Wood As A Building Material

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Wood as a Building Material

Wood is one of mankind’s oldest construction materials. Wood continues to be used widely for residential, and commercial construction, and industrial buildings. It is also used to construct such things as piers, bridges, retaining walls, and power transmission towers. 90% of houses are constructed of wood. There are several properties that influence its use in a construction application.

Wood has several advantages over other building materials such as steel or concrete. It is a renewable source we can chop down as many trees as we want and just plant more. Wood is light weight and easy to handle and ship. The physical and chemical properties of it allow us to work it into different shapes to suit our needs. Wood is very strong for its weight and is easy fastened with nails, screws, staples, or glue. Another strong point of wood is that wooden structures can easily be altered or repaired. It has low heat conductivity and resists damage from weather fairly well.

There are three different classifications of wood we use; hard wood, soft wood, and treated wood. Hard and soft wood refer to the type of tree it comes from and treated wood is either soft or hard wood with some chemical treatment to resist decay and insects, and where it comes in contact with masonry or concrete. Hardwoods are deciduous trees that shed leaves annually. Some common types are found around this part of the country: walnut, maple, cherry, oak, and mahogany. Softwoods are conifers or evergreens, which are cone or needle bearing trees. Some common types of those are pine, fir, cedar, and redwood. The terms soft and hard wood do not necessarily refer to the woods strength properties. In fact some soft woods are actually harder than hardwoods, such as southern yellow pine, which is a very popular choice for construction grade lumber.

A tree is made mainly of the sapwood and heartwood, but there are other pa...