Watch the video on Engineered Studs.
Anyone who has spent time in the produce section of a grocery store is familiar with the site of the picky shopper who labors for minutes nosing through stacks of produce to find that one, perfect, unblemished tomato. This sight replays itself often on the job site as well, as builders can spend hours sorting through stacks of pine and sighting down lengths of timber looking for a straight stud.
When framing kitchen or a bath wall where cabinets and countertops will be installed, having a straight surface to work with is critical for the builder to avoid unsightly gaps or spaces. Some new home designs call for two-story entryways or open cathedral ceilings, and builders need framing materials that are straight and true to avoid obvious waves or swells in the finished walls. With the decline in availability of large diameter, old-growth forests, builders can be hard pressed to find enough straight lumber to meet their framing needs.
Standard dimensional lumber, like Southern Yellow Pine, remains a favorite choice for builders today for framing, flooring, and stairwell construction. While this relatively inexpensive material works well over shorter expanses where slight flaws in the lumber can be hidden behind drywall, over time softwoods like the Southern Yellow Pine can, bow, twist, bend and shrink.
Though in the produce market you may not want manufactured tomatoes, studs needn't be so organic.
Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) is a type of engineered lumber that is free of bows and knots and perfect for framing in areas where straight and uniform lumber is needed. LSL has the same structural integrity of traditional dimensional lumber.
Another benefit of LSL is that it is environmentally friendly from forest to job site. The wood beams are created using small dimension, fast growing timber like Aspen and Poplar that can easily be replanted. This helps reduce the need for old-growth lumber and provides for a much more sustainable, renewable timber resource.
Here's how LSL is created:
- Small diameter trees like Aspen or Poplar are harvested and transported to mills for processing.
- Trees are limbed (cleaned) and cut into thin strips and coated with adhesive glue.
- While drying, the strands are compressed together under high heat and pressure to create "billets" or sheets of engineered wood.
- The billets can then be cut into standard 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 size studs with lengths up to 22 feet.
LSL lumber can be substituted for any traditional lumber and can be cut, nailed and installed using the same tools framing trade contractors use today. More and more engineered stud manufacturers are finding ways to use recycled, flawed wood to create LSL. Though slightly more expensive than traditional dimensional lumber, LSL generates less waste on the jobsite, and the straight studs will mean fewer removals and replacements of bad or bowed boards.
Unlike the shopper searching in vain for the perfect piece of fruit, builders today can simply order their unblemished materials, and by doing so help create a more attractive and eco-friendly home.
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