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Building Framing Materials - A Guide to Estimating Building Age InspectAPedia®  -     How to determine the age of a building Building component age: construction materials, methods, including hardware, saw cuts, and other details can help determine when a building was constructed or when it was modified.

This article lists common building framing materials used in different epochs of residential construction. Knowing when certain materials were first or last in common use can help determine the age of a building. The age of a building can be determined quite accurately by documentation, but when documents are not readily available, visual clues such as those available during a professional home inspection can still determine when a house was built. Our page top photo shows modern floor framing details for a modular-constructed house.

See Framing Methods Age for the history and date ranges of various building framing methods. Also see Nails and Hardware and Saw Cuts, Tool Marks for additional building age clues likely to be available when examining building framing materials.

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Framing & Construction Materials as Indicators of Building Age

The observation of framing materials, framing markings, and framing styles provides considerable information about the probable age of a house. We discuss framing materials and styles here as an aid to house age determination. Antique and modern trusses are distinguished and modern laminated beams and I-truss beams and wood joists are discussed.

Cement Board

Cement board is a non-structural building sheathing material which in its contemporary form is made from Portland cement covered with a reinforced fiberglass mesh fabric. Cement board is used as a tile backer or a backer board for stucco applications on buildings. Current producers include Custom Building Products (WonderBoard™) and US Gypsum (Durock™).

Panels made of a mixture of cement and wood fibers are produced for building siding by James Hardi (Hardi-panel and Cemplank™), and CertainTeed (Weatherboard™).

(History & dates in process, contributions invited)

Dimensional Lumber

Dimensional lumber that initially actually measured as equal to its nominal size (a 2x4 was actually 2" x 4") was produced beginning in 1833 in the U.S. (Augustine Taylor, building St. Mary's church in Chicago in that year) and was the dominant framing material in the U.S. by 1900. Our photo (left) shows the interior of a modern platform-framed structure going up in Minneapolis, MN in 2008.

The appeal of dimensional lumber was the reduced time and effort to construct a wood frame building compared with hewn timber frame beams that had to be cut and shaped, air dried for two years, and joined with mortise and tenon joints that required more highly skilled carpenters. Initially church members were concerned that their building was being built of flimsy too-small sticks and scaffolding materials.

The development of machine made nails that could be produced in high volume was critical to this change in construction methods. But even in the 1930's and 40's nails were a meaningful cost of construction. When our friend Paul Galow worked as an assistant to his uncle who built homes in Pennsylvania in the 1930's and 40's, his job was to salvage nails and hammer each bent one straight.

But by 1940 or earlier the finished size of most framing lumber products was less than the nominal size. A modern 2x4 is approximately 1 1/2" x 3 1/2" in cross section.

Our opinion is that modern dimensional lumber is not the same product as it was in 1833 or even 1940. Modern 2x lumber is produced from trees that have been developed to grow rapidly to a size at which they can be harvested.

Rapid tree growth means wide-spaced growth rings which means softer, weaker wood than dense-grained first-cut timbers or lumber.

That combined with the increasing number of knots (as 2x's are cut from ever smaller trees) means that the building frame must rely on additional materials (such as plywood or OSB sheathing) for a critical part of its strength. Or architects and engineers specify an engineered wood product such as a laminate-beam or wooden I-trusses or trusses where that strength is needed.

Engineered Wood Product Building Construction Materials History & Dates

Our photo (above left) shows a modern laminated wood structural beam in both side and end view. (Make sure that your builder uses proper connectors and supporting posts, not the goofy structural setup in our photo). Our photo of I-joists (above right) shows this engineered floor support system in use in a Minneapolis home under construction in 2008.

• Engineered wood floor trusses (photo above right) such as I-Joists originally were constructed using a plywood web beginning in 1977, and modified by by Trus-Joist in 1969 to use laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and OSB-like laminated wood fiber web (our photo, above right)
• Engineered factory built roof trusses
• Laminated beams such as GluLam™ (photo at left) or microlam structural wood beams (see LVL or laminated veneer lumber). Layers of wood are glued (laminated) together with heat, resin binder, and pressure to form a very strong structural member that can be produced in regular sizes and lengths. Unlike plywood or OSB, LVL lumber uses wood fragments that are all oriented in the same direction to produce very stiff beams that generally have greater span capacity than sawn lumber. GluLam produces laminated wood beams, timbers, I-joists, and other engineered wood products.
• Oriented-strand board subflooring, wall sheathing, roof sheathing - see OSB
• Plywood subfloors, wall sheathing, roof sheathing - see Plywood and see FIRE RETARDANT PLYWOOD

