It’s a little more challenging than I’d expected to find decent and widely available and accepted standards for measuring the effectiveness of wood products. It is relatively easy to find specific information on a subject, such as how individual species perform against each other in controlled metrics. A comprehensive view is more difficult, due to the wide arrays of properties demonstrated by lumber opposed to other building materials, such as concrete and steel.
Mathematical strength ratings are much more easily achieved with steel, for instance, because there is a highly predictable and consistent cellular nature of the raw materials. Wood grows in the ground. Funny things happen in the forest. Branches, though they seem to follow a more specific fractal nature than previously believed, sometimes arrive in unexpected places.
The samples of specific studies can expose localized weakness in selection materials, different studies necessarily have different moisture content—in short, the number of variables found in organic materials selected from vast geographic locations makes any study’s reliability a statement of the study itself.
I didn’t start the day thinking about gribbles.
I hope I can sleep tonight without man-sized gribbles taking me on…Good thing to live in a stone house, occasionally. These gribbles and their buddies the shipworms appear to give marine pilings serious structural issues. TRADA (TimberResearch and Development Association) is an UK outfit that considers matters such as dumping various underused species of wood in some harsh salt water, having the sea do some kick-started sandblasting on the samples, and seeing what might happen. The British, and some Americans, (don’t buy into the plastic decking in that article. That is a non-biodegradable problem of its own creation) have been concerned with the overexploitation of Ekki and Greenheart, and are pursuing the consideration of a number of species for future commercial and common use.
Better managed and more responsible forestry is the counter to the rush for plastic building materials. Emerging markets aside, the world will be required to manage its resources responsibly. The market, over time, will see to this.
Pretty interesting results in this nine page download by John Williams PhD, for TRADA Technology found: here. Tali and Garapa held their own. For those concerned with specific methodology of the study, the TRADA download is available here: It’s an 160 page programme.