IACRenter said:
Recently drove by Portola and Jeffrey. The Stonegate school walls are up and the roof is on. Looks like they are on course to open in Fall 2009. I also noticed the steel beams going up on the new TUSD school near Settlers Park at Orchard Hills.
Off the subject but just wondering why IUSD used wood framing for a school while TUSD choose steel framing? In this day and age of earthquakes and natural disasters I figure steel would be a better choice and last longer. Any civil engineers out there?
Framing methods are different due to a lot of factors. The school districts rarely have a preference for one material over another. Cost efficiency in labor as well as meeting the building type for emergency assembly are crucial for civic projects. The wood framing members for a school sometime are furrings members attached to a masonry block wall to achieve the planar relief dictated by the Mediterranean aesthetic. Roofs are often wood trusses and auditorium assembly hall that requires a longer spanning members are beams made from engineered wood. In the trade these beams are Glue Lamination (Glu-Lam) or Parallel Lamination (Para-Lam). Just because the framing components are wood it does not indicated the total framing composition is inferior. Engineered wood beams and trusses span just as far as steel and are much cheaper and easier to construct. Steels required specialized trade $$$.
When a structure is built near high fire zone with plenty of fuel a higher fire resistive rating will dictate the steel material. A school built on the flat land out of the fire danger zone material could be more conventional such as block and wood. Both will perform well seismically.