[idiotsecant]

Dumping the carbon to ship a panelized structure from western Europe is a huge use of resources, even if you aren't forced to actually shoulder the burden of externalities like carbon emission and irresponsible old growth harvest.

Building with pine actually works really, really well - pine is both cheap and plentiful, and depending on exact geography it's generally a reasonably small carbon footprint. We've spent a long time figuring out how to build well with less than ideal materials and the techniques to do so are well understood, if not always implemented properly. The difference between a well constructed pine framed structure and a poorly constructed one is in the details. Find someone who is paying the proper attention to those details and you'll have a superior product without the massive supply chain and all that entails.

[lostlogin]

That doesn’t change OPs point though. Pine is not a good wood and it requires a ton of work to finish it (plaster board, stopping and paint). It’s only attribute is that it grows fast.

Another issue is that building sites have massive wastage. It’s just so demoralising walking past their skips. If walls were prefabricated and shipped it would be hard to do worse than NZs current standard, even with shipping from a long distance.

I’ve seen over ordered materials just binned rather than collected and returned or sold.

[worik]

> Dumping the carbon to ship a panelized structure from western Europe is a huge use of resources,

Containerised hipping is very efficient. My point is it is better to use those resources rather than the local building industry. Very odd.