[Greenbuilding] Sustainable Post & Beam Construction

[RT]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 21:20:17 -0400, beatrice dohrn  
<beatricedohrn at yahoo.com> wrote:

> SOunds like you are talking about a log home,  which is worse than post  
> and beam.  Post and beam is not great,  but it doesn't gennerally  
> connote timber walls....


If the comment "Post & beam is not great" is a criticism of post & beam  
joinery being inferior to timber-frame joinery, then I would agree.


However, if the comment was intended to mean that framing that uses large  
dimension timbers instead of industrially-processed 2x dimension lumber  
isn't a good idea, then I would disagree.

God (and the Devil) is in the details.

If the negativity re: large dimension timber frames has to do with a  
notion that they consume more wood, then I would argue "Not necessarily".

My own 30 yr-old home is a timber-framed hybrid -- R-44 exterior walls,  
R-72 roof .

All of the timber framing is exposed to the interior.

The use of large-dimension framing members is offset by the fact that the  
members can be spaced further apart so that the total amount of wood  
consumed is the same as conventional 2x framing.  However since the trees  
were sawn up into little strips, there wasn't the volume of wood lost to  
sawdust with each saw kerf and less energy consumed for sawing.

The trees that provided the timbers were harvested from with a 100 km  
radius of the building site. Industrially-produced 2x dimension lumber  
typically comes from many hundreds or thousands of kms away.
Less transport energy.

I hand-planed and joined all of the timbers on site, without using any  
power tools (a conscious choice) and air-dried them in situ, thereby  
avoiding the energy consumed for milling and kiln-drying of 2x dimension  
lumber.

Framing that is done with 2x dimension lumber is typically so poorly done  
that even if Code allowed it to be left exposed, you wouldn't want to be  
able to see the butt-ugly, disrespectful manner in which the wood was  
treated by the builders.

I could go on but I won't.

Moving on to log-walled structures, I agree that generally-speaking, they  
aren't all that great from a Green perspective.

However, in my neighbourhood there are many such structures (including  
cordwood) which are over a century old and have been inhabited  
continuously over that time. I am confident that many of the homes built  
in the last 50 years or even 10 years, will not be able make that same  
claim.


Down the road from my home, in the heart of the village of Carp, there is  
a log structure built by its owner well over 40 years ago. An inspection  
of the exterior corners would reveal that it appears to be a genuine  
dovetail-joined log structure as opposed to one of the pre-fab kit  
buildings that dot the neighbourhood.

Inside, the log walled interior would do nothing to dis-spell the  
impression that the exterior gave.

The reality is that the owner ripped the timbers to create an exterior and  
interior log veneer and put an R-20, air-sealed 2x6 stud wall between the  
two skins.

That saying about "Generalisations are always wrong (including this one)"  
would seem to apply.




-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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