Limiting Height in Wood Construction

[ml13]

I gather from Table 1617 that the limiting height for light frame wood construction is 65'. The prescriptive portion of Chapter 23 limits wood to 3 stories, which is traditionally what we have seen in this area.

I was hoping to get feedback on the group's experience in using wood in applications of greater than 3 stories and the pros and cons. My feeling is that when going over 3 stories, economy is lost and that other systems may be more applicable.

Thanks.

 

[TFL]

Hello,

Last year we had a 4 story building that the owners wanted to stick frame. We ran into several problems over the last year.

the first was they wanted a brick facade. The brick institute does not allow brick to be tied to wood for over three stories. It is because of the differential movement/ wood continuall shrinks over it's life and brick continually grows appatently the resulting stress causes alot of cracking. this causes us to change the exterior to metal studs while keeping interior wood bearing walls and long span wood floor trusses.

The second problem was fire protection, i am no expert, but from what i gather the building code tries to make it very difficult and expensve to built wood structures over 3 stories. The code was requiring sprinklers and other issues that made it cheaper to go to no combustible construction.

hope this helps

 

[swBausch]

If someone wants stick that tall, my guess is they should go with steel stud.

 

[TFL]

i just re-read my last post and realized that i never pointed out that that is exactly what we ended up with. a metal stud building per swbauch's response

 

[LPPE]

We did a wood framed building over 3 stories. Much to our objection, but we were over ruled. Sprinklers, the whole nine yards. Doubled wall studs down low. Doesnt seem like a practical sollution to me. Plus all the sill plates and top plates, the shrinkage over time was ridiculous, but architects dont seem to care. And, unfortunately, it seems that the contractor was pushing what type of building to install. No one listens to the engineers, do they?! And everyones always got a better idea than the engineer, and then you have to explain to them that you've got over 600 pounds per foot at the shear walls, and they want to sheath them with cardboard.

 

[CAOranger]

Non-structural limitations may be critical. For example, wood buildings are normally non-rated Type V construction (UBC). Code has limitation on the allowable area depending on Occupancy.

From structural point of view, if your region is seismic region, unless you have enough solid shear walls, your holdown force may be too high.