I’m always confused by these kinds of assessments people make with some unrealistic test. Lumber for building a house doesn’t need to withstand bites from a human jaw!
Years ago, Tesla advertised solar shingles that could withstand a bowling ball being dropped on them. Why?! Hail is a thing, but bowling balls don’t fall from the sky.
Extending this concept, let’s say I want to sell you a new motorcycle I invented. I won’t demonstrate how well it rides or how fast it accelerates, but I will show you how deep I can submerge it underwater before the gas tank crumples — 4000 ft! Let’s see Harley beat that.
It’s kind of got some “jet fuel can’t melt steal beams” vibes to it. The beams didn’t melt. The fire was just intense enough that it caused the tempered hardening to fail. Without which, they could no longer sustain the load of the rest of the building above it.
Architectural materials are designed to deal with typical loads, plus a decent margin of error. Most people don’t have beavers in their walls, so bite force isn’t a typical load. Neither is a fully-laden jet airliner crashing into your skyscraper.
In my state of Victoria, in Australia, it’s required to use steel frames for construction of homes in bushfire-prone areas. Fire is a typical load that meeds to be engineered for. However, a single-story house (we build out instead of up when there’s the space) doesn’t need hardened steel beams, and without 100 floors to support it won’t collapse in a fire.
Generally things are engineered with a safety margin so that they are absolutely safe for regular use and minor manufacturing defects or unusual usage don’t cause immediate failure. That ladder rated for 400lbs will hold more than 400lbs before it collapses. Sometimes much more. This is normal and sometimes manufacturers like to show off how far above spec they are.
That said, the human jaw is quite strong, and structural wood is not generally expected to withstand high perpendicular shearing forces. I also don’t really believe Tesla solar roofs would hold up to bowling balls, despite that being essentially a very extreme piece of hail.
“Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”
Oh, don’t worry. The bowling ball “test” was made before they had a prototype
Remember that day when Elon had an event in a neighborhood, pointed to the house behind him, and said it had solar roof tiles? When he held up a piece of pretty glass roof and said it was a solar panel?
He lied. He stood up there with a piece of glass, and he straight up lied to our faces… He lied with fake tests, fake metrics, fake prototypes
I mean he’s a beaver, he might be a little biased towards wood bite quality. Obv gets his fix on stuff that gets “lost” at the construction site, and they’re just not buying the good shit anymore. I feel for the rodent
Absolutely, modern construction is often about not using (/spending) more than the spec requires.
Basic wood will be lower grade because it doesn’t need to be. And it will be cheaper because of that.
C16/C24 will be stronger and less knotty, and will meet a higher spec, for a price.
As the old saying goes, any old idiot can make a house that doesn’t fall over. It takes an engineer to make a house that just barely doesn’t fall over.
It’s like those TV shopping channels showing you how many bowling balls a vaccum can lift. That is of course critical for a piece of plastic and electronics that sucks up dust. It’s so stupid I can’t help but laugh.
This is like a witch bitching about her candy house not being built well enough while she’s taking a bite outta a supporting KitKat.