4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017
Timber: Company has been inundated with interested visitors
Continued from Page 1A
That’s because Redfield
and his son work at D.R.
Johnson Lumber Co., one of
two U.S. timber mills mak-
ing a new wood product that’s
the buzz of the construction
industry. It’s called cross-lam-
inated timber, or CLT, and it’s
made like it sounds: rafts of
2-by-4 beams aligned in per-
pendicular layers, then glued
— or laminated — together
like a giant sandwich.
The resulting panels are
lighter and less energy-inten-
sive than concrete and steel
and much faster to assem-
ble on-site than regular tim-
ber, proponents say. Because
the grain in each layer is at a
right angle to the one below
and above it, there’s a count-
er-tension built into the pan-
els that supporters say makes
them strong enough to build
even the tallest skyscrapers.
“We believe that two
to five years out, down the
road, we could be seeing this
grow from just 20 percent of
our business to potentially
60 percent of our business,”
said Redfield, D.R. John-
son’s chief operating officer.
“We’re seeing some major
growth factors.”
using $1.5 million it won in
a tall wood building com-
petition sponsored by the
U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture and the softwood indus-
try that’s intended to promote
CLT as a domestic building
material. A 10-story residen-
tial tower in New York City
also got $1.5 million.
The Portland firm has
been working with scientists
at Portland State University
and Oregon State University
to test the panels’ strength by
subjecting them to hundreds
of thousands of pounds of
pressure. They are also testing
various methods for joining
the massive panels together.
“We’re looking at cre-
ating a resilient design, a
design that could withstand
a major earthquake — basi-
cally the earthquake that
we all worry about — and
be repaired,” said Thomas
Robinson, founder of Lever
Architecture.
The results of the struc-
tural testing in Oregon will
be made public for other U.S.
designers, bringing the mate-
rial one step closer to the
mainstream, Dusicka said.
Back in Riddle, a tiny town
tucked in the mist-shrouded
forests of Douglas County,
Redfield is once more excited
about timber in a place where
logging used to be king.
The 125-employee com-
pany has been inundated with
visitors from around country
interested in touring their new
CLT business expansion.
Watching as layers of
beams whirred through a
glue machine, Redfield said:
“We’re able to take wood that
may be turned into chips or
pulp and turn it into a product
that’s pretty exciting.”
Lever Architecture head-
quarters is a four-story all-
wood building built using
cross-laminated timber,
or CLT, in Portland. CLT is
made up of 2-by-4 beams
laid out in perpendicular
layers that are then glued
together to make giant
panels.
AP Photo
Don Ryan
Gas Reward Points * on
Sparking interest
From Maine to Arkansas
to the Pacific Northwest, the
material is sparking interest
among architects, engineers
and researchers. Many say it
could infuse struggling forest
communities like Riddle with
new economic growth while
reducing the carbon footprint
of urban construction with a
renewable building material.
Visually blemished wood
that currently goes to waste
can be used in the middle
layers of a CLT panel with-
out sacrificing strength or
look. Supporters say it could
bring sawmills back online
while improving forest health
through thinning dense stands
and making use of low-value
wood and local tree species.
Trees as small as 5 inches in
diameter at the top and those
damaged by pests and wild-
fire are prime candidates.
But challenges remain
before CLT becomes as com-
mon in the United States as it
is in Europe and Canada, and
not all builders are sold.
U.S. building codes gen-
erally place height limits
on all-wood buildings for
safety reasons, though a spe-
cial committee of the Interna-
tional Code Council is inves-
tigating potential changes
to address the use of CLT in
such structures. And research
is still underway on criti-
cal questions of how these
buildings withstand fire and
earthquakes in high-seismic
regions.
Building codes in Oregon
allow cutting-edge designs
using new technology like
CLT in some cases, but only
after rigorous testing and an
intensive approval process.
That can make such proj-
ects cost-prohibitive, said
Peter Dusicka, an engineer-
ing professor at Portland
State University who’s been
researching the strength of
CLT panels.
“The early adopters are
looking at it and seeing it
as a good opportunity,” but
before CLT can take off, there
will have to be more exam-
ples to get people excited
and more mills producing it,
said Thomas DeLuca, profes-
sor and director of Univer-
sity of Washington’s School
of Environmental and Forest
Sciences.
SmartLam in Montana is
the other company producing
CLT panels.
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Ultimate test
This spring, cross-lami-
nated timber will get its ulti-
mate test in the United States
when a Portland architec-
tural firm breaks ground on a
12-story wood building in the
city’s trendy Pearl District. It
would be the tallest all-wood
building in the world con-
structed in a seismic zone and
the tallest all-wood building
in North America.
An all-wood building in
Norway is taller, but is not in
a seismic zone. An 18-story
wood building in British
Columbia is also taller, but
rests on a traditional concrete
core.
Lever Architecture is
FRESH
Limit
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Fresh Jennie-O
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5
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8-lb.bag.
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of purchase. Offer Valid with Card and
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5
$
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Whole Chicken
Available in
the Service Deli.
5
99
ea
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