Why should you consider timber in your home

Why use timber?

Timber is strong and lightweight: Having a natural high strength fiber composite, timber can support trees that can grow as high as 100 meters: A comparison with steel and concrete shows that radiata pine structural timber, for example, has a strength-to-weight ration 20% higher than structural steel and four to five times better than unreinforced concrete in compression.

Timber is easy to work with and install. It is easy to lift, cut, plan, drill and join, plus lightweight timber framing methods allow easy installation of additional fibre or foil insulation

Timber is versatile. It allows for a large variety of design forms and finishes. What's more, timber framed houses can be easily added to or modified

Timber is a good insulator. Timber itself is a natural insulator due to air pockets within its cellular structure.
As an insulator timber is 15 times better than masonry, 400 times better than steel; and 1770 times better than aluminium.

Timber is a healthy building material. It is easy to keep clean and it helps maintain an optimum humidity balance. It also helps a room warm up more quickly

Timber is safe
Timber holds low toxicity for indoor air quality and it does not conduct electricity. It also has high fire resistance and noncombustible lining protect timber frames. The contents of a house are the major hazard in building fires, and this it true regardless of the building materials.

Timber is durable. Good design detailing and specification ensures timber structures that last for lifetimes and thanks to modern timber preservatives enhance natural durability

Timber is innovative. Modern engineered timber products such as laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and glue laminated timer (gulam) can be manufactured to meet specific structural requirements

Timber is energy efficient. Its light-weight timber frames allow easy installation of insulation and its low thermal conductivity minimises thermal bridging. Timber windows are more thermally efficient as they do not form ‘thermal-bridges’ between the cold air outside and warm air inside (and vice versa in summer). Timber windows can be easily repaired,supplied in a number of colours and built to a wide range of designs.

Timber is naturally beautiful. It offers a large range of colour, grain and texture makes timber visually attractive and nice to touch

Producing timber generates very few pollutants compared to other building products. For example:

• it takes eight times less energy to produce a tonne of timber than it does a tonne of steel and a staggering 46 times less energy than a tonne of aluminium?
• a wood beam requires 10 times less energy to make than the equivalent steel beam.
• wood window frames use 50 times less energy to make than aluminum window frames.
• one study has indicated that timber can store up to 15 times the amount of carbon that is released during its manufacture.
• The average timber house frame stores around 10 tonnes of carbon. In Queensland we build around 45,000 houses each year. If all of those houses were timber framed we could reduce our annual carbon footprint plus store an additional 450,000 tonnes of carbon.
• Making the decision to use timber in construction will assist in offsetting the world’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

A decision to use timber to complete an environmentally friendly building project delivers “green” benefits “from seed to sawdust”. The timber you select has already helped remove CO2 from the atmosphere and has enhanced soil and water quality as a growing tree. Its milling process has used far less energy than other building product manufacturing processes. As part of your building, the timber locks away carbon gasses as solid carbon.

And when the time for renovation or demolition comes, future generations will be thankful that the timber you chose can be reused, recycled or disposed of with little environmental impact.

Contributed by: Symphony Design House

Reference: www.timberqueensland.com.au, www.symphony.com.mt