Lumber mania is sweeping North America
vox.com
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Sawmills slowed down in anticipation of a housing slump that never came, and now they're stuck playing catch-up.
Wildfires destroyed huge swaths of trees and even equipment last year, especially in Oregon. Oregon officials estimate that they lost 4X more harvestable trees last year than the state produces in an average year: https://www.ofic.com/after-the-fires-timber-industry-faces-g...
Even various policy changes from timber harvesting quotas to required sawmill safety retrofits have contributed. If you were a sawmill looking to upgrade, what better time than to do it during a pandemic? Turns out this wasn't such a great time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_5MkGbXXKc
So yeah, problem is at the mills.
You basically lose 20 to 30 years of taking care of the trees and you need to "restart" the forest naturally afterwards, because anyway, you have no ideas what could be the right kind of trees to support the climate change.
You lose money on the forest, the land is getting more value, but it means just more taxes nothing more.
At the moment, it does not make sense to own only the land, the value is extracted one level above. But here in Europe (at least in France), forest is owned by a lot of people. Many, many people have 1ha or less, here and there, because of the agricultural tradition of the country (forest has been growing again on not taken care of fields).
Source: We have about 300ha, taken care of in a "sustainable" way (all the stuff you read about the "best/ecological" way to take care of a forest) for the past 30 years, we just break even. That is, the forest is bringing no money at all to the owners, everything is going back to pay the workers and taxes.
But if in France, stay below the 40ha limit to not have to deal with massive costs of having your forest to be managed with validated planning every X years etc. which makes it very hard to keep "wild" areas in it (even more paperwork!).
I read about that a while ago! To me it seems like good-intent at first that turned out a complete bureaucratic creep! My question is: Can we decide to "manage" the forest ourselves and be registered as an official "forest manager", draft a management plan, publish any outstanding paperwork, etc ? I'm not sure about which administrative body would enforce the planning and management (municipalities, ONF, ...)
I won't go above 40ha for any foreseeable future, so it's probably not an issue!
Trees are not evolving as fast as the speed we destroy our environment, we have no choices left and we need to help them by not letting the forest completely wild. You need a bit of control. This is the reasoning being this 40ha limit. Starting this limit, you need to do the control seriously.
Mostly, the problem isn't actually one of too-slow evolution, but even more basic: Forests often can't migrate fast enough to keep up with current rates of climactic zone movement.
Human intervention is pretty simple and effective, though: keep planting trees on the leading edge of the forest (usually poleward or upslope where the limit is temperature, away from the coast where the limit is precipitation)
Of course, there are ecosystems that don't have anywhere convenient to move to (arctic and alpine, for example), but most forests don't fall into that category.
But I think the point of the program they offer is more for conservation than for incentivizing wood production.
(Softwood exports have ceased to be a healthy industry in Canada a couple decades ago, especially since a long and ugly trade war with the United States which they seemingly won.)
I suspect owning a mill exposes you to additional risks as well. I know here in Canada a bunch of the softwood mills in B.C. closed a decade ago, I suspect it's big time boom and bust and now you've got expensive equipment you're in debt for...
Every yuppie that fancies themselves a handyman and every landscaper looking for more side gigs had that same idea and sawmills are back-orded as bad or worse than outdoor recreation items.
Furthermore, milling lumber is one of those things that only pencils out to be economically in the black at very large scale or at very small scale where you focus on a high margin niche.
Then there's regulatory compliance...
Mills / lumber yards consolidated during 2008-2009 financial crisis.
In the years leading up to covid, Canada unintentionally lowered lumber prices by cutting down trees that were infested with a certain type of beatle. At the same time, Canada was reducing the number of (healthy) trees allowed to be harvested for wood every year.
Some have argued that wood prices have been too low, for to long. The industry has never recovered from 2008-2009, and has a conservative mindset.
There are definitely a lot of perspectives to hear in this equation.
I like a quote from this podcast; higher prices cure high prices.
Transcript: Stinson Dean On The Soaring Price Of Lumber ["https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-29/transcrip..."]
The T&G 1-1/8" subfloor I paid ~$40/sheet for in 2019 is currently $110/sheet at the same Home Depot.
If you're looking to share some quality bitching time with a rando, go grumble aloud about the prices in the lumber aisles of your nearest store. If there's anyone around, I guarantee you'll find vocal company for your misery. I've never had so many conversations with Home Depot customers in my life...
If you can wait until next summer you will probably save a lot depending on the deck size. Compare wood with composite decking and you might get a favorable composite price.
