Mass timber buildings - Durability and safety

[lajthabalazs]

Originally Posted by EnvisionSaintJohn

Anyone have some insight or theories on how mass timber manufacturing could become more scalable and cost efficient? Or why it's seemingly taking so long for the cost to come down?

For such an impressive building material, with huge upsides in terms of sustainability and carbon emissions, the huge downside seems to remain the high price.

In the most simplest terms, mass timber is manufactured by glueing and laminating pieces of wood together, to create larger, and stronger "pieces" of wood. I'm certainly no engineer, or economist, so I'm just curious as to why mass timber remains to be considered such an expensive building material and construction method.

My theory is that it's the market setting the price. And because it's a substitute for a widely used product (concrete beams) there's a latent demand. If price of engineered wood drops below concrete, demand increases as builders shift to wood. And that pulls the price back up.