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The future of small sawmills, sawmill manufacturers and milling ...?

Started by LOGDOG, February 25, 2010, 05:30:16 PM

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Magicman

I've had several homes built with my dimension sawed framing lumber.  In every instance, the architect specified on the house plans "SPIB #2 and or rough sawed lumber".  The building inspector, insurance company, and lending institution all signed off on the house plans before the building took place.  As a matter of fact, on a 3,000+ sq.ft. house, the architect came and watched me saw and inspected the lumber.   edit:  When I said "inspected" read that "looked at".
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

red oaks lumber

i don't think using native lumber is a bad thing at all. but there does need to be ckecks and balances. over the years i've planned hudreds of thousands of feet (framing lumber) alot of which i wouldn't use for a dog house let alone a house. if a person uses commonsense with building, everything is fine. most of the dwelling codes apply more to proper construction as apposed to the materils used.
i think the need to have grade stamping has been lobbied for my the large mills, they see that people want to use their own lumber this loophole gives them more market share.
as a side note: i'm not a fan of more government control.
the experts think i do things wrong
over 18 million b.f. processed and 7341 happy customers i disagree

taschmidretired

 You are dead on Red Oaks Lumber about applying common sense. It needs to be applied from both sides. The insulation story I posted was true and there  is absolutely no common sense used in that situation by a building code department. To top that story off when they showed up for the rough-in/insulation inspection and I had no insulation in place, I failed the inspection because the light/fan/heat units in the 2 bathrooms were considered using electric heat, we had to insulate the exterior wall and ceiling of each bathroom in order to get the OK.  Here's a few more of my favorites;

Poly film required over insulated wall/ceilings. Fine as vapor barrier as long as the insulation being installed is not faced. Seldom is insulation installed anymore without a face (USA). Many building code departments call for the poly film to be installed regardless. It creates the perfect double vapor barrier which is of course, bad.  A good friend of mine heads up a code enforcement office in a metropolitan area of NC.  He said we have to make them put it up, then turned a blind eye to the fact that they would remove it before installing drywall.

Cutting an engineered Truss: I once over ordered on trusses on a home addition job, so having no use for the extra one I used it as the nailer against the existing home. There was an existing 2' x 5' chimney so we cut that section out of the truss and then proceeded to secure the two pieces to the wall on each side of the chimney. The next full length truss layed out right to the chimney. When code enforcement showed up for rough-in they DQ the framing inspection, get this, because I had "cut the engineered truss". At first I thought he was joking, he wasn't.


He said I would have to remove it and install anything other than that truss as nailers.  There was no way I was going to remove that truss over such obvious stupidity (lack of common sense) unless the owner who I was doing the work for told me too.
He did'nt. He threw the inspector off his property (they had to mail him the the red tag stop work order, the building permit was in is name)
He had me finish the job and He paid me in full. He took lots of pictures and I do know that he won in the end and got a legal CO.


"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

Hilltop366

Quote from: red oaks lumber on March 03, 2010, 01:07:30 PMmost of the dwelling codes apply more to proper construction as apposed to the materils used.

Talking with my building inspector around 10 years ago he reminded me the code in reguards to framing size and spacing is the minimum, he had a round about way of hinting about things that he could't say out loud and once I cought on we got along just fine. One thing he did like was that I would go to his office with some questions about something and also have a preposed answer that he would either like or change a little, this saved me lots of money and time in the long run.

The one I don't get is putting a layer of nonpermeable foam on the outside of a frame and a vapour barrier on the inside it just doesn't sound right to me.

taschmidretired

"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

Hilltop366


taschmidretired

I'm just trying to keep this thread alive so that everyone may have the oportunity to see how You described most of the World's (our world anyway) problems by simply adding two letters  "UNcommon sense". 
"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

Kansas

I feel lucky to be in the area I'm at. All the various building we have done at the mill used cottonwood for rafters, nailers, etc. and we never once had a building inspector. Built my new house last year and used a lot of white oak 8x8 and 8x12 beams, along with 2x12 oak rafters holding up the loft. Only inspector that showed up was the one for the septic system, and he got to see that after we already covered it up. He did ask if he could see all the different kinds of wood in the house, which I let him do.
It seems when it comes to the state of sawmills in this area, we are about the only one left standing. Walnut and oak can still be logged and hauled to a mill. But you can't put a truck under ash or soft maple right now and haul it 150 miles and make it work. I just had truckload after truckload of hackberry come in that I bought at pallet price. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of  the logs are veneer type quality, and there is no where to go  with them. We will cut some up for kiln dried lumber. But in the end, most will probably get cut up for pallet lumber. It just seems like a terrible waste.
Things do seem to be picking up around here. When the weather breaks, its going to pick up a lot more. I guess I have to believe the future is going to be good-we are making plans to put up a new building to house everything on a place we bought across the road from our location now. We have expanded about all we can where we are at, and besides, our building now sits on railroad property. I don't want to sink a bunch of money into a new building and have it sit on someone else's land. After the last two winters, we just cant take cutting in buildings that aren't climate controlled. Just getting too old for that, and the winters seem to be getting worse around here.  I'm leaning toward putting hot water heat in the floor, using wood waste to power a furnace to heat it.

