[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekend warriors home improvement show, built by bar lumber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Cory have got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Corey.
You know, Tony, engineered wood products have exploded in popularity over the last two decades. Would you agree with that?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: My house was built by Adair. That's a customer that you supply material to. And Adair home is actually one of the pioneers of engineered wood, you know, rolling it out in volume like they do. They my built my house in 2006, and they put TGI's in my house.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah, 20 years ago. I started at par lumber about 20 years ago, and I would say a majority of builders use solid sawed lumber for underfloors. They used post and beam, which is very common. It used to be very common here. Now it's. I would say back then, 95% did post and beam, and now I'll bet you it's 5% due. Post and beam.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Rest do ijoy it has changed a lot.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: That that much is an absolute fact, and it's. It's the way we're going, right?
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Remember we went, you and I were coming up at par lumber company, and we were loading customers and new out to job sites and stuff, you know, and customers would be like, what is this stuff? You know, this is. We used to burn this stuff back when I was a builder or back when I was working at a lumber mill. Right. So the. The old growth trees that we used to get material from, which was better, and then we've moved to younger trees, and then younger trees are, you know, it's harder to be sustainable with solid sawn lumber. So engineered wood, of course, is the solution to more sustainable building materials.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: The turnover rate on trees now, I mean, it's a crop. They regrow them, they grow them to a certain point, then they cut them down. Toothpicks. Yeah. I mean, they're very small, and the turnover is like, what, 20 years? So, yeah, they don't have a chance to get, like the olden days, you know, the hundred years ago when they were cutting down these old growth trees that just seemed unlimited.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Now they're all gone.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Seemed unlimited, yeah, seemed.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: But sure enough, we hit it. And anyway, so that's what we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about all the benefits of. Of using engineered wood. Not that you probably already don't use engineered wood, but if you're not then.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: That's.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: We're gonna talk about today.
[00:03:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Sorry to interrupt you, but it's funny because a lot of people, when they hear the term engineered wood, they don't really know what that means. I mean, honestly, OSB oriented strand board, that is engineered wood. Particle board is engineered wood. It is any sort of material byproduct that has.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: That uses byproducts of materials and glues and things like that that is manufactured to make something new and structural. And you probably remember back when OSB came out, it was, it was thought of as one of the worst products ever.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: I do remember. I remember it very well. It was like $5 a sheet. I mean, it was. Yeah, I do remember. I remember very well.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Well.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: And the reason they, they did that was because the veneers were getting expensive and they were trying to figure out things to use this chip board, you know, these smaller trees and this byproduct waste. And someone came up with this plan to make panels out of it, and it kind of blew up in California, I would say was probably when it, it really took off. But when they started using in other parts of the country, like Oregon, which we live in a rainforest.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: They saw its ineffectiveness and its weaknesses, how it would expand and swell and fall apart.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: And it had those. That was real.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: And over the years, they've modified it and changed it and have come up with different resins, different wood fiber to make those products much more resilient, stable.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: So one of the best underfloor deckings, underlayments on the market, it by far is warehousers edge gold. Warehousers edge gold is made with. It's an OSB tng that they use for flooring. Floor decking. And I honestly will tell my customers to use that over plywood, tongue and groove all day, every day because it comes with a no sand guarantee. You can put it down in the middle of winter and it could rain on it for months at a time. And they guarantee that you won't have to sand it flat because it won't swell. It's pretty cool.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: They really have had great strides. I remember years and years ago going out to job sites where they had rain and that oriented strand board decking had been in the rain and they were, had seen some swelling. But those, just those products or those claims are in the past.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Old time stuff.
One of the maybe unsung heroes of engineered wood that we're not even thinking about right now. Finger jointed. You know, finger jointed. It was also engineered wood. Finger jointed and primed is a very common product used for interior and exterior trim these days.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Finger joining is a method of taking smaller pieces of lumber. Then they cut, like, a v pattern in it that's repeated. Like a repeated v pattern.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Teeth.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: In one side, and then they cut that same pattern, the opposite reverse, and the other side, they fill it with glue and they glue it together.
