Republic of the Philippines

NUEVA ECIJA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY
Cabanatuan City

COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE

WOOD CONSTRUCTION

Submitted by:
Abila, Jeremy M.
Gutierrez, Vianca Marie R.
Manubay. Jherimie D.
Rubis, Nino P.
AR 3B

Submitted to:
Ar. Jemuele J. Gonzales, UAP

S.Y.: 2022-2023
 Introduction

Wood
Wood is perhaps the most popular of all the building materials. It delights the eye with its
infinitely varied colors and grain patterns, and we value its natural, organic qualities and
appreciate its authenticity. Wood has earned both our respect and our affection. It is strong and
stiff, but by far the least dense of the building materials used for beams and columns, and it is
easily worked and fastened with small, simple, relatively inexpensive tools. But, like any great
buddy, wood has its quirks. A piece of lumber is never perfectly straight or true, and its size and
shape can shift dramatically as the weather changes. Defects in wood are remnants of its growth
and processing. A skilled designer and seasoned carpenter, on the other hand, are aware of all of
these factors and understand how to construct with wood to bring out its best qualities while
neutralizing or minimizing its drawbacks.

Tree Growth
Wood is obtained from trees through natural growth processes. Understanding tree physiology is
critical for understanding how to build with wood. The trunk of a tree is protected by a layer of
dead bark. Within the dead bark is a layer of living bark made up of hollow longitudinal cells
that transport nutrients from the leaves to the tree's roots and other living parts. The sapwood is
the thick layer of living wood cells inside the cambium. Heartwood is distinguished from
sapwood in many tree species by its darker color. The pith of the tree, a small zone of weak
wood cells that were the decompose years growth, is located in the center of the trunk,
surrounded by heartwood. A low-powered microscope study of a short segment of wood reveals
that it is predominantly composed of tubular cells with long axes parallel to the trunk's long axis.
The grain of the wood is the direction of the long axes of the cells. As a result, springwood or
earlywood cells are larger and have less substance density than summerwood or latewood cells.
Annual growth rings in a trunk are formed by concentric bands of springwood and summerwood
and can be counted to calculate the age of a tree.
 Tree Bark
This is a close-up view of the inner
workings of a tree's bark, which lies
just beneath the thick layer of bark and
under the thin layer of sapwood.
Summerwood rings are prominent and a
few rays are faintly visible in this cross section of a tree.

Classification of Wood

 Wood is classified either as softwood or hardwood.

 Softwood trees have needles and produce seeds with no covering, such as pine cones.
They also have relatively large, straight trunks from which long boards can be cut.

 Hardwoods come from deciduous trees, or trees that lose their leaves every fall. Most
lumber from hardwood trees is used for interior trim, cabinet doors, and flooring because
of its attractive appearance.

Classification Softwood Hardwood

Origin Conifer trees that have needles Deciduous trees that have leaves and
and cones. seeds.

Examples Cedar, fir, pine, spruce and Ash, Beech, Birch, Cherry, Oak, Maple,
redwood Walnut, Mahogany, Rosewood, Acacia,
Teak, Bamboo, Mango, and Mindi

General characteristics Faster growth rate and often Slower growth rate and often higher
lower density. density.

Uses Building components, furniture, High quality furniture, decorative

exterior cladding. woodwork, decks and flooring
 cost Typically, lower cost Typically, higher cost

Considerations of Sustainability in Wood Construction

 A Renewable Resource

-Wood is the only major structural material that is renewable. Some panel products can
be manufactured from rapidly renewable vegetable bers, or recycled cellulose timbers.
Bamboo, a rapidly renewable grass, can replace wood in the manufacture of flooring,
interior paneling, and other furnish carpentry applications.

 Forestry Practices

-Sustainable forestry and clearcutting are two forms of forest management practiced in
North America. The buyer of wood products can support sustainable forestry practices by
specifying products from sustainable forests. FSC-certified wood products satisfy the
requirements of LEED and all other major green building assessment programs.

 Mill Practices

-Skilled sawyers can convert a high percentage of each log into market- able wood
products. Kiln drying produces more stable, uniform lumber than air drying, which uses
no fuel other than sunlight and wind. Bark may be shredded to landscape mulch,
composted, burned, or buried in land.

 Transportation

-Fuel consumption is minimized by planning and drying the lumber before it is shipped.

 Energy content
 -Solid lumber has an embodied energy of roughly 1000 to3000 BTU per pound (2.3 to
7.0 MJ/kg). An average 8-foot- long 2x4 wood frame has about 17,000 BTU (40 MJ).
This includes the energy ex- pended to fell the tree, transport the log, saw and surface the
lumber, dry it in a kiln, and transport it to a building site.

 Wood construction

-Wood construction lends itself to various types of prefabrication that can reduce waste
and improve the efficiency of material usage in comparison to on-site building methods.
Prefabrication reduces waste by using full lengths of lumber and full sheets of wood
panel materials.

 Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)

- Wood products can contain volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde, which
can cause wood to emit fumes that are unpleasant and/or unhealthful. In damp locations,
molds and fungi may grow on wood, creating unpleasant odors and releasing spores,
which many people are allergic to.

 Building Life Cycle

- Wood is combustible and gives off toxic gases when it burns. It is important to keep
sources of ignition away from wood and to provide smoke alarms. When a building is
demolished, wood framing members can be recycled directly into the frame of another
building or sawn into new boards or timbers.

