> Here's the thing, though: most Europeans seem to be suffering some pretty serious misconceptions.
Hi there, I'm a civil engineer from the EU who specialized in building structures and was trained in masonry and timber structures.
None of the concerns you mentioned feature as a design constraint. There is no shortage of building materials in Europe, and is indeed cheaper than the classical building materials. We do use a lot of concrete, masonry, and steel, none of which grows on trees.
The main factor is population density, and the ultimate and serviceability state that buildings need to comply with in order to be assuredly safe to be habitable by people.
It's fine if you wish to build a single-family home with a timber structure from top to bottom, provided that you do all the work to ensure that expected win loads are not able to blow out your home. There are homes being built like that around here. But those are indeed rare, because of cultural differences. The everyday joe around here looks at modern timber homes and, when compared with masonry, concrete, and even steel structures, immediately perceives it as low-quality work. Think McMansion. Prefabricated homes in general suffer from that prejudice, including light steel frame homes. That in turn leads to a market where most offerings target the low-end.
On higher density residential buildings things are quite different. most residential buildings have 4 or 5 stories and thus structural soundness starts to be harder to ensure. You no longer are able to meet safety requirements by having a low-skilled carpenter randomly nailing together two boards. Moreover, the loads are more demanding, both dead loads and live loads such as wind
Here the problem lies in the need to put together building structures that is verifiably safe involving cases where the minimum prescribed values in building standards don't cut it anymore. More importantly, you start to need to design specialized structural elements that can easily need to span over 6 meters. This is engineered timber territory, and one which can involve designing specialized structural elements. To add to the complexity, this technology introduces problems in complying with serviceability limit states that don't pose as big of a challenge with other technologies such as vibration limits and sagging.
Consequently, we do see engineered lumber structures in long span structures and even foot bridges, but in general it's more cost effective, simpler, durable, lower-mainrenance and higher-quality to just build with other building technologies.
Hi there, I'm a civil engineer from the EU who specialized in building structures and was trained in masonry and timber structures.
None of the concerns you mentioned feature as a design constraint. There is no shortage of building materials in Europe, and is indeed cheaper than the classical building materials. We do use a lot of concrete, masonry, and steel, none of which grows on trees.
The main factor is population density, and the ultimate and serviceability state that buildings need to comply with in order to be assuredly safe to be habitable by people.
It's fine if you wish to build a single-family home with a timber structure from top to bottom, provided that you do all the work to ensure that expected win loads are not able to blow out your home. There are homes being built like that around here. But those are indeed rare, because of cultural differences. The everyday joe around here looks at modern timber homes and, when compared with masonry, concrete, and even steel structures, immediately perceives it as low-quality work. Think McMansion. Prefabricated homes in general suffer from that prejudice, including light steel frame homes. That in turn leads to a market where most offerings target the low-end.
On higher density residential buildings things are quite different. most residential buildings have 4 or 5 stories and thus structural soundness starts to be harder to ensure. You no longer are able to meet safety requirements by having a low-skilled carpenter randomly nailing together two boards. Moreover, the loads are more demanding, both dead loads and live loads such as wind Here the problem lies in the need to put together building structures that is verifiably safe involving cases where the minimum prescribed values in building standards don't cut it anymore. More importantly, you start to need to design specialized structural elements that can easily need to span over 6 meters. This is engineered timber territory, and one which can involve designing specialized structural elements. To add to the complexity, this technology introduces problems in complying with serviceability limit states that don't pose as big of a challenge with other technologies such as vibration limits and sagging.
Consequently, we do see engineered lumber structures in long span structures and even foot bridges, but in general it's more cost effective, simpler, durable, lower-mainrenance and higher-quality to just build with other building technologies.