When constructive coherence fails
In fact, logic would suggest that if biocompatible materials and ecological technologies are chosen to build a house, this method should also be adopted, where possible, for all the other components that make up the building. But that’s not always the case.
In my wanderings as a technical consultant, I have frequently visited carpenters, construction companies, producers of wooden houses, but also specialized technical studies, which combine wood technology with completion and finishing materials unrelated to natural construction, such as products derived from petrochemical synthesis or from quarry extraction activities, which have little to do with (bio)building and the concept of renewable material, but which are commonly accepted as such.
In fact, it is paradoxical to find, in many cases, buildings structurally constructed of wood – perhaps with the frame system that uses sawn wood without glues – in which however the insulating filling part is not entrusted to thermo-acoustic products of similar vegetal extraction, such as wood fibre, cork in the two blond and toasted versions, hemp or sheep’s wool, just to name a few, but to mineral wool, among the most frequently adopted alternative insulating types.
The fears that guide the choice of materials
The reasons that lead a producer to choose non-renewable alternative materials, as well as those that lead the user to accept them, are of various nature; most of the time they concern the safety of the construction, especially in relation to the risks deriving from humidity, water and fire.
These are construction problems absolutely worthy of attention, but to which ecological construction is able to respond with multiple protective solutions, now widely tested, as long as correct working practices are respected and you rely on a valid carpenter, capable of adopting all the necessary technical measures during the construction phases.
Between risk perception and misinformation
The main problem therefore does not objectively concern the construction materials themselves, but rather the ways in which they are correctly used. Unfortunately, the user is not aware of this, since he is used to reading only one aspect of the problem, what he finds on the internet, on social media and in newspapers, regarding fires affecting buildings and the phenomena of wood rotting in the presence of water.
Most likely, however, that user stopped at the emotional sensation aroused by the first news and did not delve deeper into the message; or, as is likely, no one explained to him that that fire started due to a known highly flammable petrochemical material, or that the rot that put a wooden house at risk of collapsing was caused by the carpenter’s “carelessness”, who did not correctly waterproof the connection to the ground, or was due to a water leak from a pipe in the kitchen, which invaded the building, due to the lack of adequate waterproof protection of the attic.
Perhaps, as I imagine, the user’s fear is due to the absence of a technical culture, which however is not his responsibility, but which only a professional or a carpenter would be able to provide him with, instead of proposing solutions with alternative materials, to reassure him and keep him at bay from worries.
Inform the customer to build consistently
Otherwise, with a little more effort, the user could be informed of the existence of protective systems and the intrinsic resistance of wooden structures, which, if subjected to a fire, can for example resist more than steel. You might therefore know that, by using, for example, high-density wood fiber panels, the flame of a fire chars the exposed surface, slowing down combustion and allowing the insulating panels to resist longer than glass wool, to name a product known for its fireproof characteristic. Or he might also know about the existence of waterproof membranes that are both breathable and fireproof.
However, transferring this knowledge requires a little more time, but it will always be time well invested. Fortunately, there are now many carpenters, builders, technical designers, real estate agents, sellers of wooden and commercial houses who adopt this approach and correctly inform the customer, reassuring them not only of the goodness of the ethical (bio)building choice undertaken, but also of the quality of the renewable materials which, in a coherent way, unite the static wooden structure with other finishing construction elements of the same origin.
In the same world there are some carpentry companies which, for philosophical coherence, act with ecological awareness and adopt wood that is not chemically treated and assemble the individual components excluding the metal parts as much as possible, but instead adopting special joints to connect the various construction elements together.
