Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

e360.yale.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 83 posts

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#71

Post by alkonaut »

faissaloo wrote: post #57

Won't we just end up worsening deforestation?

Funny, where timber is produced (e.g. Scandinavia) we are always complaining that the forests are taking over. People can basically be subsidized to keep animals to "keep the landscape open" when forests would otherwise take over old farm land. We have 7000 trees per person. We plant more than we cut down. Just buy our timber. "Deforestation" is a problem in various parts of the world because of ecosystems, erosion, desert spread. It's not an issue everywhere.

From a CO2 perspective, cutting down a tree and making a house of is excellent. The CO2 is bound in the timber and a new tree can be planted in its place.

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#72

Post by wil421 »

faissaloo wrote: post #57

Won't we just end up worsening deforestation?

You can farm trees pretty easily and it’s done in my state with Pine. If you just clear cut the forest and don’t plant it back then yea is going to be terrible. Similar to the Palm Oil issues I hear about in the news.

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#73

Post by radicalbyte »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
radicalbyte wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timber at least can last a very long time. There are houses in the UK which dates from the time of Shakespeare which are still standing. I'm not sure what's worse: a cheap wooden structure which lasts 50-100 years or a strong brick structure which lasts hundreds. Here in Europe we have a large stock of houses from the 1950's which cost 300 EUR a month to heat and cannot be insulated. For a modern passive house costs…

Any building can be insulated, you just have to spend the money and sacrifice some internal space. Frame the inside of the walls and put in insulation.

That's if you're even allowed to do that. Listed buildings are a pain.

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#74

Post by anonuser123456 »

benj111 wrote: post #7
mjevans wrote: post #3

I would like to know more about the long term stability of the glues involved and how the entire structure as a whole decays / fails over what timeframes under what exposures. Most other building materials in use today, the actual core structural elements, have withstood the test of centuries of use and are well proven and stable technologies.

Centuries? Reinforced concrete is 150 years old, steel frame construction a little less so.

>Reinforced concrete is 150 years old

Do you mean steal reinforced concrete lasts 150 years or that the technology is 150 years old? My understanding is that reinforced concrete has a service life of 50 years and 80 years if protected with a sacrificial anode of some sort.

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#77

Post by jbay808 »

marmaduke wrote: post #63
willyt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roman concrete doesn’t have the same chemistry as modern concrete.

What’s different? I’m aware of the modern mix with cement sand stone, but I’m guessing romans didn’t have the cement?

As far as I know, the romans had better cement. We're still trying to reverse engineer it.

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#78

Post by benj111 »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #74
benj111 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centuries? Reinforced concrete is 150 years old, steel frame construction a little less so.

>Reinforced concrete is 150 years old Do you mean steal reinforced concrete lasts 150 years or that the technology is 150 years old? My understanding is that reinforced concrete has a service life of 50 years and 80 years if protected with a sacrificial anode of some sort.

That the technology is 150 years old.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#79

Post by lsc »

jbay808 wrote: post #77
marmaduke wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s different? I’m aware of the modern mix with cement sand stone, but I’m guessing romans didn’t have the cement?

As far as I know, the romans had better cement. We're still trying to reverse engineer it.

this is my understanding as well...

but I wonder how much of that is that they just had more variable cement, and the stuff that wasn't incredibly great turned to dust long ago? Certainly, our modern processes are more repeatable and produce a narrower range of results. What if the existent buildings are outliers of the roman process?

Re: As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?

#80

Post by BubRoss »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #52
WalterBright wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great deal of land that could be covered with planted trees, which pull CO2 out of the air. When they are mature, then they can be used as building material, and a new tree planted.

> planted trees, which pull CO2 out of the air When an old building is torn down and the wood is burnt all the CO2 goes back into the environment. Unless we start burying old wood into sealed underground chambers (like depleted oil wells) all the CO2 stays around.

I didn't realize that wooden houses that are torn down are burnt.
Post reply on HN