[00:06:42] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: You can actually buy finger jointed studs, which aren't terribly popular here in the Pacific Northwest. But if it's an a non structural application, then people use them in other parts of the country, and it's perfectly acceptable. The nice part about them is they're more dimensionally stable, very straight, several pieces of wood. And that's one of the biggest benefits of engineered wood, is that you're taking all of these different pieces, you're orienting them differently. So as they expand and contract and come together, they're. They're straighter.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Right. I mean, how many times have you pushed a long table up against a wall and it's touching in the middle and not at either end?
[00:07:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Because there's a bow in that wall. That's very common. It's very common for one stud in the middle of a long wall to be bowed. And the sheetrock doesn't have a choice. It's, you know, it's. It's going to be bowed out. There's going to be a big wow.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: So let's jump into our list. We've got it. We made a little short list of all of the benefits that we think are with using engineered wood. And the very first one on the list, which we've kind of touched on already, structural stability.
Engineered lumber. It's, you know, you talk about engineered lumber specifically, and we're talking about, like, warehouser. They manufacture microlam, which is an LVL paralam, which is PSL timber strand, which is an LSL. These all are engineered wood. They have unique properties. But one of the most incredible things about them is that their structural stability. They're manufactured to very precise specifications. They are consistently strength strong. So they have across all axis of that piece of material. You're almost guaranteed that it's going to be as strong in the middle as it is over here, from piece to piece to piece. It's very consistent versus solid saw and lumber. There's going to be knots, there's going to be cracks, splits, checks wane. It's all very common with solid sawn lumber.
Ewp. None of that.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: It's very predictable. That's the best thing about it. It's very predictable. You know what you're gonna get. It's all been tested. It's been tested and proven and they know it works. And you get it out there and you don't have to worry about it not working.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: And it's the same on the left as it is on the right. It's the same on the top as it is on the bottom. It's, you know, it's very, very universally sound structural uniformity.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: I like that.
[00:09:18] Speaker C: Yeah, that's good.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Number two on the list, strength and load bearing capacity. Ewp, by far, outperforms solid saw and lumber. And when you talk about the structural capacity of a glulam, a LVL apparel am a timber strand. The same size, pound for pound, size for size, for solid sawn lumber, blows it out of the water.
[00:09:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: You wouldn't replace a. A four by twelve with a three and a half by eleven and seven eight. It's the same size, but it's so much stronger than that.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Like maybe twice or three times.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Huge numbers in certain applications.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: You know, the. The sheer value of timber strand is outrageous. If you take a short header, say a four foot header of timber strand, its sheer capacity, the amount of load that you can put on that beam is crazy.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Unbelievable.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Absolutely crazy.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Number three, the bit, the. Probably the best one. Longer spans.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, I mean, arguably. Arguably maybe the second best one. It's good longer spans, you know, the.
Using lumber that's cut from trees, using solids on lumber, you're limited to what's available. If those long lengths, those long trees aren't out there for you to have them, those lengths aren't available.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: And this is. I mean, you know, these guys will send stuff out 42ft long. Longer.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Up to 60ft.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Up to 60ft. That's amazing to me.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: On an underfloor, which is, you know, is probably the most common use for I joists that I see nowadays, you know.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: You have a foundation that's 20 foot wide over there, 50 foot wide in the middle, 40 foot wide on this side. You can send out full length. Full length eye joists. 45ft from one side all the way to the other, 50ft one side all the way to the other. You have no splits, no splices. It's amazing.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: You actually have to get a. You have to get a long length permit in order to put that on.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: A truck and haul it.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Anything over 42.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: 42. Yeah, I think 42ft.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: So, I mean, these guys are producing stuff that's even difficult just to get to the job site.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: But they're like, well, they will not be hampered by such silly restrictions.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: If you need it, we will make it.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: How you get it there is on you.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: One of the other huge deals with long spans is you think about the last 20 years and how the open floor plan has just exploded.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: You know, you have your great rooms that span. You know, you have these kitchen, living, dining, all in one giant room. Well, that wouldn't be possible without engineered wood because the longest spans that I have really ever seen solid sawn go.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: And we're talking about ceiling joists.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Ceiling joists or even second floor joists.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Which require walls to sit on.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: You're looking at two by twelve. I mean, 24ft. I mean, I've sold some 26, 28 foot two by twelves in my time, but when you get that long, they are extremely, extremely hard to keep straight. Oh, sure.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: And they don't span nearly as far. So you can get I joists in up to 24 inches pretty readily available. So you're talking eleven, 7814, 16, 1820 inch deep joists that you can span a country mile.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: So you can have a parking lot up there.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know about a parking lot, but I mean, you can span a long ways.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: So these huge open areas inside of a building that, you know, you don't really think of, you walk into these huge spaces, 30 foot by 30 foot rooms with no beams to be seen, no posts to be seen, and there's a second floor. It's crazy.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: Right?
