Benefit found in using whole trees to build houses

Cool architectural company Whole Trees Architecture uses whole trees harvested on site instead of milled pieces of wood for significant benefit:

- Structural testing of small diameter round timbers conducted by the USDA Forest Products Laboratory found that small diameter round timber is 50% stronger in axial loading and bending than a comparable cross-sectional area of milled lumber. This is due in part to the fact that milling violates a tree’s concentric, continuous and spiraling fibers removing the strongest outer layers of the tree, which are naturally pre-tensioned to resist wind shear.

- Structural testing by the USDA Forest Products Laboratory has found that “small diameter round timber” or what we call whole trees have a comparable weight to strength ratio in compression as steel and twice that of steel in tension.

Once again we learn that using nature RAW is best (and beautiful!). See http://www.wholetreesarchitecture.com/Strength_Safety.html for more details.