Lumber Wood Process

1. Sawing

The production of lumber, lengths of squared wood for use in construction, begins with
the felling of trees. Sawmills range in size from tiny family operations to giant
semiautomated factories. Lumber for structural uses is typically plainsawn (also called
flatsawn).
 2. Seasoning

Growing wood contains a quantity of water that can vary from about 30 per-cent to as
much as 300 percent of the oven-dry weight of the wood. Wood can be dried to any
desired moisture content, but framing lumber is considered to be seasoned when its
moisture content is19 percent or less. Figure 2 shows how the difference between
tangential and radial shrinkage will cause the same piece of lumber to look different
when it is sawn.

Figure 1.

Plain sawing produces boards with a broad grain figure, as seen in the end and top views below
the plainsawn log. Quarter sawing produces a vertical grain structure, which is seen on the face
of the board as tightly spaced parallel summerwood lines. A large log of softwood is typically
sawn to produce some large timbers, some plainsawn dimension lumber, and, in the horizontal
row of small pieces seen just below the heavy timbers, some pieces of vertical-grain decking.

Figure 2.

Because tangential shrinkage is so much greater

than radial shrinkage, high internal stresses are created

in a log as it dries, resulting inevitably in the formation of

radial cracks called checks.

Figure 3.

The difference between tangential and radial shrinkage also produces

seasoning distortions in lumber. The nature of

the distortion depends on the position the piece of

lumber occupied in the tree. The distortions are most

pronounced in plainsawn lumber (upper right,

extreme right, lower right).

3. Surfacing

Lumber is usually seasoned before it is surfaced, which allows the planning process to
remove some of the distortions that occur during seasoning. Surfacing is done by high-
speed automatic machines, or planes, whose rotating blades smooth the surfaces of the
piece and round the edges slightly.

4. Lumber Defects
 Manufacturing characteristics of lumber are largely determined by changes that take
place during the seasoning process. Knots and knotholes reduce the strength of a piece of
lumber, make it more difficult to cut and shape, and are often considered detrimental to
its appearance. Crooking, bowing, twisting, and cupping all occur because of
nonuniform shrinkage.

5. Lumber Grading

Each piece of lumber is graded for appearance or for structural strength and stiffness,
depending on its intended use. Grading offers the architect and engineer the opportunity
to build as economically as possible by using only as high a grade as is required for a
particular use.

Structural Properties of Wood

Wood is typically several times stronger parallel to grain than perpendicular to grain. With its
usual assortment of defects, wood is stronger in compression than in tension. The higher the
structural grade, the higher the allow- possible tensile strength.

Figure 4

Lumber Dimensions
The relationship between nominal and

actual dimensions for the most common

sizes of kiln-dried lumber are given in this

simplified chart, which is extracted from

the complete chart in Figure 5.

Figure 5

A complete chart of nominal and actual dimensions for both framing lumber and finish

lumber.

Wood Chemical Treatment

Chemical treatments are used to counteract two major weaknesses of wood: its combustibility
and its susceptibility to attack by decay and insects.

Fire-retardant treatment (FRT)-is accomplished by placing lumber in a vessel and

impregnating it under pressure with certain chemical salts that greatly reduce its combustibility.

Preservative-treated wood- is used where decay or insect resistance is required, such as with
wood that is used in or near the ground, that is exposed to moisture in outdoor structures such as
marine docks, fences, and decks, or that is used in areas of high termite risk.

3 Types of preservative Woods

1.Oil Borne Preservatives-These chemicals are generally insoluble in water so they are usually
dissolved in petroleum or other organic solvents in order to penetrate wood.

Pentachlorophenol or penta is also impregnated as an oil solution, and as with other oily
preservatives, wood treated with it cannot be painted.

Creosote is an oily derivative of coal that is widely used to treat wood in engineering structures.
But the odor, toxicity, and unpaintability of creosote-treated wood make it unsuitable for most
purposes in building construction.

Copper naphthenate is an active ingredient used predominantly in industrial and commercial

wood preservation for non-pressure (dip/brush/spray) and pressure treatments (vacuum/full cell)
to protect against fungal rot, decay, termites and wood-boring insects in unfinished wood and
various fabricated wood products.

2.Water-borne preservative- The two main waterborne preservatives used for infrastructure
treatment today are chromated copper arsenate (CCA) and ammoniacal copper arsenate (ACA).
CCA is used primarily in the eastern United States for nonresidential uses.

Ammoniacal copper zinc arsenate ( ACZA ) is a water-borne formulation that can be
purchased in a premixed solution only. It used to be prepared on-site at wood preservation
facilities by mixing and oxidizing arsenic acid, copper oxide, zinc oxide, ammonium hydroxide,
ammonium bicarbonate and water.

Chromated copper arsenate (CCA) is a chemical preservative that protects wood from rotting
due to insects and microbial agents. It has been used to pressure-treated lumber since the 1930s.
Since the 1970s, the majority of the wood used in residential settings was CCA-treated wood.

3. Fumigants -are used to control an existing internal decay or insect attack or to prevent future
problems. 

Use Service Condition Typical Uses

Category

UC1 Interior construction, above ground, dry Interior framing, woodwork,

and furnishings; for resistance
to insect attack only

UC2 Interior construction, above ground, damp Interior construction; for

resistance to insect attack
and/or moisture

UC3 Exterior construction, above ground

UC3A Not exposed to prolonged wetting, finish Exterior painted or stained

coated, readily sheds water siding, millwork, and trim

UC3B Exposed to prolonged wetting, unfinished or Exterior decking, deck

poorly drained framing, railings, and
uncoated millwork

UC4 Ground contact or fresh water

UC4A Normal exposure conditions; non-critical, Posts for fences and decks
replaceable components
UC4B High decay potential; critical or difficult-to- Permanent wood foundations
replace components

UC4C Extreme decay potential; critical Pilings, utility poles in severe

components decay environments