But today, $9 for a 2x4 is ridiculous. I’m sort of expecting labor costs to go up too since these guys are in such demand.
It's not a surprise that there is a demand for lumber.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffe...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIFR
https://www.clevelandfed.org/our-research/indicators-and-dat...
Yes, some things (housing, lumber, used cars, etc.) are experiencing quick increases in price. Some are saying this is a sign of runaway inflation. Many others are saying these price increases are a result of pandemic related supply/demand issues and temporary shocks to supply chains.
Unfortunately at the same time money isn't cheap for other things that matter.
Where I live all houses are brick homes. Wood is something that one might use in a "forest cabin"; a "real house" will have wood perhaps on doors, window trims and and maybe to pave the hard cement floors. And that's it.
I assume bricks are also more expensive, but perhaps not as much?
Perhaps North Americans will start building more brick homes.
Masonry is popular in (central and southern) Europe because forests were already cut down centuries ago so lumber prices are generally high. The abundance of lumber in Scandinavia and previously in N.A. thus explains why wooden structures are/were popular there.
So, the hypothesis that N.A. will build more with masonry and less with lumber is an interesting one.
http://masonrydesign.blogspot.com/2014/01/european-construct...
So that is to say, the situation we have arrived at, however unfortunate, is entirely unsurprising, and not that hard to figure out why it is so.
It makes almost everything a much simpler do it yourself project.
I feel like it's a good time to introduce HN to "groverhaus" - a DIY extension performed by a mod on the SomethingAwful forums to a property in the Great Dismal Swamp.
It's really amazing: https://twitter.com/boldlybuilding2/status/11979995316711301...
But the major driving force is probably wood prices. We have less forest, and those forests have been farmed for wood for centuries. Long straight hard timber takes way to long to grow to be used for anything but accent pieces. (Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification, countries with more forest like e.g. Sweden tend to build wooden houses in the countryside).
In industrial buildings you sometimes see something akin to American construction methods, but they usually use aluminum instead of wood
That might have been true once upon a time, but looking at the houses that have been built around me the past few years, I'd say that quick and cheap is the driving factor of the day. Most people building houses now aren't doing so on the assumption that they'll be in use 100 years from now.
I don't see a real difference in durability. There are plenty of stick built houses that are passed down for generations. The ones that are torn down is usually not a durability issue but more of desire to upgrade (wiring, more sqft, HVAC, etc), and it happens with masonry too.
Even masonry homes require preventive maintenance. It's just that the maintenance and concerns are somewhat different.
You also need proper ventilation/drainage to ensure that you don't get moisture build-up inside walls and other spaces from condensation and the like, but admittedly that's more of a factor for things like dry rot or mold, rather than termites.
As long as you keep replacing the wood... a wood house will last?
[1] https://www.heluz.com/en/product/heluz-family-50-grinded
How acoustically active are the rooms in a house like this? I can only imagine how many rugs and tapestries hanging on the walls would be needed just to stay sane.
Rugs are not 100% coverage but the rugs that were used here in the past were maybe 90% coverage? Like not glued to the floor but covering most of it. So these are not popular anymore.
This is probably climate-related - when there is a big difference between day- and nighttime temperatures it is very comfortable.
Most homes have asphalt tiles as they are reliable, easy to install, and inexpensive vs the other options.
Siding however has a lot of variety. In the northeast you see a lot of wood siding (cedar shingle) where as in many other parts it’s aluminum or vinyl (made to look like wood) or stucco.
I recently did a renovation which required 2 outside walls to be modified and they put cedar shingle up to match the existing siding.
Why build anything out of brick when you have concrete? Aerated concrete blocks are almost perfect for low and even some medium density housing. Additional insulation is a bit annoying, but for many states it won't even be needed if the wall is one full block thick.
In the highlands of Greece (where my grandparents are from), earthquakes are frequent, and almost every house is built out of stone. I am not sure if they are unreinforced or not these days or have been retrofitted, but many are 300-400 years old and still standing.
I did find this https://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/WCEE2012_2227.pdf which is a fascinating analysis of the damage to the unreinforced masonry buildings during the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes (which poor quality materials was found to be one of the largest factors of resulting damage)
For sources... I'd say check out ASCE 7-16 Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Building and Other Structures, table 12.2-1. For seismic design categories D, E, and F, even Ordinary Reinforced Masonry Buildings (Bearing wall systems) are simply "NP" or not permitted.
