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Sustainable building effort reaches new heights with wooden skyscrapers (yaleclimateconnections.org)

submitted 5 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/environment@beehaw.org

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[–] hefty4871@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

To demonstrate mass timber’s fire resistance, engineers put the wood elements in gas-fired chambers and monitor their integrity. Other tests set fire to mock-ups of mass timber buildings and record the results.

These tests have gradually convinced regulators and customers that mass timber can resist burning long enough to be fire safe. That’s partly because a layer of char tends to form early on the outside of the timber, insulating the interior from much of the fire’s heat.

I live in a country where single family homes are built with wood. Everyone seems to trust their life to that. I don't know why it would be different in an apartment.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Because these are literal sky scrapers. Fire on a wood structure is a recipe for catastrophic failure. A fire in a large structure could have similar effects to those large high rise condos that collapsed in Florida from poor maintenance.

This is very likely dangerous deregulation of the fire code to cut costs being "green washed" as a new thing that needs a hell of a lot more scrutiny. Building large structures with wood WAS a thing in the past, it was outlawed because it's EXTREMELY dangerous when one of those structures ignites.

They're only getting away with it because these are composite timbers which have been "tested" to be safer. I'm very skeptical that those tests are comprehensive, at least to the point where I would feel comfortable spending a significant portion of my life in one of these buildings.

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Because these are literal sky scrapers. Fire on a wood structure is a recipe for catastrophic failure. A fire in a large structure could have similar effects to those large high rise condos that collapsed in Florida from poor maintenance.

i think you're operating under 1) an extremely 1800s understanding of how fire-resistant a wood skyscraper would be and 2) a misguided understanding of where fire safety problems tend to come from in most contemporary buildings

wood is not uniquely flammable,[^1] and the vast majority of the problem in a fire is not going to be with the actual wood itself (as is true of steel, concrete, etc.) but moreso with the fact that we make nearly everything that isn't the building itself out of extremely combustible materials and we probably should not do that? as i recall that was the entire problem at Grenfell, where the cladding used was a flammable plastic that rendered any airgapping measures between flats useless and allowed the fire to spread uncontrollably. the fire at Grenfell also reportedly began from a refrigerator that was plastic-backed.

[^1]: it can rather trivially be treated to be fire-resistant--and as the person you're replying to notes has already been tested extensively and implemented in existing buildings to that end, and in multiple locales, just from a brief search on the subject