Victoria Commons

[tomh009]

Well it does certainly seem like the BC codes were changed mostly to create a new market for lumber after the trade softwood lumber tarrif problems with the US.

The shift to more wood for commercial construction was happening already before the softwood lumber war.  A long, long time ago we worked on software for engineering wood buildings (not houses, where you normally just use tables).  This was more than 20 years ago, long before the dispute started.

Making lumber requires kilning wood for long periods of time and lots of fossil fuels to harvest the wood from the forests... and increasing lumber demand with glulam beams or whatever else is going to mean more deforestation. I don't know if they can make glulam beams out of the same kind of fast-growing trees that are used for paper production. We're still harvesting lumber faster than it can re-grow so it seems like a bad idea to speed that up. I also doubt that glulam beams are gonna be easy or even worthwhile to recycle, and once a glulam building catches fire the smoke will likely be very toxic stuff.

Glulam is made from softwoods, the same as paper.  For recycling glulam and other engineered wood products, the glues will ne the challenge.

Not sure why you think we are harvesting lumber faster than it grows -- in Canada, deforestation is 99% driven by population and farm growth, not clear-cutting.

Here's one comparison though it's not about engineered wood so much. It's also not a peer-reviewed paper so I dunno much about who wrote (could be a steel industry guy, who knows)

If I ever get a chance to build my own house it's going to be mostly steel frame and stone walls.

I have no idea about what the right answer is but the link seems to ignore the impact of minining and shipping iron ore, which is also not insubstantial.  That said, I would be very happy to have a structural steel and concrete house -- including a concrete floor.