How to choose material for building a house?

Only the owner can decide from what material to build their summer cottages. The choice depends on many factors: on preferences, financial situation, historical traditions and many others, which in one way or another influence the choice of building material.

A house can be made of wood, stone, brick, or other modern materials rapidly entering into domestic construction. Each of the building materials has its own advantages and disadvantages, which to one degree or another affect the choice. Wood.ua will help you make the right choice, setting out in this article brief characteristics of materials for building a house.

Advantages and disadvantages of building materials made of wood

In antiquity, houses of Slavic peoples, including Ukrainian, were built of chopped wood. This is due not only to the fact that our country is covered with dense forests, but also to the fact that wood is a natural material with good energy that provides people living in a wooden house with good health, performance, health, etc. As for the heat-insulating properties of wood, then they are slightly higher than stone and brick.

However, the tree, having so many advantages, is not deprived of shortcomings, which include high combustibility, fragility compared to other materials, and susceptibility to decay and damage by insects.

The main characteristics of wood

From ancient times, cottages were built from wood, rural, city houses, temples, fortresses, baths and other buildings - all this was built of wood. There is a return to basics. Construction using natural wood, lumber from wood (boards, beams, beams, laths) is gaining popularity.

Wood Features:

• The color scheme of wood - this is where to start the presentation of its basic characteristics as a building material. Each tree species has its own inherent color.
• A decorative feature of a tree is its drawing on a cut. Hard hardwoods have a more beautiful pattern than soft hardwoods and conifers.
• Density of wood affects its strength, which varies with annual layers. The late layers of the tree are 2-3 times stronger than the early layers.
• Density also affects wood hardness, which is a critical feature. The choice of material intended for building a house often depends on hardness. By hardness, wood is divided into soft, hard and very hard.
• Wood moisture is its most important characteristic. Depending on the degree of humidity, which is expressed as a percentage, the wood can be: wet when it has 100% humidity, freshly cut - when the humidity varies between 50-100%, air-dry - the moisture content of such wood is from 15% to 20% chamber drying - 8-12% humidity and absolutely dry with a humidity of 0%. Prefabricated wood with a decrease in humidity decreases in volume, and, conversely, an increase in humidity leads to an increase in blanks in volume.

Types of building wood

Country houses are most often built of three types of wood: spruce, pine and larch. In the list below we list the popular types of construction wood with brief descriptions:

• Spruce wood is marked with a white tint, softness, light weight, high degree of elasticity, high tensile strength.
• Pine is easy to process, it is durable, resistant to decay, cracking, moderately flexible and elastic. Of all conifers, it has increased resistance to fire, hardness and durability.
• Larch in its positive characteristics is not much inferior to pine wood. The resistance of larch to moisture is truly impressive. Larch wood does not decay, even if it is immersed in sea water.

Also, wooden houses are erected from cedar, walnut, oak, mahogany, etc., but before starting the construction of these types of wood, it is worth consulting with specialists about the characteristics and practice of their use in construction.

Why you should choose wood as a building material

Residential buildings should have very well-built walls, as they carry the most important operational and aesthetic role. It depends on the quality of the walls whether these houses will be durable. The walls of the house must have a high level of strength, durability, fire resistance, a high level of sound and heat insulation, and other requirements that apply to the walls.

A rock. The houses built of stone are durable and durable. The use of stone as a building material greatly expands the possibilities in the architectural plan. However, stone is a cold building material, and country houses built from it will not be pleasant for everyone to live.

Brick. Brick is warmer than stone, and the regular, rigorous shape of the brick makes its use more widespread. In order to increase the thermal insulation characteristics of bricks, economical forms of bricks and artificial blocks have been developed. But brick, unlike wood, will not give you natural beauty and natural warmth.

Concrete. Summer cottages can be built from cinder blocks, slag concrete, sawdust concrete, expanded clay concrete. These materials have many positive characterizing properties. But, again, it is unlikely that a concrete house will fit beautifully into the surrounding countryside. Another thing is a wooden blockhouse with a carved wooden porch.

In any case, before making a choice in favor of one or another building material, it is worth learning about its thermotechnical qualities, which are one of the main criteria taken into account during the construction of external building envelopes of a modern house.

Living in a cold house is uncomfortable and financially expensive, because maintaining a comfortable temperature requires a lot of effort and money. That is why the thermal performance of the walls are the most important when choosing the building material from which residential buildings will be built.

So, having stopped the choice on building material from a tree, you will not lose, but only win in all respects. You can buy high quality lumber at a competitive price on our website wood.ua.