[00:13:28] Speaker A: So that is one of the biggest advantages that engineered wood has had. Tgis are, are amazing in that regard.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: I mean, you were saying that you felt like that was maybe the number one, in my opinion. I feel like the number one perk of engineered wood really is the sustainability of the product. The fact that it is made out of byproducts of, you know, of trees, basically. You know, they're making it out of sawdust and out of chipwood and out of, you know, all of these, the byproducts. So there's no fall down anymore. They use it all. They cake a tree down. I mean, they use everything but the berries.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: You're, you're really optimizing the use of raw materials. All of those raw material, like you said, they're being used in when, when, before they weren't. They were cutting off the outsides of the tree. Maybe, maybe they were chipping it up for sawdust or wood pellets or something.
But now it's, it's all very, very.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Sustainable and it doesn't matter how old the tree is, because again, you know, you're not having to, you're not getting.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Toothpicks out of the forest now.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You don't even have to. It doesn't have to be a big old tree anymore. You know, they're making it out of all that other stuff. It's genius product.
Absolutely sustainable, and I love that about it.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Another advantage is reducing when you're, when you're in the construction world and you're saying you're doing a remodel, reducing your structural modifications. And what I mean by that is you'll get into situations in older houses where you're limited by height or size. I have people come to me all the time and say, hey, I have the second floor that's sagging, or we have this area that we want to take out, this wall and the second floor, we need to put a beam in, or we need to do this, we need that. But I can't have a gigantic beam hanging down into my floor or my room. Maybe you only have eight foot studs. So you have an eight foot ceiling.
Do you want a twelve inch beam hanging down below? You know, all of a sudden you.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Got 7ft six and three quarter by 24.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've seen these things. And that is one of the really good advantage of using EWP. I had a customer come in where they had a second story. It was an attic, actually, with ceiling joists. They were two by eight ceiling joists spanning pretty far, and they wanted to convert that space into living area. But the problem is, two by eight, you're limited.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Unless you're putting a structural wall underneath the center of it.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: A beam or a wall.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Which they didn't want to do, so they were able to get it engineered where they could. They sistered seven and a quarter lvl to the existing two by eights that were there, creating a space upstairs that was rock solid. So we didn't have to go through this huge process of re engineering and modifying the entire house. It's, it's phenomenal.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Smaller packages packing a bigger punch. Yeah, that's what it is.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: It's, it's.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: So they've condensed down the quality of product into smaller little packages, allowing them to do so much more.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. Which leads me to the next one number. I don't know. What number we're on? But the next one is reduced deflection.
[00:17:11] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: And if to understand deflection, you have to understand how spans work with, with any sort of material. You put material up, you could put a two x four up right on edge and just put it up somewhere and it would span 20ft. You could put a two x 420 footer up there.
But any weight that you put on it, right, it's going to bow. Right, it's going to deflect. Now this, there is a certain amount of deflection that is completely acceptable in the construction world and that industry standard. Industry standard. But usually, usually it's well under an inch.
So the middle of your second floor, for that whole diaphragm, including your decking, your sheetrock and all of that stuff, can deflect almost an inch right in the middle of that thing. So you got a group of people walking around on the second floor and.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: You feel, it feels a little spongier.
[00:18:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: One of the biggest benefits of EWP is your reduced deflection because you can get taller.
Taller joists, taller beams. And one of, one of my customers that I'm shipping right now, all of their second floors are 16 inch I joists.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Because they don't want a ton of deflection. When you walk across a floor and it feels like a trampoline. You know what I'm saying?