There simply isn't a category for "unreinforced masonry" because it will not hold the shear. The problem is it has no ductility. That is essentially the measure of a material to resist force even after deformation. Masonry is very stiff, but it is brittle and fractures as it deforms at which point it loses ALL of it's ability to hold shear in the direction which it is being applied. Reinforced masonry will retain some capacity to resist shear after deformation because the steel inside will continue to resist shear.
In the case of old buildings, you're literally looking at survivorship bias. It may be luck, it may be the effect of soil and rock characteristics acting to dampen seismic ground accelerations at the right frequency of seismic waves, it almost certainly is exceptional construction technique, methodology and design, and it likely combines with several other factors I haven't listed here. Personally, I suspect the load-bearing components of the buildings you're talking about are actually wood.
To your point,
> In the case of old buildings, you're literally looking at survivorship bias
There's a hell of a lot of survivors.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/l1gal0/why_a...
> Architecture and construction practices are regional and cultural. What works gets repeated and over time it becomes so common that people forget why things are done a certain way.
generally, you use what's available.
Where I live in Oklahoma City, almost all of our houses are brick or stone on the outside. It's a veneer so it's not structural, but it provides a great thermal layer beyond just insulation between the timber studs. Brick is made locally in Oklahoma because the "red dirt" soil has a lot of clay in it, so bricks are actually the same price or cheaper than many siding products. Siding is really only widely used on second floors and "bonus rooms", etc. since brick is too heavy for the second floor and would require a lot more structural support.
Most of the HOAs in newer neighborhoods around OKC will even require 70-80% brick or stone exteriors because it's lower maintenance and less likely to become an eyesore with fading/chipping paint, etc. So the requirements are pretty regional.
There's some people on YT demonstrating how to cut a log with a chain saw... For the very adventurous ;)
You've alluded to it in your post but for anyone else thinking about using pallet wood - look for heat treated wood (stamped HT), and be mindful that these things can be used to ship hazardous materials, and may retain some residue of whatever they were carrying.
Surface detail was a scroll saw and power-carving with a cheap rotary tool. Flex shaft, assortment of diamond coated burrs, and some patience. Just started getting into power carving and I have a long way to go, but enough can be done with just a hand file and sanding: https://i.imgur.com/kjLPtGu.jpg
I've also gotten some very nice pallet wood from a local business importing countertops from China.
Do watch out for chemically treated wood though I think that's more rare these days. The wood should have stamps/marks showing how it has been treated.
i’ve done some (small) reclamation projects with similar old wood, and it’s so much better than today’s lumber.
As a bonus, I have to empty the wine crate before I build something..
I don't pay as much attention to high grade sheet goods prices because I mostly work in solid wood, but they seem reasonable-ish. Good plywood has always been pricey.
[1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22481706/N...
Whoa!
Why not to try steel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-framing_metal_buildings
Even at current high steel price of $700/t you will save a lot.
The people who built the house aren’t going to care if the house lasts 40 years or 300. They will care if it costs 5x more to build/live in/buy/rent.
Secondly - there are areas like SF and London where house prices are like 5x the national average because of land. Surely they can afford better materials?
This is exacerbated by the fact that a huge number of homes are built by developers who want to sell the thing as soon as it's built, and then move on.
In a long-term, societal sense, you're right that it's kind of irrational. It's really unfortunate.
One factor that is a big issue in Europe is energy efficiency, and recent/updated electrical. With so much of the stock being ancient, and societal trends towards keeping older structures (and large investments in very durable structures being more of a norm), they have huge issues with a large stock of very inefficient and difficult to upgrade or fix structures. It is entirely possible to make energy efficient and modern buildings in Europe of course - it just doesn’t happen as much (because there is so much existing stock), and it is REALLY expensive compared to the US.
Even Munich which got bombed to smithereens and rebuilt not that long ago (so less a problem than most), it’s not common to have well insulated walls or what American’s would consider modern electrical. Lots of retrofit work, surface mounted outlets and conduit, etc.
What most Americans would consider a normal remodel (adding a bathroom, changing the layout of some rooms though modifications to non-exterior walls, whatever) are essentially impossible or crazy expensive in many of these buildings too because of the concrete masonry construction.
Wood frame construction is cheap and easy to reconfigure, drywall and wood frame is easy to rip off and upgrade what is underneath, then replace, and all of these are easy to stuff with insulation. They’re also remarkably strong, durable, and flexible. They do have flammability and pest issues, but those have good solutions in modern structures.
