Restore Forests, Decarbonize Building, And Sequester Carbon Through Forestry, Biomass Energy, And Biochar
Forest and biomass industries can help grow biochar production and use. One Oregon mill, the Freres Lumber Company, converts renewable fiber to carbon smart building materials, supplies fiber to paper and engineered wood products, generates firm renewable power, sequesters carbon, and enables carbon and nutrient cycling with biochar.
New net zero Bush School comes together with mass plywood panels
It won’t open until next spring, but an addition to The Bush School in Seattle is already teaching lessons in green construction. The 20,000-square-foot building is under construction on Bush’s upper campus at Hillside Drive East and Lake Washington Boulevard East. It
will serve high school kids with 10 seminar-style classrooms, causal break-out areas, a 400-seat multipurpose room with pre-function space, student lounge, student/faculty collaboration center, catering kitchen, administrative offices and a faculty workroom.
The addition faces Lake Washington Boulevard East, with the school’s historic Gracemont building behind it.
Tragedy to gateway: Wildfire-salvaged wood gets new life at Portland International airport
When the 2020 Labor Day wildfires burned 50 miles to the south, destroying more than 3,000 homes and scorching 1.2 million acres of trees, the lingering smoke cast the state’s largest airport in a haze. Now, as the Portland international Airport takes on an ambitious $2.2 billion makeover that will expand the main terminal and make significant improvements, much of the wood for the new roof over the main terminal is coming from wood salvaged from those wildfires.
Crews with Hoffman-Skanska work on the new $2billon remodel of the roof using salvage wood product from Freres Engineered Wood Co. at Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon on Friday, July 16, 2021.
Santiam Canyon district turns a $17.9 million bond into a $26 million project
Alex Mitchell never thought the day would come when he would want to come to school. After almost a year of learning entirely in front of a computer screen, he was ready to come back to Santiam High School to complete his senior year. “Sitting behind a computer all day wasn’t working,” Mitchell said.
Meyer Memorial Trust by LEVER Architecture
Michelle Depass, the CEO of the Portland, Oregon-based Meyer Memorial Trust, the state’s largest private foundation, thinks the label “civic building” is less about the architecture than action. She would argue that the Trust’s new headquarters fits the definition: “Building democracy isn’t about four walls. It is a participatory practice.”
Freres Lumber Utilizes Caldwell Rotary Leg Lumber Lifter
Freres Lumber Co. Inc. is using a custom below-the-hook attachment, manufactured by Caldwell, to lift long lumber loads at it’s Mass Ply Panel facility in Lyons, Oregon.
The 15-ton capacity, 53 ft.-long, motorized rotary leg lumber lifter handles lamellas (thin layers / plates) of structural composite lumber, used to manufacture Mass Ply products. It is attached to a 20-ton capacity overhead crane with two hoists; the lifting equipment and attachment were provided by U.S. Crane & Hoist, also of Oregon (Wilsonville).
No time to waste: Freres begins post-wildfire timber salvage
LYONS, OR – The suffocating smoke that blanketed the Santiam Canyon after Labor Day wildfires consumed nearly everything in their path is gone. The Beachie Creek and Lionshead fires displaced more than 1,200 residents, destroyed more than 500 homes and consumed 400,000 acres of forest lands, both public and private.
The long process of rebuilding homes and lives has begun.
Freres Lumber mass timber Mass Ply beams and columns now APA certified
LYONS, OR – Freres Lumber’s mass timber Mass Ply beams and columns are now APA certified. Freres has continued to innovate and expand its Mass Ply Panel products, and is now able to offer its customers beams and columns in dimensions up to 24 inches thick and 48 inches deep.
Oregon businesses fear being publicly identified as COVID-19 workplace outbreak
Freres Lumber in Lyons knew of one employee who tested positive in August for COVID-19. But the next month, the state identified Freres as the site of an outbreak — reporting they’d had five and then later 14 cases. Businesses argue they’re being stigmatized by a state reporting system they describe as unfair and misleading.