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Yes, you do.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: You feel it wobbling. I've been there.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Or if you have a little, a little curio cabinet full of trinkets, you know, glass shelf, and you walk by it and it clinks. Clink, clink, clink.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Little place every time you walk by.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's deflection. And a lot of, I see this a lot in designs where they'll have like a bonus room above the living area. You know, you have this big wide open living space and then you have the bonus room above that, and that's where all the kids are going to hang out and play. Right. So you're hanging out downstairs with all your friends and you friends with your friends, and you got all the kids upstairs in the bonus room. And that floor literally looks like a trampoline bouncing around on that thing.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: The chandelier on that.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Everything's shaking.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: You can eliminate a lot of that by using eye joists.
[00:19:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: In the right ways.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Vibration, that's kind of another term. People confuse vibration with deflection.
And there's, there's actually a pretty complex math algorithm that warehouser actually developed for tjIs. And they call it their pro rating. TJI pro rating. So when you get an a TJI floor designed, they will give you what's called a pro rating, that it has a number assigned to how that floor feels. And they take into consideration things like deflection, but also vibration, you know, so it's.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: It's.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: It's pretty complex.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Pretty smart stuff.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: You're not gonna be surprised by the, you know, a feeling of instability.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Right. With Weyerhaeuser, if you get a TJI pro rating of 60 or 70, you know what you're getting.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: You remember when they used to have trust Joyce commercials on tv?
[00:20:43] Speaker A: With the elephants.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah, with the elephant.
[00:20:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: They called silent floor.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: They called it silent floor. Yeah, the silent floor. I mean, I think they still call it silent floor, but they had an elephant walking across the top. It was. It was great.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Well, this product's been around, surprisingly, for a long time.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Well, you actually touched on another huge benefit of using I joist floors, TJI floors, when they call it the silent floor, because it. When you use the product correctly and you install.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: When you install it correctly, you are.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Virtually eliminating squeaks by. Because when you think about regular solid sawn lumber, it's an inch and a half wide, however tall. So if you're putting in a two by ten or a two by twelve floor system, you know, it's an inch and a half by nine and a quarter or eleven and a quarter. A TJi minimum flange width is an inch and three quarter.
So you've, you're, you're making that flange width wider, but most now are over two inches. So you can have a two and a quarter or two and 516 flips. Floor flange. Well, when you put glue down on that and you put decking down on that, your chances of hitting that flange with a nail or a screw are much higher. And when you look at old floor systems that squeak, it's because of what they call shiners. Shiners come through the decking or the floor, the framing. And they run alongside the timber.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: And as that floor deflects.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Or inside of a joist hanger, Tji joist hangers are designed, especially Simpson ones, they have what's called a snap in feature. So they just tell you to put a little dab of glue inside the base of that floor joist hanger. And when you push the joist down in it, the flange, it actually pinches and grabs that, that joist flange. So it makes for a very very quiet floor system.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: It's fantastic indeed.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Consistent quality certainly is something you can expect when you're working with the same recipe for every single thing that you're making. When it's engineered and.
And designed to a point where it's made exactly the same way every time with exactly the same products every time. You get a very consistent quality, and there's no question about whether it's going to work or not. You can open up a book and say, what will this, what will this structural member do in this application? And the book will tell you it will do exactly this, and you know it going in.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: So very consistent. Making it fewer surprises.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: When you look at lumber, like solid saw and lumber, there's. There's a lot of variables. You can buy stud grade, you can buy two and better. Number one, select structure. You know what I'm saying? There's all of these different variables when it comes to solid sawn lumber and when they're grading solid sawn lumber.
It's a guy, right?
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Literally a guy or. Oh, a duder with an eye.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: I didn't notice that knot was so loose. Yeah, that's not gonna work.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: It's.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: I did that one.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: It comes through and they grade it. Literally.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: So it's all very interesting.
It's. You're consistent, you're quality. You're not going to have any wane knotholes, those sorts of things.
[00:24:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Fewer defects to worry about or zero.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Good word. Defects.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: The quality is top. The next one. Let's go ahead, Tony.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: I like this one. Versatility.
And I'm just going to tell a quick little story. Corey and I did a YouTube video not too long ago with warehouser representative, and we were talking about warehousers I joist product, their trust joist. And we actually decided we were going to build something with some scraps of I joist that we had right there on hand. So we built a couple of sawhorses out of I joist, which is I joist, of course, is manufactured for a floor in a new constructional remodel. But we had these pieces, and so we used them to build, um. To build two sawhorses. Definitely not what they were intended to be used for. But my goodness, those sawhorses were strong, weren't they?
