Wood framing is a conventional building practice that we use quite frequently at Endeavour. For the teachers’ union project, we are using wood framing for both the floor system and the exterior walls. The walls and floors may not look very different from conventional building, but from a sustainability point of view we’ve made choices that can make a large impact.

First, all the wood framing is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a third party certification organization that helps to ensure that wood products are harvested and processed according to high standards of sustainability. For this project, ensuring FSC certification meant going straight to a FSC certified distributor for our framing lumber and plywood as non of the local lumber yards are FSC certified.

The floor framing uses open web joists from TriForce. These open web joists do not use metal plates, but are finger-jointed and glued, using 2×3 top and bottom chords and 2×2 webs. This uses wood from smaller diameter, fast-growing trees and significantly less wood than solid floor joists, and significantly less glues than wooden I-beams with solid OSB centres. The floor joists are deep enough to allow us to achieve R-46 once they are filled with cellulose insulation.

The 2×6 wall framing is the load bearing exterior wall of the building, and will also be filled with cellulose, adding R-22 to the exterior of our bale walls (more on this hybrid system later), which will be installed to the interior side of the frame.

One of the great advantages of wood framing is the speed of construction and the low cost. When added to the renewability of wood when harvested and processed responsibility, it’s a great combination.