Fiberboard Building Sheathing: Black board, grayboard, buffaloboard exterior sheathing

In addition to plywood, OSB, and gypsum board, impregnated fiberboard has been used as exterior building insulating sheathing in North America since at least 1909 (see our discussion of Homasote, below and see Masonite™ and other hardboard Sheet and Siding Building Materials). Fiberboard wall sheathing, when intended for use on a building exterior is installed by nailing directly to the wall studs, most often with let-in diagonal bracing or plywood panel bracing at the building corners to assure building rigidity.

There both non-structural and structural fiberboard panels that did not require this additional bracing have been produced. Some fiberboard sheathing products can claim adequate structural shear strength, particularly if the proper nails and nail pattern are used.

Other contemporary producers of fiberboard building sheathing include International Bildrite (Bildrite structural), Georgia Pacific (Stedi-R & Stedi-R-structural), Knight Celotex (Celotex premium insulating), and Temple Inland (Temple fiber brace).

Fiberboard sheathing, also called black board, gray board, or buffalo board sheathing in some areas, is a fibrous material impregnated with a stabilizer and water repellant - asphalt on early versions of this material that we have found. While it's not easy to find and identify this material on a building wall unless indoor or outdoor demolition is being performed, you can spot the product in building attics on the gable-end walls.

The R-value of fibergoard sheathing is higher than plywood, gypsum board, etc, and is rated at about R 2.4 per inch (or about R 1.2 in more typical half-inch thickness with which it is applied. The board also reduces sound transmission into buildings.

Gypsum board building exterior wall sheathing - history, description, age of use

Hewn Beams & Pit-Sawn Planks as Construction Materials - Help in Determining Building Age

Hand hewn beams, chopped and then sized with an adze and axe were used in North America from the 1600's into the late 1800's. Our photograph at above right shows adze cuts and axe cuts that are normally visible in the rough surface of hand hewn wood structural beams.

Timber frame construction initially used hand hewn beams, cut roughly rectangular by an adze and axe. Later beams were sawn manually or mechanically by a manually opearted vertical pit saw, ultimately by machine-powered pit saws and circular saws. Timber framing using post and beam construction with mortise and tenon joint connections was used in Europe for at least 500 years before it was first employed in North America.

Our photo at above left shows typical roof framing on a Poughkeepsie home built ca 1790. Notice that there is no ridge board or ridge beam used, just a treenail-joined pair of numbered saw-cut rafters. The timber framing shown in our photograph at above left is from an 1875 Colonial home in Newburgh, NY. You can see this house at Architecture & Style.

For details about post and beam construction methods see our full text article at Post & Beam Construction. Also see Nails and Hardware and Saw Cuts, Tool Marks for additional building age clues likely to be available when examining building framing materials.

By 1650 a typical timber frame building used multiple bents and girt beams, may have been more than one story tall, and included an exterior made of horsehair-reinforced cement stuccoed over hand-split lath. Timber framing in North America continued until about 1920. (CF Reference due: Age of Barns, op.cit.)

Identifying Photographs of Homasote®, Celotex®, & Similar Fiberboard & Insulating Sheathing Board Products

Insulating building sheathing made by Homasote® is produced by the Homasote Company, a manufacturer in the U.S. in New Jersey, and similar fiber sheathing products have been used both as a sound barrier and for exterior sheathing on buildings. Insulating board sheathing has been widely used on building exterior walls, under roofs, and against masonry foundations in finished basements. Originally, Homasote produced sanded "agasote" sheets used in the roofs of passenger railroad cars, moving, in 1915, to automobile roofs, and in 1916 to construction products. Homasote was widely used for military barracks in both WWI and WWII and is still promoted for sound resistant sheathing and other applications. Homasote and similar insulating building sheathing board products are still sold as a lower cost alternative to plywood or OSB for building sheathing. The product is used as structural paneling, insulation, concrete pouring forms, and expansion joints.

Our photos (above left and right) show closeups of Homasote-type insulating buildnig sheathing board products, including a torn cross section showing the layered fibrous character of this material.

Where structural shear strength is needed by using the company's recommended ring-shanked nails in a specified nailing pattern. Homasote Co., the oldest manufacturer of building products from recycled materials in the United States, was founded by Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge as Agasote Millboard Company, and has been producing this material since 1909. In 1936 the company changed its name to its best known product, Homasote.

