North Vancouver’s first six-storey condominium building constructed with wood-frame construction may help silence critics of the nascent building system.
In 2009, the BC Building Code was changed to allow an increase in the maximum height for wood-frame residential construction from four to six storeys. Only a handful of such wood structures have been completed in Metro Vancouver, but 79 are under construction across the province, according to WoodWorks BC, a division of the Canadian Wood Council.
It is less expensive to construct multi-family buildings with wood than concrete, said WoodWorksBC technical advisor Sukh Johal, though he said actual savings would differ from one development to another. Johal suggested the savings advantage of wood-frame would be “double-digits.”
But a knock against wood-frame multi-family buildings is that they are perceived as being nosier than concrete construction, especially between floors.
Adera, which has built its six-storey, wood-frame Shore project in the Lower Lonsdale area, claims to have silenced the noise issue. “The Shore [condos] will be the most soundproof wood-frame homes in Western Canada,” said Adera president Norm Couttie, claiming the unique sound deadening used, “is a quantum advance in the reduction of sound transmission between private residences.”
Adera’s “superior acoustic specification” includes twice as much insulation and gypsum between floors as the BC Building Code requires, Coutie said, which limits both airborne and impact sounds. The 2.5-inches of gypsum panels layered between the floors are capped with cement and laid over 1.5-inches of concrete, the latter of which is required in the building code for multi-storey wood-frame construction.