Brucer

In BC the building code requires all wood used in structural applications to be grade stamped. There's a reason -- in the interior we can bet some pretty impressive snow loads. The code in my fair city used to specify a design load of 110 pounds per square foot. After the winter of '96, they raised it to 143 pounds per square foot.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

ARKANSAWYER


  I can see where that ink would make the lumber stronger to hold up that snow.
ARKANSAWYER

taschmidretired

Good one AK,
The reason they may have increased the sq ft lbs is because the graded lumber/timber quality has decreased, causing failure.
Or it could be because snow has gotten heavier in the last couple of decades? ;)
The Architects planning buildings have had to force a change in the actual stress factor ratings because of failure in the recent past.
The failure comes from the use of inferior product. The tight ringed old growth DF, has been replaced with fast growing/or immature DF timber and the stress ratings are not the same.
Yes, this is just an adjustment into the future, But it was not adjusted by those putting the stamps on (which are private associasions/unions by the way).


"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

Brucer

The stamp is strictly for quality control. If you buy wood from me, it will meet or exceed the grade requirements, stamp or no stamp. If you buy it from a couple of my competitors, don't be planning to use it for any structural applications.

The reason for the increased design loads is more variability in our snowfalls. 1996 was a pretty extreme winter all across the province. Carports, garages, boathouses, even a few houses were collapsing under the load.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

taschmidretired

 We had that same kind of Big Winter in 92/93 in Eastern Oregon.  Many engineered truss's failed under the extreme snow load that winter. Increasing the snowload requirements is no different than when they increase the Earthquake requirements in areas where they are subject to Earthquakes. Same for Hurricanes. Everytime after a bigger Hurricane takes out what was rebuilt from the previous smaller Huricane, they raise the stanards again.
  But that is not the same as the fact that 2x4 2x6 etc have the same stamp on them they had 30/40 years ago but the material being stamped is in no way the same. The raw material being graded and stamped for use is inferior to the material that was being stamped in the past.
I believe in the need for building inpectors, ones with knowledge and are capable of using common sense. They should be capable of inspecting a framing job and either passing or DQing the jog based on the quality of the material.
Look at the ends of every unit of dementional lumber at any home depot/lowes. You will only see heart centers, no heart wood (the best part of the log). Most of the sticks being sold are milled from tops (the worst/weakest part of the tree). 
How many custom sawmillers are using these methods in order to move their product? The millers I know that saw dementional lumber for construction have to produce a decent product, both in size and in quality, or they won't have any customers, because their material is being DQed.


"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

sigidi

TA, I'm with ya on building inspectors - here in Aus our first module was ready for it's framing inspection, called council, arranged an inspection. Old mate comes out and as I had gone to great lengths to get myself qualified with a grading ticket, I was happy to show off... I asked him if he wanted to see my grading ticket as all the timber we had cut oursleves... he slaps the frame a couple of times whilst saying "nah, good hardwood frame like this, no worries" but the frame was made from slash pine :o ??? I remained calm, didn't correct him and later when he was gone(bless her) Wifey asks me "why didn't you say anything?" ('cause she knows I like things being right) I figure if I embarrassed him by correcting him on mistaking pine for hardwood, he'd be a real mongrel to work with for all our inspections... so yeah I agree, I don't think the inspectors have a clue what they are dealing with.

I also can understand what is being said about the grade of timber being stamped the same as it was years ago, but the tree it's coming from being sub-standard and therefore the timber produced is inferior. Do you guys get proof graded timber? or visually graded? here we have both, but for softwood it is generally Machine Grade Prove or MGP so therefore a machine will put a specific stress onto the timber and then if it holds that stress it is stamped that grade either MGP10, MGP12 that kind of thing. With hardwood most of it is visual stress graded unless a mill has pretty expensive grading gear, so most do visual grading according to an Australian Standard.
Always willing to help - Allan

taschmidretired

Sigidi I don't know the answer pertaining to the modern methods to which the lumber is graded, it is probaly similar to what you have in Aus. Hopefully someone will chime in with the facts on that.
One time I was headed from NY to Turlock CA with two Sawmills. I was going to show at the California Farm Show in Turlock. I delivered the one mill to a customer in Montrose, Colorado and bought a small load of lodge pole pine from him to demonstrate at the show in California. As I was driving I started to think about the fact that California has their border agricultural inspection stations and that they had been on the watch for pine timber coming in due to the pine beetle outbreak. I had desease free healthy logs but for good measure I decided to enter California from it's most Southern gate in hope that the desert people were not as knowledgable on timber as their Northern counterparts would be. As I approached the inspector they stopped me and started to look over the logs I was hauling. After what seemed to be forever the inspector lady came to my window and asked, "What kind of Trees I was Hauling" I didn't want to lie so I said "Lodge Pole"
instead of lodge pole pine. She let me go. I never tried that again.
"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

