Hello my name is Doug Routledge, vice president with the Council of Forest Industries or COFI,
a trade association that represents the interests of
dimensional lumber producers in British Columbia. COFI members are pleased to support the recent
change to the British Columbia Building Code that now allows six-storey wood frame construction.
While the benefits in improved business stability and provincial employment and
in rural, resource dependent community stability from increased use of wood and construction are obvious,
there are many other less obvious benefits that accrue from this change.
Improved affordability, lower carbon emissions during lumber production processes and when using
wood from sustainably managed forests, the increased sequestration of carbon.
COFI members also look forward to this change in the code motivating even more
innovation in the development of new wood based building products, including new
engineered wood products that could allow for even taller wooden buildings in the future.
As the world looks to build a more sustainable future, one of the oldest and most abundant
materials is coming to the forefront: wood. This natural, renewable and sustainable
resource is not only good for the planet but British Columbia's communities too.
These factors, along with many others are behind the drive to encourage the
use of wood as a construction material in the province of British Columbia.
It was in 2009 that the BC building code was amended to allow wood-frame residential
buildings to increase, from what was originally a maximum building limit of four stories to
six stories of wood frame construction, and although the future of wood framed mid-rise
construction is looking brighter than ever, the practice of designing and engineering structures
of this magnitude in British Columbia isn't exactly an altogether new process.
Hello I'm Sukh Johal, a technical advisor for the Canadian Wood Council and WoodWorks BC.
We're here in Gastown, the historic core the city of Vancouver.
It was here in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that this once small colony involved not only
becoming the City of Vancouver but also Western Canada's largest area of commercial activity.
From the very beginning, it was the forest sector and the lumber industry that was the foundation
on which the City of Vancouver and the province of B.C. was built, grew and continues to thrive.
It was the Hastings Mill that started Gastown, it commenced operations in 1865
and set up on the South Shore Burrard Inlet, present-day the north end of Dunlevy Avenue.
The mill's primary purpose was to export timber products back to England, but in time a settlement
of workers, merchants and their families began to grow around the mill and soon enough the
mill found itself servicing the derived demand of the ever growing domestic market,
which included residential and commercial construction, as well as large warehouse buildings.
It was during this time that the settlement skyline was starting
to take shape and many of the wood frame buildings I mentioned earlier
were lining the streets of this area we now know as Gastown.
Well the history of Gastown actually grows from the lumber because the first non-native
settlement on this shore, Burrard Inlet, was really because of the Douglas-fir forest that was here,
coastal rainforest, thousand year old trees. The largest tree I think they
cut down they bothered to measure was 22 feet across at its trunk,
so it was the lumber that got people here in the first place.
Not only was Gastown the birthplace of Vancouver, it was also the birthplace of
mid-rise construction in B.C. At the turn of the century,
when wood was being used to industrialize, not only Gastown but the rest of Canada,
we were already building six storey and taller buildings out of wood.
Gastown is actually unique because this is actually where we find some of the largest
timber frame buildings in Vancouver, that coastal rainforest produced what they called the Vancouver
toothpick these were beams that were sort of 60 feet long and two-and-a-half feet square.
These were shipped out of Vancouver to other markets but also used to
build many of the buildings that we have here. Traditionally, in the city it was six storey
timber frame construction we actually have a couple buildings here that are seven and
eight stories, in the timber frame. So it was the immense dimension and
really tight grain of that Douglas-fir that enabled that construction.
Built with heavy timber and predating the days of calculators, computers and engineering design
software, we have beautiful examples of simple but effective design solutions that incorporate wood.
The post and beam design allowed for a flexible floor plan, the large
clear spans not only suited the needs of the original owners and their commercial tenants,
but currently accommodate the required improvements of today's residents as well.
Configured in a grid pattern, the floor and roof system, which primarily consists of laminated
decking material is designed as a simple span and bears onto two support girders.
The buildings were built with the readily available structural wood
products of the day, coupled with simple but effective connections.
These buildings have weathered the test of time, subjected to earthquakes, damp Vancouver weather,
and generations of occupants. The resiliency is a testament to
the strength and durability of a wood structure, when correctly detailed.
We're here at The Landing which is one of the largest wood frame buildings in Gastown,
it hosts over a hundred and eighty thousand
feet of commercial space on nine levels of wood frame construction.
It's a true testament to the craftsmanship that occurred at the turn of the century.
While the building use differed on each floor the lower warehouse levels usually
housed heavy commercial goods or manufacturing production machinery; as such, the corresponding
structural members of these floors have tighter spacing, with wider columns.
Bill Billups, technical advisor with the WoodWorks
BC program, takes a closer look at these impressive structures.
Here we have a perfect example of heavy timber construction done at the turn of the century,
sawn timber deck, on sawn timber purlins which in turn load these tandem girders and these girders
were used doubled up to get better headroom and also utilized as sections they had available.
What this connection does for this system is allow you to take the upper column, which is loading the
top of the connection and transfer that load end grain to end grain to the bottom column,
what it also does is that bypasses the beams, and what that means we're not compressing wood 8x8 up
on top 10x10 in below, as you go down below the column gets bigger but the beams don't.
So here we are this 20x20 Douglas-fir column is supporting this 18x18 column upstairs,
which comes through the floor system loading end grain to end grain, which reduces bearing for
the wood but this corbel in the center catches these beams on the other side so
we're not loading the floor. We're simply transferring the load through straight down
through the columns, this is done in the turn of the century and these connections
are actually almost like a piece of art. That allows us to build taller buildings
to go taller than what we currently are sitting in, which is nine stories.
When you think about the buildings that were built in Vancouver, many of them over a hundred
years ago most of the wood that was used to build the city came from the forest, which
the city now covers or from the mountains of the North Shore and an entirely new forest has grown.
You'll see that most of the area is forested, other than where the houses and buildings are,
all of that is second-growth forest.
When the loggers that came to Vancouver to access the tremendous forest resource,
they used hand saws, they used axes, they didn't really make a dent into the forest resource. Since then, how we access the forest,
how we harvest it, has changed, we're now able to grow a forest which might have taken 300 years,
in about a hundred years because we manage it, we regenerate it and we tend it throughout its life.
It has become not just a forest but a planned forest with harvest capabilities,
as well as the wildlife and water sources and a whole host of other resources.