Want to buy Canadian wood homes? Read on for facts and info that will help you select the ideal Canadian wood home for yourself…
Canada has some of the best forests in the world and they produce some of the most exquisite wood. The abundance of wood in Canada and the Northern United States has meant that home construction in Northern America has been traditionally a wood affair.
Construction of Wood Homes
Apart from the adobe dwellings in desert areas such as New Mexico and the glass-and-steel skyscrapers of metropolitan areas, most North American residential and small building construction uses wood in what is called a light-frame construction method. This method uses a technique called framing in which a wood skeleton of the house is first erected. The house frame is made of studs which are structural wood members that form a latticework to reinforce each other and provide the frame on which exterior and interior walls are affixed. The house plumbing and electricity can also be easily run through this lattice frame.
The roof is usually made from sloping rafter beams which give it shape and these are supported by wooden joists which are sort of like beams (the difference being that a beam usually extends to the length of or is longer than the structure it is supporting). Joists are also used in floors and walls to help carry the structural loads. The traditional sloped roof thus obtained is eventually covered in shingles or other roofing material that can help drain off water and snow. This type of construction also yields attic area under the roof for free which may be used for storage or extra rooms.
Although interior walls are these days mostly made from drywall which is a heat-treated sandwich of gypsum plaster inside thick sheets of pulp paper, exterior walls are normally made from thick plywood which is preferred because of its stiffness. Other types of board material such as fiber board and wafer board may also be used instead of plywood.
Wood Homes in Canada
There are over twenty million wood-frame residential houses in all of North America. Canada has almost a sixth of the world’s best soft wood forests and Canadian logging nets more than a tenth of soft wood lumber production world-wide. Most of this lumber is exported to the United States where it meets a third of annual US lumber requirements.
Soft wood lumber is logged from coniferous (needle leafed) trees such as cedar, spruce, fir, and pine. These are the main woods used in constructing the house frames. The broad-leafed hard woods are also used in flooring and their examples include oak, walnut, maple, and cherry. Three quarters of Canadian hard wood lumber comes from Quebec which also produces a quarter of Canadian softwood. The largest production of Canadian softwood is in the province of British Columbia.
Canadian Wood Homes in Quebec as well as Craftsman Timber Frame and Honka Canada in British Columbia make excellent designer homes and use the finest red and yellow cedars, Douglas fir, and pine in their construction. There are also many regional home constructors that can make the ideal wood home to your budget.
