Saturday, May 18, 2013

Building with timber

Have you ever sat and watched an open fire burn. Then you place another piece of 4x2 on the fire. watch where the fire starts at the corners and then the wood is slowly consumed. Taking advantage of this if the timber was round as in the raw so to speak it takes longer for the timber to start to burn. Why ? There is no hot spot on the round to start to burn as there is with milled square timber. The milled timber also has the saw cuts that produce corners for hot spots to form. In comparison the round with bark fully removed is smooth and there is no areas of hot spots to start to burn. If houses were built with this in mind there would be less tendency for them to burn down. Trees in the wild resist fast moving fires and if  the fire gets inside them the heat generated is reflected to the near by surfaces which then speeds up the process.

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