Our photographs below show Celotex® insulating board with an older Celotex fiberboard building sheathing board at left and a more recent Celotex insulating board product shown at below-right. Also see this closeup of an older Celotex inslulating sheathing board product.

Also see Fiberboard insulating sheathing or board sheathing products and see Masonite® hardboard siding products.

Log Home Construction Materials

Masonite™ and other hardboard Sheet and Siding Building Materials

OSB - Oriented Strand Board Roof and Wall Sheathing Materials

Plywood Sheathing on Walls & Roofs: Use in Building Construction, History, Description, Identification

Plywood (1905 - present as a construction material in North America) is sheet material made of thin veneers of wood that are laid with wood grains in alternating direction, glued, heated, and pressed together. Interior plywood is generally glued with urea formaldehyde based glues; exterior plywood and marine plywood use phenolic formaldehyde glues and are water resistant.

Our photo (left) shows both fire-retardant plywood roof sheathing (left half of the photo and center top and bottom) and OSB roof sheathing (center of photo and right edges of photo).

While modern plywood products use a variety of glues, heat, and pressure to produce the product, plywood has been around at least since 3500 BC when a glued-veneer version was produced in Egypt. The furniture industry has had a long history of gluing thin fine-wood veneers to a cheaper wooden base - a process similar to the production of plywood itself. The invention of the rotary lathe (ca 1850) by Immanuel Nobel (1801 - 1872) is what made modern plywood possible by permitting manufacturers to cut large thin (but thicker than wood veneers) sheets of wood from logs. The wood sheets are placed at right angles to one another and glued together.

The cross-grain construction combined with glue produces a strong, uniform material that is used for both enclosure and for structural stiffness in frame construction of building walls and roofs. The properties of plywood, including its tolerance to weather exposure (marine plywood) depend on the glues and finishes used. Both softwood and hardwoods are used in plywoods, and fine wood veneer finishes are also available (for furniture use).

Also see FIRE RETARDANT PLYWOOD.

The first plywood made in the Western U.S. was produced by the Portland Manufacturing Company in Oregon in 1905, a company founded four years earlier by Gustav A. Carlson, F.S. Doernbecher, and M.L. Holbrook. Peter Autzen bought out Doernbecher and Holbrook. It was Autzen's son, Thomas, who made key progress solving problems with bonding the veneers together.

Originally the Portland Manufacturing company had produced fruit baskets, crates, and drums, experience which we pose gave the owners familiarity with cutting thin strips of wood (baskets) that remained flexible for use in a manufacturing process. Their plywood was exhibited at the 1905 Worlds' Fair in Portland, Oregon. Interestingly, the first exhibition of plywood as a building product in the Northwest was in a log structure, the Forestry Building in Portland, OR where it was displayed until that building burned in 1964.

In 1924 plywood sales were still primarily to door producers, but by 1928 the company had increased production and plywood was being used in automobile bodies. In that year the Pacific Coast Plywood Manufacturers, Inc. (PCPM)was formed jointly with Elliot Bay Mill Co. (Seattle), Walton Veneer Co. (Everett WA), and Washington Veneer Co. (Olympia WA). But PCPM was dissolved after the 1929 Stock Market crash.

The appeal and success of plywood as a building material are based on quite a few factors including increased construction speed (consider nailing up 4x8 sheets of plywood versus individual tongue and groove exterior building sheathing or roofing), product uniformity and strength, and the reduction of waste compared with cutting sheathing boards out of logs.

Truss Materials used in Building Construction

(History & dates in process, contributions invited)

Our photos show an attic view of modern roof trusses (above left) and floor trusses (above right).

Welded Wire Sandwich Framing Panelized Construction

Welded-wire sandwich framing panels: polystyrene or polyurethane foam core insulation is surrounded by a welded-wire space frame.

