What really determines how long a house will last is water/moisture management.
Denser growth means it's harder for pests to damage and water to penetrate.
My mom's place is build with high grade fir for every stud and beam and there's clear differences in how it's holding up to contemporaries built using pine from the same era (old growth too). Materials make a difference.
Wood isn't magic and no common softwood is particularly moisture resistant. It's more likely that the envelope of the house was built better than anything to do with the framing materials.
I really question if you comprehend the type of wood I'm talking about. The contemporary pine is like butter by comparison...
(And hardness has little to do with the strength or survivability of a constructed building.)
And it absolutely 100% does, as I've had it happen to me many times. It also gives circ saws a hell of a time.
Don't know how to prove this given that's an 18 hour drive from me and she's not currently doing renos....
While driving the fastener, or over time while the structure settles?
Either way, I can't see how this is a problem with the wood itself. The structural design and material properties have to be specified in a compatible way. The only three options are the spec is wrong, the materials are out of spec, or the engineer considers it a non-issue.
In any case, is unnecessary to use wood like that.
Although actually afaik older buildings are often overbuilt because there was no engineering to figure out the least you could safely get away with.
I agree with you that houses are more likely to rot than to break from under building and fall down, although events like decks collapsing during party or roofs collapsing in heavy snow do happen.
This is just absolutely false.
Older growth wood is more stable and more likely to resist moisture.
We have zero examples of homes built with fast growth SPF (etc) lasting 100 years or more. Hell even 75. On the contrary, we have a plethora of examples of old growth pine lasting centuries. Just look at the cold, wet, and snowy northeast. Plenty of moisture there, yet the historic homes still stand.
No contractor I've spoken to thinks the homes being built today will last half a century or longer.
edit: I will stand by my comment. Lets see how many 70's and 80s era houses last until 2040.
Contractors adhere to code largely as far as they can be forced to and work on a "we've always done it that way" basis. On the other hand, architects and engineers are pretty sanguine about modern softwood, and for good reason. You start seeing "modern" SPF in broad use starting in the mid-seventies and construction from that era is by-and-large fine.
Remember that the houses that sucked--and there were a lot of them in the 1900s and earlier--simply no longer exist. Survivorship bias is real.
If "older growth wood is more stable and more likely to resist moisture" it still stands that any wood can perform well in the absence of excess moisture.
I certainly agree that my 120+ year old house made of fir would last much longer with a leaky roof than a house from the 1960's or 1990's with a leaky roof.. but all of those houses would be unfit for occupancy while they deteriorate.
75 years ago is 1957 by my reckoning, you have some example of 75 year old houses deteriorating because of the quality of wood in the absence of moisture penetration?
There is no point in having a structure that is uninhabitable due to moisture penetration that still stands except for the purposes of salvaging it.. which I guess has some value..
My personal opinion is that building built to code today will stand for 100+ years no problem, buildings built in the 70's, 80's and 90's to code in many places will also do so if moisture (Rh) mitigations are reasonably executed (lots of mould & vapour barrier issues in that era). Older houses don't face the moisture issues because they are not as well sealed and as with all structures - keep a good roof on them and they are fine.
Framing wood quality doesn't matter, how fast that wood rots is a question of every other material used in the construction of the envelope.
Does spray foam have a failure mode just sitting in a wall?
If it does, I wonder if they'll have some special robot to replace it one day.
It certainly could be the case that something like spray foam degrades over very long periods of time.. but you'd have to figure the savings from the enhanced insulation value over that period would more that pay for its replacement.
2040 is only 17 years away! Houses from the 1970's and 1980's are selling for top dollar today in suburbs all over North America, if the expected life spans of those structures were only 17 years they'd be worthless.
Where I am from the late 60's and early 70's homes are the worst quality ones on the markets, really a terrible time for home building. The issues are all foundations, plumbing, and wiring.
The only major advancements beyond the late 70s-80s are energy efficiency-related.
What really matters is the foundation.
Forgive my skepticism, but for wood boards (and not engineered materials being used incorrectly), ones not stored in deeply failure-causing conditions to the point where you wouldn't want to touch them because they'd be gross, this just does not happen.
Check them out, they’re nice.
Jarrah looks like:
https://youtu.be/jdBHtUN5gAE?t=217
and sounds like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGFqvOEL5bw
https://youtu.be/uKxAkfI2pNo?t=39
Jarrah was used to pave high traffic thoroughfares in London at the turn of last century.
Once our state stopped the wholesale clear felling of jarrah by europeans, we turned to harvesting regrowth:
Jarrah is a sustainable, exclusively sourced from regrowth forests in Western Australia. Strict regulations are in place to ensure jarrah sustainability is managed in a way that balances ecological, economical socio-cultural factors.
The guidelines and policies outlined in the The Forest Management Plan and the WA Regional Forest Agreement are regularly reviewed to ensure world-class standards are upheld. All native forests that are harvested in Western Australia are regenerated or replanted every year. Jarrah can be recycled and repurposed for other uses.
Even though Jarrah is very sustainable timber, the West Australian Government has made the decision to ban logging any native timbers by the end of 2023.
It looks incredible when oiled.
I know this first hand, having once hit myself in the head with a 4" x 4" x 8ft piece of it while building a bed.
Natural edged shelves, island tops, tables.
South-West W.Australia has a lot of old craft skills kicking about - I was in the midst of a crowd doing glass blowing, cabinet making, solid and ply shell drums when I was writing pre-Google Earth not exactly KeyHole geo spatial processing and display software and we'd often going out to retrieve all manner of wood and rock that was toppled or exposed by storms.
It's not just jarrah stashed away, there's also wandoo, granite slabs, numerous burls extracted .. and a lot put back in terms of replanting, cool burns, 'artifical' hollows, culling ferals, etc.
Look at https://www.wood-database.com if you want numbers. Balsa is around 9 lb/ft^3 dense, with a crush strength of 1,690 lbf/in^2 and a modulus of rupture around 2840 lbf/in^2. White spruce--which is a pretty representative member of "SPF" in the USA--is about 27 lb/ft^3 even in its modern, "oh so weak" form, with a crush strength of 4,730 lbf/in^2 and a modulus of rupture around 8,640 lbf/in^2. That's, uh...a lot. Is it Good Old Hardwood? No, but who cares? The numbers we're talking about are so strong that if you need more, you need a big span or something, you throw a 2x12 at it or you go to engineered materials (which are basically wood alchemy, they're magic).
From a numbers perspective, the modern "oh they take so much off" 2x4 is overkill for things like external wall framing. We use them because of safety margins and because it allows us to box in more insulation.
Where it can matter is in terms of rot resistance. Sort of. Heartwoods do have accumulated waste products (they're basically dead while the tree is standing, if you ever see a tree desleeve it's because there's too much heartwood for the sapwood and it just peels off) that bugs don't like. And you can tell why; if you've ever bought a decent-sized board, you can taste the difference if you lick your finger, touch the wood, and lick your finger again. Heartwoods are bitter. There is value in that, and old growth does have more heartwood. But we have modern building practices that maintain a better moisture envelope not "because the wood is worse", but because it makes for a nicer house to live in. It also happens to compensate pretty well for that.
The people who fulminate about "the wood isn't as strong" are old and old at heart. It is not just "strong", but it is strong enough, and the fact that we can produce so much softwood for so cheap at such truly incredible strengths is worth celebrating.
Really...