Timber as a building material

Timber as a building material

Timber is one of the oldest building materials known. With masonry, it provided the mainstay of building construction around the world until the 1800’s. Timber is a natural, renewable material that is both beautiful and durable. Timber is easy to work and handle. Light and versatile, it is used for an extensive range of interior and exposed structures and surfaces, including framing, lining, cladding and flooring and roofing in domestic and industrial constructions.

Timber is strong in both tension and compression and has a high strength to weight ratio. Like both steel and concrete, timber has physical limitations, but once these are accommodated, it is possible to design structures of almost any size with it. Depending on the species and purpose, timber may be used in its original shape, dressed to a smooth finish, machined into a variety of shapes or processed into veneer sheets. Its ability to be recycled has been evident through history.

Timber can also be transformed into reconstructed products, including particleboard, plywood and laminated veneer lumber. Each has it own structural and aesthetic properties and qualities in building. The natural qualities of timber can also be modified using special treatments that improve its resistance to decay or fire resistance and its dimensional stability.

Advantages

Timber contains stored carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is released through the milling of timber, and contains a net effect of 8.3kg of carbon dioxide

absorbed during the growth and milling of timber. During this process no harmful carbon dioxide is produced and released reinstating low harmful effects on the environment.

Forests, trees and forest products all play an integral role in reducing harmful Green House gases. Newly planted trees, forests and plantations consume large quantities of carbon dioxide from the air. More mature forests also maintain an integral role as they act as the forests storehouse of carbon. Manufacturing of timber products not only holds an energy saving benefit when compared to steel or aliminium alternatives, timber products also act as a long term storehouse of carbon.

Disadvantages

• Inflexible in multifaceted designs and dimensional variances i.e. if panel’s sizes need to be reduced then entire bracing mechanism needs to be reinstalled in each of the panels.
• Inaccurate materials, material dimensions can alter and be affected by the environment.
• Tools and equipment are required for assembly, maintenance is also constantly required.
• Materials hold a limited life span and require constant renewing of building materials.
• Timber systems are heavily reliant on professional trades i.e.: carpenter’s to assemble. This is a very costly process when comparing skilled labour rates to unskilled labour rates.