They all do use a lot of wood; which is a bit of an issue now.
Now, steel - that would be better.
But if thinking about the future I think wood framing is superior. In many places in Europe the old brick or stone homes have a lot of issues by modern standards and they are expensive to renovate. They tend to have floor plans that made sense 200+ years ago but not today. Like small rooms to better conserve fireplace heat. But again, it’s very difficult to renovate these homes to have a sensible, modern floor plan.
Old wood frame homes are fairly easy to renovate either to modernize or to renovate.
Even a house that's going to fall over in a year would be worth 75% as much as one that would last 1000 years.
I certainly moved a lot in my 20s, especially if you count school. But I've been in the same house for over 20 years and I'm sure that's not at all unusual. (Although I don't disagree with your point that most people won't pay a big premium just to have a house that could be standing in a few hundred years.)
A dollar sitting under the mattress for 20 years affects GDP/the economy a lot less than the dollar that gets spent all the time.
It isn’t as simple of course as ‘who cares, I’ll be out of here in a few years’ - though a surprisingly percent of the time I’ve literally heard people say that and use it as justification for writing off obvious maintenance issues or buying a place that clearly has problems.
Brick is harder to the touch, but that doesn't translate into anything useful for mechanical strength.
That is a selection effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
I doubt this results in lower homebuilding cost all-in, though.
In Europe pretty much nobody builds stick frame houses today. I'm building a house right now, and the only wood that'll be part of the structure is the roof struts. Floors are concrete and walls are made of clay air bricks. In milder climates these walls are insulated enough that you could get by without any extra insulation (here it gets to -25c/-5F). The interior is finished by plastering, and the exterior by cladding or concrete render.
Ha! Cob is like as old as history. Im sure there are other reasons. When you add sprinklers wood isn't a bad choice especially for making modifications later. Adding a wiring/outlets/making modifications is a lot easier to.
If there’s an issue with sound then you can install dampening material in the wall or floor.
You’re more likely to have noise travel through vents though.
In some places with high humidity though you want the home to breath to prevent mold, etc. Otherwise it gets damp and stays damp.
For instance, the local university uses permeable pavement, but the local building code forces homeowners to use less sustainable options, and then spend exorbitant amounts of money on environmentally destructive drainage.
There are old (>80 years), wood frame plus open clay filling buildings ("Fachwerkhaus"), but those are impossible to construct anymore due to building codes. Upkeep is extremely expensive and quality is not up to current standards, so nobody would want anything like this.
Due to the reasons stated above, there is no experienced construction workers available (at least not cheaply), no architects and since that part of the building code is rarely used, statics evaluation and building permit take ages. In short, new construction will still be concrete plus bricks over here.
The point is, in North America, everyone builds with wood so it is very difficult (expensive) to find someone who can build in brick. There is also the issue of material availability and familiarity of building inspectors. Building anything "non-standard" will be a big pain. I am sure the same applies in Germany, but swap wood for brick or concrete.
This is such an incredibly low bar to be citing as an achievement!
I think a lot of Americans can't comprehend that if you build from a permanent material like brick or stone the house will just sit there for a thousand years.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of those 500/1000 year old wooden houses are like the ship of Theseus. How much of those buildings has been replaced or repaired over that time period?
Same thing with brick houses. When they are repointed every few decades, how many of the bricks are swapped out when they crack or crumble?
That can depend on how stable the land is. My sister's US brick rental has many large gaps in the masonry. One side of her front door frame sags over 2 inches.
Edit. Maybe the 40 years come from that the sidings might have to be changed after around 40 years depending on the climate. But changing the siding is not a large job, easier that changing a roof that also often have about the same lifespan
Foundations are brick here (cinderblocks) but after that I can’t see any real advantages to using bricks for walls. They’re expensive, hard to modify, and bulky. Wood framing breathes much better too.
As long as the wood is protected from moisture and termites, it will get stronger over time. I have ~100 year old 2x4s in my house and they are nigh indestructible - in a way it's a bad thing because it makes renovations more difficult. Drilling into the stuff is basically impossible. Why would it last only 40 years?
Last time I checked UK is still in Europe, and that's how nearly all new houses are built here. I'm from "the continent" personally but when I mentioned to people having concrete floors they looked at me like I'm mad. It's just not done here. The exterior walls are however made from "air bricks" quite often. But nearly the entire internal structure will be just wooden frame.
Not the load bearing parts though, a light frame for internal walls. The load bearing parts are still masonry.
