Grandin residents might have noticed something odd about the new condo complex rising out of the ruins of Grandin mall. The two towers are the first all-wood structures in northern Alberta that are more than four storeys tall.
Grandin residents might have noticed something odd about the new condo complex rising out of the ruins of Grandin mall.
The two towers are the first all-wood structures in northern Alberta that are more than four storeys tall.
About 70 workers are now on site at the old mall location hammering together the first phase of Grandin Parc Village. When finished, the two, five-storey buildings will contain some 139 condo units.
Unlike most buildings of this height in Alberta, these two will be made almost completely out of wood, said Stefan Ilic, project manager with Amacon. (The ground floor on one of the buildings is steel.) Alberta only recently changed its regulations to allow wood-frame buildings to exceed four storeys.
“This is the first one north of Calgary that's higher than four storeys,” he said – Calgary has a six-storey one.
“We wanted to bring this new higher limit of wood and sustainable construction to St. Albert.”
The province changed its building codes to allow wood-frame buildings to exceed four storeys back in May 2015, said Brock Mulligan, a spokesperson with the Alberta Forest Products Association familiar with the Grandin project. B.C. has allowed such structures for about a decade, and now has about 300 of them.
“It's something that's really important for our industry,” he said, as it encourages the use of locally produced wood.
Wood has a number of advantages over steel and concrete, Mulligan said. It's renewable, far less carbon intensive in terms of manufacture and transportation, and costs about 12 to 20 per cent less than other materials. It's also more resistant to earthquakes, as it's flexible.
Ilic said wood is well suited for buildings with a lot of variation between floors such as the Grandin condos. With concrete, you'd have to build a different form for each floor. It's also much easier to modify; if you need to punch a pipe through the floor, you can use a drill instead of a jackhammer, and you don't need an x-ray machine to dodge the rebar.
But wood also has limitations. Wood can only support so much weight, and if you build too high with it, that flexibility becomes a liability. It also shrinks and expands slightly with changes in heat or moisture – too many storeys, and those little changes make your cabinets fall off the wall.
Recent advances in engineered wood beams have let builders get around these problems, Ilic explained. Regulators, meanwhile, have determined the amount of firewalls and sprinklers these taller wood buildings need in order to be safe from fire.
The Grandin condos are made from a mix of conventional and laminated veneer lumber, which is a sort of super-plywood made by gluing many long strips of wood together. Ilic said these engineered beams come pre-cut, and provide the strength needed to support the building.
Much like a regular wood house, the condos are held together with nails, staples, bolts, and screws.
“It's very similar to stick-building a house, but it's stick-building many houses all together,” Ilic said.
One difference is the addition of hold-down rods. There are about 40 of these thumb-thick steel rods running vertically in the walls of the Grandin buildings, Ilic said. Secured under great tension to steel plates, these rods help keep the top and bottom of the buildings together.
These new six-storey wood buildings will be a good fit for hotels and mid-rise buildings in communities like St. Albert that aren't right for giant towers, Mulligan said. Several are now under construction in Sherwood Park, and he's hoping to see more.
Ilic said he suspects that the technology needed for eight-storey wood structures is not far away. He's also interested in the results of an 18-storey student residence made of wood now under construction at the University of British Colombia.
“That would be quite an industry changer, if we started to look to wood to build something that high.”
The two Grandin condos should be finished by November, Ilic said. The rest of the Grandin site, including its proposed 24-storey towers, will be made with concrete and rebar, as they're too tall for wood.
