Summary
Wood is truly remarkable. Engineered by Nature, its strength-to-weight ratio exceeds those of both steel and concrete. Wood is also less rigid, allowing it to support gravitational loads while also withstanding temporary lateral forces, such as those created by high winds or earthquakes. Wood requires minimal processing and is easily workable. It's abundant, available throughout the world, and renewable. No wonder wood has been humankind's most commonly used building material for thousands of years. 

But wood is not flawless. Wood burns. 

For centuries, humans have recognized the need to keep wood used in construction from burning. Many strategies have been developed, with varying degrees of success. As our understanding of fire behavior and the various ways wood interacts with fire has progressed, we've become more adept at developing technologies to protect wood from fire's destructive effects and to reduce and delay development of smoke, the most common cause of death in structure fires. The most effective of these technologies is to impregnate wood with fire-retardant chemicals using a pressure treating process that causes the chemicals to integrate into the wood's cellular structure. 

In this presentation we will explore this technology and look at how pressure-treated fire-retardant wood products are expanding the ways in which wood can safely meet the needs of today's construction industry.   

 

Who should attend: Fire & life safety professionals, formulators, technical marketing & sales, material scientists, fire safety educators, academia, government authorities and all interested stakeholders.

 

About the Speaker​

Presented by Timm Locke, Marketing Director, Western Wood Preservers Institute

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Timm Locke has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1987. He boasts more than three decades of experience in wood products marketing and communications. Before joining Western Wood Preservers Institute, he worked as an employee or consultant to a wide range of associations and companies in the wood products industry including, among others, Western Wood Products Association, Willamette Industries, SierraPine, Contact Industries, Warm Springs Composite Products, the Pacific Logging Congress, NOFMA: the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association, and Pacific Lumber Inspection Bureau. From 2015 to 2019, he developed and implemented programs on behalf of the State of Oregon which helped cement the Pacific Northwest's reputation as the early leader and epicenter of the rapidly growing mass timber construction movement. He authored Business is Good: Stories of Patrick Lumber Company's First Century, published in 2014 to celebrate the company's 100th anniversary. 

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There will be a Q&A session during the webinar session.