(History & dates in process, contributions invited)

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AGE of a BUILDING - how to determine
  Architecture & Style
  Building Records
  Chimneys & Fireplaces
  Electrical Components
  Flooring Materials
    Asphalt Tile Flooring
    Cork Flooring Tiles
    Vinyl Asbestos Floor Tiles
    Sheet Flooring Materials
    Linoleum Sheet Flooring
    Non-Resilient Floor Coverings
    Laminate Wood & Other Laminate Floors
    Wood Floor Types
    Wood Floor Damage
  Flooring Materials
  Foundation Materials
  Framing Materials Age
    Dimensional Lumber
    Engineered Wood Products
    Hewn beams & planks
    Log construction
    Sheathing, Gypsum board
    Sheathing Homasote & Other Board
    Sheathing, OSB
    SHEATHING, Plywood
SHEATHING, FOIL FACED - VENTS
    Trusses
  Framing Methods Age
    Balloon Framing
    Log Home Construction
    Modular Construction
    Panelized Construction
    Plank Houses
    Platform Framing
    Post & Beam Construction
    Straw Bale Construction
    Welded Wire Sandwich Framing
  Framing Size & Spacing
  Heating Equipment
  Insulation Materials
  Nails and Hardware
  Plaster & Beaverboard & Drywall
  Plumbing Materials & Fixtures
  Roofing Materials
  Saw Cuts, Tool Marks
  Sears Kit Houses
  Siding Materials
  Windows & Doors

