European Wood, Grade C24

[mijowe]

Does anyone have experience with using wood framing with only a European grade, (C24) for use in the united states. No US grade has been assigned to it.

It appears Europe just uses grade tiers, and no necessarily species for grouping their wood into properties. C24 relates to the Fb, ie C24 has a bending stress of 24 N/mm^2, all other properties, ie Fc, Fv, get tied to the bending limit. It is not uncommon for a US species with a high FB to have a lower Fcperp than a different species with poorer Fb, ie no link between the properties.

European grades also appear to be more similar to LRFD values than ASD.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[MIStructE_IRE]

I was hoping you’d say.. Any thoughts wood be appreciated..

I have used plenty of C24 timber here, but not in US. So firstly you’d want to make sure it complied with local requirements, which it probably doesn’t. Its perfectly fine in reality I’m sure but I couldn’t get the paperwork to use US approved timber here.

The European timber is typically from Scandinavia and is selected from douglas fir forests there as the trees grow almost perfectly vertical which gives fairly consistent fibre properties. So its good stuff! Perhaps the difference there is down to how the trees grow?