[00:25:07] Speaker A: They were. It's, uh. And they were super easy to build. We actually, if you want to go check that video, it's on our YouTube channel, but you can take a piece. It's like scrap piece of I joist. You know, just a cut off piece and make really strong. We even set a unit of plywood on it.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Yeah, we set a full unit of plywood right on top of these two, um, right on top of these two saw horses. And it was very strong. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. It is a very versatile product. We see these products being purchased and used in ways other than the way that they were initially intended.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: And it's not just sometimes, it's all the time.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Well, and the other aspect of versatility is being able to address certain situations in the sizes, the different sizes of LVL, paralam, timber strand, glulam. You can get special order glulams made to any size you want. Literally.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: I have purchased, for customers 30 inch tall glulam, eight and three quarter by thirties. I mean, you can get them so big, you can get them curved. You can get almost anything you want.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Treated. Arched.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah, treated.
[00:26:22] Speaker C: There's just.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: There's a lot of versatility there. And depending on the product, you know, eye joists, you can't cut, you can't rip down. But lvls, you can microlam, you can paralam, you can timber strand. So if you've got a situation like in that floor system I was telling you about earlier, where they sistered lvls to the sides of their solid sawn lumber, or you need something to fit into that space.
The old two by eights weren't seven and a quarter. Exactly. They were like seven and an 8th. So they were able to take all those lvls and rip them to the size they needed them, exact size they need. And that's perfectly acceptable.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: You know, as long as it's okay by the engineer.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Sure, of course.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: But the versatility of ewps, it's exceptional.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: It's unmatched.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: The next one on the list, you, tony, you already talked about environmentally friendly.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. I love the sustainability of it. I love the, you know, I love the way that it is available to be used again. The way that it is. It's really good.
[00:27:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: So I'll move on. The next one on the list is their lightweight. Eye joists, especially, are so much lighter than solid sawn. You can take one person, can grab a nine and a half inch by 30 foot, I joist and carry it around, no problem. You're talking about setting up a floor system out front, and you have one or two guys grabbing the pieces of lumber in, or I joist and hauling them in beams. That's a different story. But I joist is so much lighter than traditional lumber. You know, the framers back is going.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: A 30 foot two by ten is no joke.
I mean, I have lifted a 30 foot two by ten. I can tell you right now. It's a heavy.
Yeah. Lightweight is.
It's a game changer.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: The.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: The lightweight nature of the ijoyce is a game changer. Makes it so much easier to work with and to pack it from place to place up on the job.
[00:28:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Let's talk a little bit about ease of installation.
I feel like the lightweight nature of the product plays right into that ease of installation.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Right, right. You know, and the structural stability of it. The fact that it is so straight and flat, you can build walls out of it. You can build two by two by walls out of timber strand. I have a situation. A couple builders that use these in tall walls. So, like, in a grand entrance, you walk into the house and there's 28 foot to the ceiling. Well, if you build that out of standard lumber, you are stacking. You know, you can't buy 30 foot tall two by six.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: It's just there. You can't do it, and you can't build it very straight. So you're stacking lumber on top of lumber, trying to create a vert, a straight, flat surface.
If you buy timber strand, you're only. You're framing it like a standard wall. So the ease of installation there makes it super easy. But one of the other benefits is in I joist.
When you're talking about installing your h vac system, your plumbing, the size of hole that you can cut out in the middle of an eye joist would shock you.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, they literally tell you you can remove this much percentage of the web in the middle of an eye joist, and that's in the middle of every eye joist without touching its structure ability.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: You can even cut holes in their beams. You just have to make sure you're following the guidelines. Uh, I've seen some pretty ridiculous stuff by, you know, from some rogue plumbers that have gigantic holes, or the, you know, the H vac person says, oh, I need to put my hole right there.
[00:30:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: But, you know, the, there's a rule of thumb. It's called the middle third. And you can usually produce a hole in the size, in the, the middle of the middle third of almost any beam. But the I joist web, I, these guys are using 16 inch, 14 inch I joists, cutting out almost the entire middle with a 24 inch wide hole from flange to flange to run h vac through in the floor system.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: So the other thing too, is that I joists come with a pre cut knockout.