laffs

here in the northeast we grade by nelma rules, which is all visual. size of knots and color on all 4 sides spacing any edge breaks,compression wood,bark seams,holes(missing knots considered holes)pitch pockets,shake and decay or red rot.
they also have mechanical stress rated. most of it i havent done. i had been licensed for grading pine for 12 or so years but havent done any for 8.
i  think if anyone wants or needs a pocket dictionay for the grading rules they may be able to look up nelma(north east lumber manufacturer association) it covers boards light framing, stringers,studs timbers and beams.
species iclude-white pine eastern spruce,hemlock,tamarack,jack pine,red pine pitch pine,northern cedar,balsam fir,aspen(poplar),red maple,mixed maple,beech,birch,hickory,red oak,northern red oak,white oak and yellow poplar.
i also have phone# fax# and address if needed.
brent
timber harvester,tinberjack230,34hp kubota,job ace excavator carpenter tools up the yingyang,

Brucer

Softwood lumber can be visually graded or machine graded (stress rated). It seems to me that it was after machine grading appeared on the scene that the quality of the wood began to deteriorate. The old visual grading rules were conservative because of variables in the wood. Machine grading is more precise and lets you get away with a lot more wane.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

Ron Wenrich

Standard grading rules for northeastern lumber:  http://www.nelma.org/Page-10.html   They're one of seven grading boards in US and Canada.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Larry

Truss builders around here use machine graded SYP.  When I questioned the amount of wane I sometimes saw on pieces, I was told the truss would still make the engineered design strength.

Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

beenthere

Quote from: Brucer on March 07, 2010, 01:26:07 AM
...............It seems to me that it was after machine grading appeared on the scene that the quality of the wood began to deteriorate. ...........

The machine grading skims the higher-valued stress graded material off the top, leaving lesser stress-grade material to be visually graded for "quality" and end use. Then visual grade material looks worse because the better grade isn't in the mix. Machine stress graded lumber still has some minimum visual over-ride. 

Design stresses will change when new information is brought into the data base as well as when new species are added. The weaker species in the data base for any group will control the design values.
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Ianab

Also because it's not graded visually pieces may go through that look suspect, but are actually strong enough to pass the standard and be used. Building standards realise that not all boards are perfect, so there is a decent safety margin in the design.

When grading visually, you see a board with a couple of obvious flaws, and it gets culled, when it may actually still be up to standard and OK to use. I bet the machines also cull some wood that visually looks OK but is internally weakened.

In the end, how many houses fall down because the 4x2s are too weak? Approx none. Winds might tear them apart, floods might undermine them, rot or insects might weaken them, but it's never a case of the wood was just too weak.

Ian
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

Larry

Quote from: Ianab on March 07, 2010, 02:28:47 PM
In the end, how many houses fall down because the 4x2s are too weak? Approx none. Winds might tear them apart, floods might undermine them, rot or insects might weaken them, but it's never a case of the wood was just too weak.

Ian

Once the stud is covered up by drywall and sheathing, the only quality left to determine is whether the building stands up or falls down.  From what I've seen a building that stands or fails is far more dependent on fasteners used, the design, and the carpenters skill than how much wane is on the stud or if it has pith in the center.

Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

LOGDOG

Quote from: Ianab on March 07, 2010, 02:28:47 PM


In the end, how many houses fall down because the 4x2s are too weak? Approx none. Winds might tear them apart, floods might undermine them, rot or insects might weaken them, but it's never a case of the wood was just too weak.

Ian

BINGO!!! I'd also like to know how much stronger a frame would be if it was built of full dimension 2x4's, 2x6's, etc,etc rather than the "nominal" dimension lumber used in framing today?


taschmidretired

"Until I had turned Thirty Five, the longest I had ever stayed in one place was my Mother's womb."

"Beware of the man that shoots his arrow first, and then paints a bulls eye around it after."

ARKANSAWYER

  Back in 1989 I was living in Myrtle Beach S.C. when Hugo came to town.  I saw houses built in the 1950's survive the storm on the beach and houses built just the year before with all stamped lumber and built to code were spread all over the place.  One house I was in was 3 blocks back from where it was standing the day befor the storm hit.  It was in tact and could be picked up and moved back to where it belonged.  But since it did not meet the new building codes it was torn down by a track hoe and hauled off to the burn pit with all the new homes that fell apart.
  I would bet that no matter how good the ink is it will not keep a house from comming apart if it is not well made.  Alot of the people who are now drawing up the blue prints or setting the codes have never made a board or built a house with their own hands.  There is a job here where the people hired a Architect to draw up the plans for three 24x36 buildings of which one was an office, one a information center and the last one for restrooms.  These were very simple stick framed buildings on slabs.  Snow load is 30 lbs and wind is 60 mph with no seismic concerns.  The builder did not have to do plumbing or wiring and did not even finish the insides.  Cost was $347,000 for the buildings by a Comercial builder so the Architect would sign off so the building inspector would sign off to approve the whole deal.   I think the $133 sqft is a bit high but since they had to pour 2x2 footings under the 12 inch thick slabs the buildings will have a firm foundation.  The Architect got paid a percentage for the job for what it got bidded as.  Seems wrong to me.
ARKANSAWYER

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