An Oregon mill shipped the final load of its patented mass plywood panels to Oregon State University for construction of the A.A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory, part of the Oregon Forest Science Center. The 15,000-square-foot facility uses the panels for interior walls, exterior walls, and roofing in the adjoining George W. Peavy Forest […]
Housewrap is the thin layer between the sheathing and the siding, and it does two jobs: it blocks bulk water that slips past the cladding, and it lets vapor move out of the wall assembly. Standard wraps lie flat against the sheathing, so water that gets behind the siding has nowhere to go but down
Lumber distributors close yards for the same reasons other retailers close stores: the numbers say the market is not there. A regional chain that runs two dozen yards will shutter the small-town locations, keep the ones in metro and mid-sized markets, and pour the savings into the stores that actually sell. Builders who bought a
The online market for tropical hardwood decking grew quickly after the first direct-to-consumer sellers opened shop in the mid-2010s. A homeowner in Ohio can now order ipe boards from a wholesaler hundreds of miles away, compare prices across several suppliers in an afternoon, and have a truck deliver the order to the jobsite. The sector
Lumber grading rules define what a piece of wood can carry, how it can be stamped, and where it can be used, and for decades those rules lived only in paper books. The Western Lumber Grading Rules reference has been the go-to source for lumber standards definitions since 1965, relied on by builders, engineers, architects,
Wood fiber is the raw material behind plywood, oriented strand board, and a long list of panel products, so its price moves eventually land in construction budgets. In North America, fiber costs for pulpmills stayed roughly flat from the second quarter of 2018 to the third quarter, but they ran measurably higher than a year
Water is the most destructive force in building materials. It rots wood, rusts steel, feeds mold, and moves through concrete and masonry in ways that are hard to predict. Decks take the worst of it, because a deck sits outdoors, exposed to rain, snow, and ground moisture for decades. Wood-alternative decking exists to solve exactly
Cabinets are the most visible and most expensive single investment in most kitchens, and the way they are built determines how they look in year one and how they hold up in year twenty. The industry behind them is larger and more consolidated than it looks from a showroom floor, with manufacturers, distributors, and dealers
A major building products distributor expanded its composite decking lines at California distribution centers in December 2018, after adding the same product lines in Phoenix, Arizona, and Houston, Texas earlier that year. The sequence is a snapshot of how regional expansion works in the building materials business: distributors follow demand, stock the categories contractors ask
Lumber moves through a supply chain that most people never see. Logs become boards at the mill, boards become truckloads at the distribution center, and truckloads become wall framing at the job site. The companies that run this chain are consolidating, and the pattern is visible in the deals: a distribution group acquires a family-owned