• Thanks to Alan Carson and Bob Dunlop, Carson Dunlop, Associates, Toronto, for permission to use illustrations from their publication, The Illustrated Home which illustrates construction details and building components. Carson Dunlop provides home inspection education, publications, report writing materials, and home inspection services. Alan Carson is a past president of ASHI, the American Society of Home Inspectors.
• Carson Dunlop, Associates, Toronto, have provided us with (and we recommend) Carson Dunlop Weldon & Associates' Technical Reference Guide to manufacturer's model and serial number information for heating and cooling equipment ($69.00 U.S.). Technical Reference Guide, Carson Dunlop Weldon & Associates, Ltd., 120 Carlton St. Suite 407, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 4K2 Canada, ISBN 1-895585-90-2 165pp.
• America's Favorite Homes, mail-order catalogues as a guide to popular early 20th-century houses, Robert Schweitzer, Michael W.R. Davis, 1990, Wayne State University Press ISBN 0814320066 (may be available from Wayne State University Press)
• American Plywood Association, APA, "Portland Manufacturing Company, No. 1, a series of monographs on the history of plywood manufacturing",Plywood Pioneers Association, 31 March, 1967, apawood.org 253-620-7400 APAWood.org
• Asbestos products and their history and use in various building materials such as asphalt and vinyl flooring includes discussion which draws on Asbestos, Its Industrial Applications, D.V. Rosato, engineering consultant, Newton, MA, Reinhold Publishing, 1959 Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 59-12535 (out of print).
• Building Research Council, BRC, nee Small Homes Council, SHC, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, brc.arch.uiuc.edu. "The Small Homes Council (our original name) was organized in 1944 during the war at the request of the President of the University of Illinois to consider the role of the university in meeting the demand for housing in the United States. Soldiers would be coming home after the war and would be needing good low-cost housing. ...  In 1993, the Council became part of the School of Architecture, and since then has been known as the School of Architecture-Building Research Council. ... The Council's researchers answered many critical questions that would affect the quality of the nation's housing stock.
  • How could homes be designed and built more efficiently?
  • What kinds of construction and production techniques worked well and which did not?
  • How did people use different kinds of spaces in their homes?
  • What roles did community planning, zoning, and interior design play in how neighborhoods worked?
• Georgia Pacific: information about DensGlas gypsum board building sheathing can be found at the company's website at gp.com/build/product.aspx?pid=4674
• Homasote Co., 932 Lower Ferry Road, West Trenton, New Jersey 08628-024, U.S.A. 800-257-9491 homasote.com
• "Hurricane Damage to Residential Structures: Risk and Mitigation", Jon K. Ayscue, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, published by the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, November 1996. Abstract:
  "Property damage and loss from hurricanes have increased with population growth in coastal areas, and climatic factors point to more frequent and intense hurricanes in the future. This paper describes potential hurricane hazards from wind and water. Damage to residential structures from three recent intense hurricanes - Hugo, Andrew, and Iniki - shows that wind is responsible for greater property loss than water. The current state-of-the-art building technology is sufficient to reduce damage from hurricanes when properly applied, and this paper discusses those building techniques that can mitigate hurricane damage and recommends measures for mitigating future hurricane damage to homes." - online at www.colorado.edu/hazards/publications/wp/wp94/wp94.html
• "Evaluating OSB for Coastal Roofs," Paul Fisette, Coastal Contractor, Winter 2005, online at coastalcontractor.net/pdf/2005/0501/0501eval.pdf . Fisette cites: "Jose Mitrani, a civil engineer and professor at Florida. International University in Miami, was ... Florida’s official damage assessment team. ... After Hurricane Andrew, Florida code advisers ruled OSB sheathing inferior to plywood
• GluLam Structural Wood Products, U.S. GluLam Inc., 4245 W. 166th St., Oak Forest Il. 60452 - email: bevusg@aol.com, 708-535-6506
• I-Joists: "The Evolution of Engineered Wood I-Joists", Paul Fisette, Building Materials and Wood Technology
  University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, 2000 - see U. Mass online article at umass.edu/bmatwt/publications/articles/i_joist.html
• Isham: "An Example of Colonial Paneling", Norman Morrison Isham, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 5 (May, 1911), pp. 112-116, available by JSTOR.
• Laminated Beams: Radial reinforcement of curved glue laminated wood beams with composite materials", Kasal, Bo and Heiduschke, Andreas, Forest Products Journal, 1 Jan 2004
• OSB: "Evaluating OSB for Coastal Roofs," Paul Fisette, Coastal Contractor, Winter 2005, online at coastalcontractor.net/pdf/2005/0501/0501eval.pdf . Fisette cites: "Jose Mitrani, a civil engineer and professor at Florida. International University in Miami, was ... Florida’s official damage assessment team. ... After Hurricane Andrew, Florida code advisers ruled OSB sheathing inferior to plywood."
• OSB: Timberco TECO is located at 2902 Terra Court, Sun Praire, WI 53590 USA, 608-837-2790. TECO provides a reference library of .PDF files that can be downloaded by consumers, homeowners, builders, and architects. The association refers to industry standards for oriented strand board OSB products as:
  • "DOC PS 2, Performance Standard for Wood-Based Structural-Use Panels. Certified to CSA 0325, Construction Sheathing, or CSA 0437, OSB and Waferboard, OSB is accepted in the National Building Code of Canada, certified to EN 300, Oriented Strand Boards and recognized for structural use in Europe and certified to meet the JAS standard for structural panels in Japan."
• OSB: "Performance of Wood Shear Walls Sheathed with FRP-Reinforced OSB Panels", J. Struct. Engrg. Volume 132, Issue 1, pp. 153-163, Jan. 2006 provides a study on the development and structural testing of a hybrid sheathing panel designed to improve the lateral resistance of light wood-frame shear walls. "FRP" refers to fiber reinforced polymer material that was sandwiched between more conventional exterior OSB layers.
• OSB - Universite Laval slides on the production of OSB are at xylo.sbf.ulaval.ca/osb/sld001.htm
• Manufactured & Modular Homes: Modular Building Systems Association, MBSA, modularhousing.com, is a trade association promoting and providing links to contact modular builders in North America. Also see the Manufactured Home Owners Association, MHOAA, at www.mhoaa.us. The Manufactured Home Owners Association of America is a National Organization dedicated to the protection of the rights of all people living in Manufactured Housing in the United States.
• Pergo AB, division of Perstorp AB, is a Swedish manufacturer or modern laminate flooring products. Information about the U.S. company can be found at http://www.pergo.com where we obtained historical data used in our discussion of the age of flooring materials in buildings.
• Plank House Construction: webslog from plankhouse.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/plank-house-construction/ and where plank houses were built by native Americans, see
  Large 1:6 Scale Plank House Construction / P8094228, Photographer: Mike Meuser
  06/12/2007 documented at yurokplankhouse.com where scale model Museum quality Yurok Plank Houses are being sold to raise money for the Blue Creek - Ah Pah Traditional Yurok Village project.
• Radiant barriers such as attached to OSB and plywood panels - see radiant barrier standard ASTM C1313, the California Title 24 Insulation Standards, and information provided by an industry site radiantguard.com
• Scott C. LeMarr has provided his file of keys to decode Furnace and Water Heater Age from the data provided on the manufacturer's equipment labels. Mr. LeMarr is a professional home inspector, Certified Professional Inspector/President, MASTER Indoor Environmental Specialist (MIES). Vice President of Wisconsin NACHI. He and his company, Honest Home Inspections, LLC. can be reached at 262-424-5587 or by email to scott@honesthomeinspections.com
• Weaver: Beaver Board and Upson Board: Beaver Board and Upson Board: History and Conservation of Early Wallboard, Shelby Weaver, APT Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 2/3 (1997), pp. 71-78, Association for Preservation Technology International (APT), available online at JSTOR.

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