Yep, although woods like Totara could be sustainably farmed. It takes twice as long to grow as pine, but it is a stronger, more rot resistant wood. There would be little need for CCA style wood treatments, so that would partly offset the cost of the wood.
gazzat22,
Feb 1, 7:13am
Here comes another Leaky Homes scenario.The main excuse for using untreated timber was to lessen the use of Chemicals in timber for houses and we all know how that turned out.! How much "partly offset". ? percentage wise?
apollo11,
Feb 1, 7:16am
You need to do some reading on the rot resistance of Totara.
tweake,
Feb 1, 7:26am
same issue overseas. slow growth trees are better but, if it takes twice as long to grow you need double the land aera. if its 3 times as long you need 3 times the aera. then there is pruning etc (we want straight timber) and longer it takes to grow the more damage the trees can get from storms, bugs etc.
afaik you can take up a lot more carbon with faster growing trees. which helps a lot pollution wise.
tweake,
Feb 1, 7:30am
the excuse they made up after it all went to crap ! the whole reason for the untreated timber was for faster turn around. so the big companies didn't have to store so much timber and didn't have so much capital tied up in product sitting in the yard. its all about money and the govt was silly enough to listen them.
apollo11,
Feb 1, 9:47am
I don't know how much of our pine for construction is thinned, judging by what I've been buying- not much. Or at least you pay a premium for stuff without knots everywhere. Totara has been researched as a plantation tree and if it's planted close together for the first years, tends to grow upward with few knots. Pine grows very quickly here, but it's only a matter of time before someone decides that strip mining the hills with pine monoculture is an environmental cost that our ecosystem can no longer support. (Plus all of the treatments required to make it last longer than a few years). We also need to stop importing cheap, throwaway garbage from China, but NZ seems to be addicted to the stuff.
apollo11,
Feb 1, 9:50am
Yep, you sell more of a product when you make sure it doesn't last as long. The lightbulb companies know all about that.
harm_less,
Sep 19, 12:13pm
According to your link 99MW presently. Did you realise that the URL you posted was "Live Data" so will state the generation at that moment?
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