Thread: Boxed heart

The reality is that Australian Standard 2082 has to change in line with the timber resource.
As the industry increasingly transitions to a plantation based resource and/or a resource based on more frequent rotation through native forest stands we are faced with greater challenges retrieving large cross sectional pieces from smaller and smaller logs. At the same time this is occurring there is a major construction industry shift away from hardwood into softwood and manufactured wood products such as gluelam. This has placed the hardwood sector at a severe disadvantage in terms of (a) providing large sectional pieces and (b) reducing market demand for smaller cross sectional pieces. At the same time a high exchange rate and domestic cost of production increase (read wages growth and electricity & fuel prices) has made it more cost effective to import hardwood then cut it locally.

The reality is... and I speak as one who has experience in the timber industry outside of this country... is that Australian consumers have long been spoilt. We have these absolutely magnificent hardwood timbers, but we want to buy them for nothing. We want cheap housing, and the only thing Joe Average consumer is looking at is the price. Modern houses are engineered structures... go ask what the design service life on your typical new home is and you wont get an an answer easily. The reason why is it's designed to last for 40 years, and the builder/ developer doesnt want you to know that: he's quite happy for you to assume it's like grandads house and built to last not one, but two lifetimes.

At the same time however there is some sleight of hand occurring re: you want it to look like grandads house. And it does- but you also don't want the trees cut down that went to make a house of grandads quality... so they aren't. Basicly you're getting what you didn't ask for because you never thought what you wanted through to its inevitable conclusion - you cant get good timber from juvenile trees, and you can't get mature timber without cutting down mature trees. One should never underestimate the stupidity of the voting public or their ability to shoot themselves in the foot through shortsightedness, and public sentiment drives policy.

Anyway, back to the standard. The standard in Australia was written by government at the behest of the construction industry with a view to making a common, enforceable and repeatable standard that could be administered in light of the constitutional laws surrounding interstate commerce. So that I could send a piece of F17 hardwood from here to any other state and it would have known and defineable qualities in service. (Prior to that there were various grade rules administered on a state basis). That was more then a few years back, and the timber resource has changed.

Whether heart in timbers are good or bad is irrelevant. The question is will it do the job expected of it in service? The reality is that it will... maybe, subject to it being in good condition and seasoned sufficiently to know whether it will collapse or not, and subject to being protected from weather. The onus lies then on the designer, and builder, and end user specifying more clearly exactly what service conditions are to be encountered. There is no way a boxed heart 150 x 150 should ever be able to go F17 IMHO... but it would equally clearly more then exceed the F8 and a half that is the MP3 proof tested standard in pine.

Here's the thing... if I go out tomorrow and cut my old growth, tropical zone, Forest red gums... they will consistently under pressure testing rate F22, and a high percentage will go F27. The same species grown in Victoria gets F17, so the species is rated at F17 for structural number 1 for visual grading purposes. Plantation timber however, is more likely to go F14 when tested. So what is going to happen is that structural grades for species are being revised down where there is a high likelyhood of that timber being supplied from a plantation resource.

The onus ultimately lies here with designers. There is going to be an increasing dependance on designers to more clearly deliniate what is the requirement for a particular piece of timber in a house. Currently they all say F14H3... and so we have a situation where class 1 hardwood gets a trip to pressure treatment because the designer is lazy, the builder is afraid to deviate from the design through liabilty issues, and the consumer doesnt know enough to say "why are you making my timber more expensive when it doesnt need to be treated at all?" Designers are like the rest of us... they dont want to work harder for the same amount of money, so they dont say well you could go 6 x 2 F27's, or use 8x2 F14's, or use 12x2 gluelam pine... and it can either be class 2 hardwood or better or H3 treated.... just for the drawings you submit to council to get approval on your veranda extension. Allowing choices leads to issues cause then someone buys 6x2 pines and wonders why it fails.

Heart in 6 x 6's... will I sell them? Dammed right I will.
Would I build my house with them... nope.

As a sawmiller, my gut tells me that that the only easy solution is to shift to machine proof grading. That way each piece of timber can be utilised based on it's individual merits, rather then being lumped in with others of the same species that are stronger/weaker through inherent structual differences in the individual trees . That however is cost prohibitive to the smaller sawmiller and I shan't be doing it. Ergo, my long term plan is to build a 60 footer and go fishing off Tahiti.

