Massive wood is a surprisingly fireproof material that can endure fire even better than concrete or steel pillars. Wood contains about 15% of water. Therefore, before wood can catch fire, all water has to evaporate. In a fire, a massive wood house will char, but it will not collapse in the same way as Timber-frame wood or steel-structured houses.
Surface charring also protects wooden structures. The charcoal generated in the combustion process has a much lower thermal conductibility than the wood itself and forms a natural insulating layer during a fire. This protects the wood from becoming even hotter, while the load-bearing capacity is retained practically unimpaired.
In contrast, steel loses most of its load-bearing capacity at temperatures as low as 500°C and has to be encased in other construction materials to achieve fire safety characteristics similar to those of wood.
Eco Log House is an excellent choice even for seismic areas. Eco Log House has extensive expertise in delivering log houses to seismic areas such as Japan and Kazakhstan, for example.
Log buildings can withstand earthquakes because of their special structure. Log buildings have a strong angular bisector joint at the corners that prevent the structure from collapsing. The frame of Eco Log Houses is made of thick massive wood logs, i.e., hard wood. Logs have high bending strength, which enables the structure to hold its form even during quakes with fierce magnitudes.
All Eco Log House have been tested on official fire-load tests by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The test results are surprisingly good compared to timber framr houses and steel structured houses. In practice, this means that a log house made of massive wood gives its inhabitants more time to escape a fire as its load-bearing structures can withstand the heat for a long time without collapsing.
We have been testing the earthquake-resistance of our log homes on shaking table tests in Japan. The test simulated an earthquake similar to the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995, which had the magnitude of over 7 on the Richter scale. The house remained intact in the test.
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