Timber iQ October - November 2017 // Issue: 34 | Page 48

FEATURES
When considering sustainability, thought must be given to the entire process of turning that resource into a usable building material.
water. There are more pressing issues at play than saving
the world.
Therefore, sustainability hasn't been a big driver in
South Africa before. “The only place where it has come into
building regulations has nothing to do with sustainability,
but rather, energy efficiency. “There is a new part of the
building regulations called part XA, which came out a few
years ago. But that is all to do with reducing energy
consumption, which means better insulation for energy.
They are not looking at timber sustainability per se,”
he explains.
SUM OF TWO PARTS
When one talks about timber sustainability, there are, in
fact, two parts to it.
“There is energy consumption, which is the desire to use
less because that is electricity, which in turn creates
carbon. But then you are also looking at embodied energy,
which is the amount of energy that is embodied in a
material. So, when you compare materials like timber to
brick, you should compare the embodied energies. That is,
how much energy went into producing that material and
what its resultant carbon footprint is.”
He says the use of timber is very low on the ladder when
it comes to preferred building materials in South Africa.
“People that go for timber in terms of my clients are mostly
or very often European. Europeans are used to highly
insulated buildings. They often choose timber because of
46 OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2017 //
"It's not even a matter of comparing
wood to other materials; it is in a
league of its own."
the insulation properties and because it is what they are
used to. Either that or it is for aesthetic reasons.
“It is very seldom that we have clients say, ‘We want to
build a timber house because we want to save the world.’
It's not a cost factor either, because often timber ends up
being more expensive to build.
“It is often for insulation purposes and sometimes, it is
simply less hassle to build; timber houses are often quicker
to build. But mostly, they're for people who prefer timber.”
He says corporates around the world use timber, such as
in Australia and England, but South Africa is far behind.
“Those are typically CLT buildings and not timber frames.
“There are some famous CLT buildings, like the Tamedia
office building in Zurich, which was designed and built
about two years ago by Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban.”
ASPECT RATIOS
Werner Slabbert, director of Rustic Homes, says there are a
couple of aspects to timber sustainability.
See more on page 48