Originally Posted by John.G

go fishing off Tahiti.

sounds like my kind of holiday..MM

A beautifully written response John, illuminating the competing pressures and rationals behind the changing standards. I fully concur with your thoughts about machine proof testing as the answer. Hopefully it won't be long before the testing equipment becomes affordable enough to install more widely and hardwood can compete on a better footing with the softwood and engineered timber alternatives. It really irritates me (and must send you spare) when run of mill hardwood is graded F14 when it will easily run to F27 (or better). The simple fact is that so few designers/specifiers bother to consider higher stress grades in their calculations that really good quality timber is lumped to the lowest common denominator, being F14. A significant proportion of hardwood scantling produced are clears which rate 33% stronger than structural no 1 grade and for a species like grey ironbark yield an F34 rating G.O.S!

My reticence about 150x150 boxed heart is founded in the difficulty of visually establishing its' competence - we simply don't know with any confidence what is lurking just below the surface. As you are daily reminded the era of 600mm c.d.u.b mill feedstock are well and truly over and I fully understand your position both as a sawmiller and as a consumer. I'm inclined to think that more research into juvenile core wood in plantation thinnings timber would reveal that it is more durable and stronger than the core timber of many species of mature trees which have often undergone significant chemical decomposition and that this younger wood (when suitably protected) would be more suited to boxed heart usage than is currently supposed.

In my experience boxed heart can be fine in some species like ironbark but I would never trust it in Gympie messmate - horses for courses. I seem to recall reading somewhere in the standards (for recycled timber?) that heart is allowed in non beam timbers from certain species.

Timboz

Irrespective of what species i mill i always try to 'box' the heart then throw it to the fire heap.Can't see the pith or heart of the tree being used for anything worthwhile as it splits,twists,is often defective courtesy of our termite friends.These attributes alone would compromise the loading strength of the timber(you'd think) so i certainly would be dubious about using 'boxed' hearts.I believe 'boxed' Stringy Bark is accepted for use though ...still reckon its only good for the B.B.Q...MM

John, I share your frustration regarding overtreating timber. The 'it's treated it must be better' mentality is alive and well. I'm constantly scratching my head when I see beautiful sapwood free H3 treated ironbark! What is your all up tanalith E cost - $200 m^3? That sure puts an unnecessary disadvantage on your product. Is there an industry campaign 'naturally better' or is their a strong advocate in Canberra? I wonder whether the greens would advocate strongly. Particularly in Queensland where they had such a strong hand in the R.F.A's and pushed so strongly for plantation hardwoods. Perhaps an equivalency ratings scheme could be employed so that treatment tags (or non-treated tags) read H4 (equivalent durability class 1), durability class 2 (equivalent H3) etc so that the buyer is forced to look at the equivalence at point of sale and not 'just heading to the treated stack'.

Perplexed, timboz

Originally Posted by MAPLEMAN

Irrespective of what species i mill i always try to 'box' the heart then throw it to the fire heap.Can't see the pith or heart of the tree being used for anything worthwhile as it splits,twists,is often defective courtesy of our termite friends.These attributes alone would compromise the loading strength of the timber(you'd think) so i certainly would be dubious about using 'boxed' hearts.I believe 'boxed' Stringy Bark is accepted for use though ...still reckon its only good for the B.B.Q...MM

http://www.solarkilns.com/solar_kiln...-flood-gum.htm

interesting reading on what you - and I - send to the firewood heap.

Originally Posted by timboz

John, I share your frustration regarding overtreating timber. The 'it's treated it must be better' mentality is alive and well. I'm constantly scratching my head when I see beautiful sapwood free H3 treated ironbark! What is your all up tanalith E cost - $200 m^3? That sure puts an unnecessary disadvantage on your product. Is there an industry campaign 'naturally better' or is their a strong advocate in Canberra? I wonder whether the greens would advocate strongly. Particularly in Queensland where they had such a strong hand in the R.F.A's and pushed so strongly for plantation hardwoods. Perhaps an equivalency ratings scheme could be employed so that treatment tags (or non-treated tags) read H4 (equivalent durability class 1), durability class 2 (equivalent H3) etc so that the buyer is forced to look at the equivalence at point of sale and not 'just heading to the treated stack'.

Perplexed, timboz

We contract out the H3 pressure treatment... just not big enough to justify installing our own. $200 a cube is near enough to the mark: because only the sapwood uptakes dip and the truewood only gets an external stain our stuff doesn't use a lot of chemical, but there's freight and a handling charge etc to make it worth the operators time. I still have the hot dip, but it's solely for borax now for the cabinet timbers, or for the odd environmentally conscious person with enough knowledge to ask for something "green".
Borax is me still trying to beat my head against a wall. It penetrates the timber but will leach out so its only H1 up here. Course, I dont know a lot of people who use exposed timber in a house and then dont paint it, or oil the deck or something but hey... lets not let practical usage and common sense into the argument. If we bang a nail into a H3 treated bearer trying to hold the decking to it we've broken the chemical seal there too. That of course, is different.

