Explain what are the advantages of a wooden house or timber frame house

Characteristic Advantages of Wooden Houses

●Earthquake Resistance

Wooden houses have good life safety performance in earthquakes.Wooden houses are constructed with mortise and tenon joints, and the main structure is staggered and connected, which provides good stability. As a structural material, the seismic performance of wood is significantly better than other materials. Wood is lightweight and strong, and thus ground acceleration does not generate as much energy in a wood building as in other buildings. An additional advantage of wood framing systems is that they are more flexible than other materials and can absorb and dissipate energy. In this type of building, the wood members are small, regular in size, and closely spaced. Most framing consists of three parts: vertical studs that form the skeleton of the walls; horizontal joists that form the floor slab; and rafters or diffusers that support the roof. When a wall is clad with diagonally braced boards or lightweight wood-based panels, it provides lateral resistance and, in turn, creates a shear wall system - lightweight, strong, and efficient to build. All the components **** together to support the building so that it can resist gravity, wind and earthquakes. It has been proven that wood construction has demonstrated its stability and structural integrity under a variety of extreme loading conditions, and that even when strong earthquakes remove the entire building from its foundation, the structure often remains intact. Wooden structure has great toughness, strong resistance to instantaneous impact loads and cyclic fatigue damage, and has the best seismic resistance among all structures, which has been fully proved in many large earthquake zones. In the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, most of the houses that survived were wood-framed.

●Durability

Wooden villas are constructed of high-grade pine wood, wood is a natural, healthy and highly affinity material, wood integrated house is environmentally friendly and healthy high-grade housing, wood according to different architectural shapes after modern technology production and processing of different wall profiles, and then through the fire retardant, anticorrosion treatment and other processes, more robust and durable. It has remarkable stability against subsidence stress, drying and aging. If used properly, wood is a stable, long-lasting and durable material.

●Fireproof

The timber used for the building structure of the wooden villa is treated with "water-based fire retardant", which has a charring effect. When it meets fire, a charring layer will be formed on the surface of the wood, and its low conductivity can effectively prevent the flame from spreading inward, thus ensuring that the whole wooden structure will not be damaged for a long period of time.

●Moisture resistance

People often mistakenly think that water is the enemy of wood, but this is not the case, in rainy or humid places wood buildings can have long-term performance. The key lies in knowing how to control moisture when using wood-based building products in design and construction. Generally speaking, the only part of a building that needs to be completely protected from moisture is the building envelope, especially the roof, which should drain as much water as possible, but remain watertight when holding water. If the face of the building can be well waterproofed, then we can be confident that other parts of the building do not necessarily need to be waterproofed. Timber frame houses are protected from rot and damp because we dry all the timber used in the building. Most of the volume changes are avoided by drying the timber, which has been pre-dried to a moisture content of less than 19%, which can be up to 10 times more resistant to damp than even a brick structure. Moisture content measures how much water a piece of timber contains relative to the weight of the timber itself. We calculate moisture content by dividing the weight of the timber when completely dry by the weight of the moisture in a given sample of timber. Wood is considered dry if its moisture content is equal to or less than 19%. Wood reaches fiber saturation at about 28% moisture content, which is the reference point for drying and rotting. Unless the moisture content of the wood reaches or exceeds the fiber saturation point, decay bacteria will generally not grow. At the same time, we prevent water erosion by preserving wood with preservatives such as ACQ and BAC for impregnation and natural vegetable oils for surface coating. In fact, wood is much less susceptible to permanent damage from occasional wetting than other commonly used building materials. Wood buildings in rainy or wet locations can have long periods of trouble-free performance.

●Green, heat preservation and energy saving

Wood is a natural and healthy material with a strong affinity to the environment, and wooden villas are environmentally friendly and healthy high-grade housing. It has excellent heat preservation (insulation) performance, saving more than 40% energy than ordinary brick structure houses. Its thermal insulation performance is 400 times that of steel and 16 times that of concrete. Research shows that the thermal insulation performance of a 150㎜ thick wood structure wall is equivalent to that of a 610㎜ thick brick wall.

Wood is the preferred building material for "green building". In an era of decreasing fossil fuels and increasing costs, light wood construction has obvious advantages over other building materials. Manufacturing wood construction materials uses less energy than steel or concrete, both of which require high-temperature refining and manufacturing. Wooden house adopts all solid wood material, which is called "breathing house", and the indoor air contains a large amount of fentolin and negative ions known as air vitamins. Phenanthrolin and negative ions are the substances that modern "forest bathers" are highly favored, which can effectively kill bacteria in the air, curb diseases, enhance immunity, and have obvious effects on keeping the brain awake, improving concentration, lowering blood pressure, and stabilizing the nerves. The harmful gas radon in the wooden house has a very low radiation amount, which is harmless to human body; the relative influence of wood on energy consumption, air and water pollution and greenhouse gas emission and other factors is small. According to the research of Institute of Building Environment and Equipment Engineering of Tsinghua University, wood structure building saves 5.3% energy compared with light outline structure building, 8.1% compared with concrete structure building, and saves about 6% of operation cost compared with ordinary concrete roof in the building life cycle. Lightweight wood buildings have the potential to significantly reduce heating and cooling costs over the life of the dwelling unit. The holes in wood construction give log homes excellent insulation properties compared to other building materials such as steel or concrete. Lightweight wood frame buildings have spaces between the frames that can accommodate insulation, reducing heating and cooling costs, reducing fossil fuel consumption, and maintaining comfortable temperatures in an economical manner.

●The wood construction system has the lowest environmental impact

1. Comparison of energy consumption: Comparison of energy loss during manufacturing, transportation and installation shows that wood construction has the lowest energy consumption among several types of structures. Steel structure is 2.4 times more than wood structure.

2. Comparison of greenhouse effect: The result shows that wood structure has the lowest greenhouse effect. Steel structure is 1.8 times of wood structure.

3. Comparison of air pollution index: The results show that wood structure has the lowest pollution index, and steel structure is 1.42 times of wood structure.

4. Comparison of water pollution index: the results of the study showed that the pollution index of the steel structure is 120 times that of the wooden structure.

5. Comparison of solid waste: Research shows that wood structures produce the least amount of solid waste in the production and construction process. The waste of steel structure is 1.36 times of wood structure.

6, the use of ecological resources: after a comprehensive assessment, the wood structure seized the least resources, the steel structure is 1.16 times of the wood structure.

Environmental impact of building systems - Conclusion: Wooden structures have the least negative impact on the environment.