You may have missed them but it is worth pointing out these two tiny sections of the article:
> In general, a large mass of wood, such as a CLT floor, is difficult to burn without a sustained heat source—for the same reason that it is hard to light a camp fire when all you have is logs. Once the outside of the timber chars it can prevent the wood inside from igniting. The big urban fires of the past, such as the Great Fire of London, which occurred 350 years ago this month, were mostly fuelled by smaller sections of timber acting as kindling. Prospective tenants would doubtless need lots of reassurance. But with other fire-resistant layers and modern sprinkler systems, tall wooden buildings can exceed existing fire standards
> What about woodworm and rot? “If you don’t look after it, steel and concrete will fail just as quickly as timber,” says Michael Ramage, head of the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at the University of Cambridge in Britain.
In New Orleans 1972 a concrete and steel building called the Rault Center had it's top two floors gutted by fire, likely arson. The building has been vacant since then, much of it in an almost skeletal state and yet a renovation started last year.
If the Rault Center had sprinklers tragedy could have averted, but I don't believe a wood building could have contained the fire. A wood building certainly couldn't have stood neglected for decades after and still been of any use.
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_9ca3a457...
Many contemporary building codes require sprinklers for any building over four stories. To me, the neglect is a sign of economic conditions effecting development more than other factors. For example, if the location was highly desirable and the market for new space strong, redevelopment would make sense.
Yea, I don't buy those as being sound arguments. I'm sorry I don't just accept everything in a sales pitch. I've seen a log cabin burn, and those were 12" logs, so....
There are no termites in colder climates. The material can be coated to precent any insect from eating it. If you think avout what happened in New York 15 years ago today one might argue steel and concrete burn just as well as wood
Neither steel nor concrete burn under ordinary circumstances. Wood does. We do not know what exactly happened in New York, and it does not seem relevant here.
Highlighting something in an article that shows that a poster clearly hasn't read some or all of the article is "insinuating", and seems to be widely accepted. (And why not - a counter argument based directly on the source material seems perfectly reasonable.)
Maybe the guidelines need to change to say not directly call it out, which is what you seem to be objecting to.
So downvote and say "the article mentions that" with a relevant quote (as per the guidelines). Commenting with "did you read the article?" is just noise.
> In general, a large mass of wood, such as a CLT floor, is difficult to burn without a sustained heat source—for the same reason that it is hard to light a camp fire when all you have is logs. Once the outside of the timber chars it can prevent the wood inside from igniting. The big urban fires of the past, such as the Great Fire of London, which occurred 350 years ago this month, were mostly fuelled by smaller sections of timber acting as kindling. Prospective tenants would doubtless need lots of reassurance. But with other fire-resistant layers and modern sprinkler systems, tall wooden buildings can exceed existing fire standards
> What about woodworm and rot? “If you don’t look after it, steel and concrete will fail just as quickly as timber,” says Michael Ramage, head of the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at the University of Cambridge in Britain.