Lets just say that if one was to look at who sits on the advisory boards in various states, and look at who sits on the board and the membership of the TPAA (Timber Preservers Assosiation Australia) and who sits in similar capacities on various advisory boards in the national capital... the same names keep showing up. There is a fine line between expert opinion and vested interest group... I'm not saying it gets crossed, just making a broad non-committal statement.

Joe Average consumer doesn't get a choice. He shops at the local hardware store, he takes whats there, its all treated. I go to sell to a hardware store the first question is always "Is it treated?" You don't get a second question asked of you if the answer to the first is no.

Originally Posted by John.G

http://www.solarkilns.com/solar_kiln...-flood-gum.htm

interesting reading on what you - and I - send to the firewood heap.

Amazed by that John, wouldn't have thought that was possible to achieve? And using young plantation grown trees too ...incredible...MM

At 12 years old this E. grandis material is exactly the sort of material that I believe is more usable than has previously supposed. At that age the core wood simply hasn't had time to chemically degrade to any extent. I can envisage a gangsaw to edger line producing quite usable material (particularly with a well timed pruning schedule).

Timboz

Check out how cheap treated 'hardwood' is at Bunnings...around $600-$700 a cube ..now how can a small mill compete against a price that low?...MM

Mapleman,

I'm guessing that is only fencing grade? Would any mill sell structural hardwood for $500 a cube? They'd be broke quicker than a drunken sailor in a casino!

Timboz

Originally Posted by timboz

Mapleman,

I'm guessing that is only fencing grade? Would any mill sell structural hardwood for $500 a cube? They'd be broke quicker than a drunken sailor in a casino!

Timboz

Yeah it's landscape...about the only valid use I could think of for a boxed heart 6 x 6... holding up heartshook 8 x 2's in a garden bed somewhere.
The only structual hardwood Bunnings carries really is laminated Kwila in square sections, though I seen a stair tread set there the other week that was two 1.2 long 10x2's, and two risers with pre machines slots... was about $300 or so

you would not pay to much attention to any documnet written by mr stubbersfeild if you knew the details.

i feel a 150mm boxed heart post cut from teh right species is more than satisfactory for structural use.

i would not box a structural 6x6 from bluegum, blackbut, broad leaved red ironbark, or any other high shrinkage species but a boxed post from tallow, grey ib, gum toped box, spotted gum and any low shrinkage species is fine, especially considering in most instances the larger size is being used for visual reasons where a 100 x 100 would be sufficient.

as for the treated timber issue, there is no issue with treated timber, and there is no problem with class 1 species being used untreated, its simply a lack of knowledge by teh general public. once you take the time to explain the situation to your potential customer most would rather class 1 hardwood over treated flooded gum.

i had this to send to customers as part of my information pack.

class 1 fact sheet.pdf

it is possible to produce LANDSCAPE GRADE TIMBER at 400 per cube if you buy in landscape grade logs at landscape price. see bellow comparison of profit between feedstock witch is the bread and butter of every sawmill in qld and landscape timber.

S&B feedstock - mill log price +/- 180/m3 - recovery 33% -cost of board = $545/m3 - sell price = $850/m3 - profit = $310/m3

landscape - salvage log price +/-$75/m3 - recovery 40% - cost of board = $187/m3 - sell price = $425/m3 - profit = $238/m3


obviously your running cost have to come out of that profit.

once you also factor in production rate of feedstock v landscape i will do this on lucas production rates to make it suit the forum

S&B feedstock = 1" board = log volume per day = 2.4m3 @33% recovery = .79 m3 @ $310/m3 = $244.90/day

Landscape = 2" plus board = log volume per day = 5.0m3 @ 40% recovery = 2.0m3 @ $238/m3 = $476.00/day

these recovery rates are based on what we actually get from logs on average over the last 4 months

these log prices are what we have to pay for log landed in our yard from contractors when buying in bulk.

you are almost twice as better off cutting landscape than feedstock, now these are both teh bottom end of the market and we all know retail and structural orders are whwere the cash is at but this shows that just because its a higher cube rate dosent mean its a better payday at teh end of teh month.

Weissyboy, it is true that you can 'sell' the virtues of untreated class 1 hardwoods if you are speaking directly to the end user. I think the point of what John and I are saying is that most timber is sold through a third party and you are asking a sales person to 'argue' with the customer - who 'knows' that treated is better. Big chains and builders want to say 'yes' to whatever the customer says so treated timber proliferates.

Thanks for the maths - it is good to let people understand the metrics of timber pricing.

Regards, Timboz