[00:31:03] Speaker C: So.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: There's these round holes that look like they're kind of like impressions.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Every. I don't know, every 4ft. And they're called knockouts. You can just hit them with your hammer.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: Yep. The plug just pops right out.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Pops right out. And the electricians, you don't have to drill holes. Electricians can just run their stuff right through there. So it adds to that ease, not just for the framer with its installation, but with other installations, other trades. It's causing, I would say that it saves you money.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: The next one is dimensional stability, which I think that, you know, I know that they're referring to. The moisture content is. Is much lower most times than you would find in natural wood or solid sawn lumber.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Well engineered wood, this, the. The components of it, the wood chips are dried to almost zero when they manufacture it.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: It's incredible.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: It reduces the likelihood of expansion and contraction and the other things that happen with solid sawn lumber, because, you know, expansion and contraction leads to checks and cracks and splits, bows, twists and all of that stuff. So you get a lot less movement with the engineered wood than you would get with solid son lumber because of it's low moisture content and it's consistency.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: And it's consistency when you look at a piece of two by twelve compared to the next piece of two by twelve compared to the next. The rings on this one are totally different from the rings on this one. I mean, it's not just moisture content, it's the consistency of the lumber itself. So you could have a two by twelve that you could have ten two by twelves next to each other, and they would all shrink to their own dimension. One might be eleven and a quarter, one might be eleven and an 8th. One might be eleven, one might be eleven and a half. It's just how they. How dimensional lumber works.
It's dimensional. It's cut out of a piece of wood.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: It's solid sun.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: It's cut out of a tree.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: So the last one on the list, Tony, cost effectiveness.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Yeah, and you wouldn't think so upfront because engineered wood doesn't tendency to be more expensive than solid sawn lumber. But it's one of those situations where you are getting what you pay for, you spend more money and it saves you more money because it does more of the job.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Right. Dollar for dollar, foot for foot. I joist her more than solids on. That is true. However, you know, everything in life isn't just foot for foot. You can't just take this piece and compare it to this piece. You have to look at it as a system. And honestly, that's what we started doing 20 years ago when 95% of all underfloors that went in were post and beam.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Solid sawn four by eights with four by fours sitting on pier pads. That's just the way it was done. And when you looked at it, a four by eight was $1.20 a foot or whatever, and an I joist was $2 a foot. And they said, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is way too much, that. I'm not doing that. But the problem is they weren't looking at it from the aspect of nail pops, callbacks, squeaks, consistent floor flatness, then the installation. And when you started doing it that way, now, I mean, the percentage of people doing I joists on floor systems, under floor systems especially, it's night and day. It is 100% flip flopped. Yeah, I see very, very few post and beams.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: And that's in people that do it are what they would, you would call.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Old, old school of retirement age.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: They go, oh, that's.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: I've been doing it that way for 40 years. I'm gonna continue to do it that way because that's what I like. So if you like it, then great. But the fact of the matter is, I joists are a better floor system.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Stronger, easier to use, more self, more sustainable.
Everything about it is better.
So anyways, I agree with you. This was a great topic. I think engineered wood is a great topic, and it's, it's here to stay. And it is. It's the future. It's our future.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: There are some, lots of new, exciting products on the market coming out. Treated, pressure treated LVL.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: You can use outdoors.
[00:35:45] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Fully warrantied. I mean, there's some cool products coming out that are engineered because, like you said, those trees aren't getting bigger.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Trees aren't getting bigger. That's right. And there's, yeah, it still takes lots of years to get them grown to a point where they can be used.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:36:02] Speaker C: All right.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Well, thanks so much, folks, for listening. If you have any questions for us, or you want to comment or you have a topic that we haven't talked about that you want to hear us talk about, you can email
[email protected]. Parr.com.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: That's right. And if you want to go check out our YouTube channel? We've got plenty of videos on there. You can find our YouTube at par. At par lumberjack.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Par lumber.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: You have to go to YouTube and search our lumber. We've got a whole series on there. And then our other one is home show.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: So search ww home show or just search par lumber? You'll find us. But, yeah, subscribe and like us there. If any portion of this podcast that you just listen to, you find somebody that might be interested in it. Forward it to him.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Forward.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Make sure you like. And leave a little nice note about us.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Especially if it's, you know, just laughing at Cory's facial hair.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: It's fine.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Thanks so much for tuning in, folks. Have a great week.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: We'll see you next time.