I suspect this is going to change as the big house builders all seem to be moving towards making houses in factories then assembling them on site.
Maybe modern houses are built as you say
This is definitely not the case. All the houses around me a structural brick, including all the new ones they're building now.
You'll have to exclude Scandinavia there
Particularly when combined with modern building science, there is absolutely no reason that a modern stick built house cannot last for hundreds of years and be energy efficient.
The extreme of this was, say, 1800s Scottish architecture - the typical croft house was designed to use exactly one piece of proper lumber, the roof beam, while the walls were all stone, because trees were scarce.
https://www.electricscotland.com/history/journey/jour3.htm
> From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman's house stands a small plantation, which in Scotch is called a policy, but of these there are few, and those few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards between two hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. This, said he, is nothing to another a few miles off. I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. Nay, said a gentleman that stood by, I know but of this and that tree in the county.
Parts of the US were originally built with brick and stone but were destroyed in earthquakes. Civil engineering, along with the ample availability of timber, changed the way the US designed buildings. New England, which does have a lot of stone and brick construction, suffers damage when they experience the rare, moderate for the US (M5-ish) earthquake.
Earthquake safety and cost will never recommend brick and stone in most of the US. They are more likely to switch to steel than brick. There are a lot of brick houses, I grew up in some, but they were built before modern seismic codes. Parts of the US people don’t think of as being earthquake prone have surprisingly large earthquakes. For example, severe earthquakes in New Madrid Seismic Zone[0] in the southern Midwest. In the US, learning the extent of seismic activity in North America was often paid for in blood. Like Japan, everything modern is engineered for it.
This collapsed a freeway.
A quick glance at one of the big box diy-stores shows a the similarly sized ¾" × 4' × 8' birch ply costs some $60 in the US.
Are there any disruptive technologies out there that might allow for smaller new entrants to enter the industry more quickly?
Conditions have not been so ripe for inflation in a long time.
It's possible this current wave of anecdotes of price increases is indicitive of a large wave of inflation. It's also possible it is just a short lived mismatch between the demand economy ticking on slightly before the supply economy does.
I assumed it was due to the increasing income/wealth gap. You have automation and cheaper labor from other countries reducing the price of labor for a substantial amount of people, seen in the lack of meaningful rise in wages for decades.
You also have the US splitting into very desirable areas seeing lots of increase in prices, but more of it seeing price decreases due to lack of demand. Concentration of businesses that offer higher paying job opportunities contributes here, as well as people’s preferences.
If you don't employ anyone, the unemployed still have to eat which means corporate savings grow at the expense of the unemployed. Of course, investing your savings into growth is fine, because that will both employ people and net a return for your business.
Why aren't companies growing their business? One problem is that there is not enough consumer demand to justify it. Why is there not enough consumer demand? Because people are unemployed or underemployed. It's a vicious cycle.
I do not see the connection here. It seems more direct to say that the supply and demand curves for labor have shifted in such a way that the price of labor has gone down for the labor many people are selling.
>Of course, investing your savings into growth is fine, because that will both employ people and net a return for your business.
That’s one of those how to draw an owl things. Maybe if the whole country got behind it as an effort, it might work if properly executed. But one or a few companies doing it (without the caliber of organizations like Apple) are probably just going to end up with worse financials, and get punished for it by investors.
Remember, the purpose of that money printing is to add money back into the economy while various factors are removing it from the economy. By "economy" I primarily mean the productive part, namely businesses and workers doing work on behalf of a customer.
Somehow the money is not reaching the productive part of the economy. Of course that is changing in 2021, governments finally decided to hand out money directly to those who actually want to spend it and that is a good thing. If it works, then money printing no longer becomes necessary.
With lumber prices where they're at, you'd see mills popping up like oil wells if they had any hope those were permanent increases.
Trends in inflation are just that, trends. So it’s certainly possible to have high inflation for short periods.
Doubt that has much if anything to do with it. According to this study[1], increases of 10% to the minimum wage are correlated with only a 0.36% increase of prices, and minimum wage increases may decrease prices.
[1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-m...
But the problem doesn't seem to be the timber supply, weirdly enough.
Please do list the engineering advantages of wood over concrete, because from my experience a US house was a structural (and efficiency) downgrade compared to my European concrete & brick house.
It looks like around of 1/3rd of planted corn in the US is used for ethanol production for cars. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10339
I have a feel a lot of farms are going to turn in to more sprawling suburbs when some monster subsidies get passed to build out these abandoned farms.