structural
| construction of newer homes. There's a reason why "This Old
| House" is a popular thing in places like the Northeast.
| ourmandave wrote:
| One of my favorite ads was a lumber company showing how they
| plant two trees for every one they cut down, and framing it like
| they were preserving nature.
|
| When in fact they were planting future trees they planned to cut
| down, like a farmer planting corn, just on a longer time line.
| zip1234 wrote:
| The article isn't fully accurate. For example old growth is not
| more knot free. That depended on a lot of factors. Maybe the wood
| used for windows was more knot free but that is a different
| matter entirely. Here is a counterpoint article:
| https://www.finewoodworking.com/forum/old-growth-vs-second-g...
| bitmagier wrote:
| Whether wood grows fast or slow depends mainly on the tree
| species. Nowadays, you find still good wood for furniture and
| windows from oak trees for instance. It's just more expensive.
| jrexpr wrote:
| > The difference between old growth wood and new growth wood is
| like the difference between granite and paper. Old growth wood
| has better stability, durability and longevity. New growth wood
| and the windows they're made of, begin to rot and warp after only
| twenty years.
|
| To help salvage, recycle or reuse wood products, the American
| Wood Counsil has a website: https://reusewood.org/
| danans wrote:
| If you do't have old growth wood windows to preserve, but are
| looking for a long lasting alternative, consider fiberglass
| framed windows. Fiberglass can be made to look like almost
| anything, and unlike some other modern materials (i.e. metals),
| it's a good insulator.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Any structural engineer or serious lumber person will tell you
| this is wrong.
|
| In fact, if you go over to the Reddit discussion on this post,
| they all agree.
|
| New growth has much fewer knots and issues because they are grown
| in a way that does not force the trees to compete for sunlight.
|
| As such they grow straighter, taller, and with far fewer knots
| and anomalies.
|
| The old stuff is denser but that is the only advantage.
|
| It's worth not throwing out but it's not magically better.
|
| We don't care about making new growth denser because we created
| lvl, lsl, psl, clt, etc.
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