this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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I was surprised to not see this until the very bottom. There’s usually a panel about it in a lot of the environment and conservation conferences I go to for work. Storing the carbon in tree trunks and the using that wood in to build the housing that’s required is a long term carbon sink.
Sure it just makes it someone else’s problem, wood like almost all other materials has a finite period where it’s safe to use. Eventually all of it will decay and become co2 again.
But when it decays you could replace it with more wood, and then if more housing is ever needed you pull more carbon out of the air to make the wood for that. Not that it's the end all solution but actually replanting forests and increasing the amount of wood in structures, and replacing plastic furniture with wood, it all could help. Every lever matters
Buildings made today really should last for a long friggin time. I really don't see why any modern house ever needs to be torn down.
You can use chemicals to preserve the wood, but there’s environmental issues with that, it also increases the cost, it’s not safe to inhale while cutting, requires post treatment, etc.
Yes they should last 3-5 decades and some could last a century, just like some existing wood buildings have. But modern homes are weird, they are meant for efficiency over being “structurally sound”. By that I mean they’ve figured out essentially the bare minimum needed to build and have the right safety margins. So yeah build with 2x8s, they’ll last longer than 2x4s, but it’s also not environmentally “conscious” at the same time. So rock hard place.
We still have homes from a century ago. The ones built today should last wayyy beyond that. And century homes are being torn down not because of the wood, but because they are way too small. I have a really hard time thinking that modern homes are going to be seen as too small in 100 years. Likewise I think you're out to lunch thinking modern homes are going to structurally fail.
Survivorship bias, yes some last, most do not.
I’m not saying they’re going to fail, that’s why they have a life span that they last before they require replacement, or you could find an engineer to continually sign off every x years to deem it safe.
There codes, laws and regulations for a reason, I guess you could argue against the communal knowledge of every industry if you want. But houses built nowadays aren’t overbuilt like they used to be, that’s just how code have adopted to be as efficient as possible, instead of here, wood aplenty. More wood also requires a stronger foundation since it weighs more and requires more support. So it’s all snowballing in that regard. You can’t just put a 2x8 wall on foundation meant for 2x4, that requires double the size of foundation, just like that.
Survivorship bias from a hundred years ago. We build things a lot better now.
You think I'm arguing against the communal knowledge of every industry? I'm arguing with the communal knowledge of every industry. We have way more knowledge, have better materials, know how to build things better, and we do build things better than before. I don't think we're going to agree, so I'm out.
You should really look at how building see constructed a century ago (full dimensional lumber) vs modern homes (OSB and TJIs).
Things aren’t built stronger, but they are built better since they are built more efficiently…... They are two wholefully different things.