It doesn’t take that much more effort, nor that much more material, to frame up a home with timbers rather than by using laminated lumber from Home Depot, but the difference in appearance and durability is amazing.
Timber framing
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How do you get your own timber approved for residential building? everything I have read says you must used graded material for residential approved buildings.
Building codes, and the enforcement of the thousands of pages of restrictions that can be put in place upon us, vary from… inspector to inspector, county to county, city to city, state to state, and country to country… so there is no single answer to this question.
It would take me the better part of an hour to address this question as fully as I can.
The brief version would be…
A) the person who can best answer this question for you is the person who has the power over you to grant or deny your freedom to build as you want to… but of course, you risk pointing out a potential problem that this person might not ever notice in the first place… or care about.
B) most often this person in authority is just trying to do their job, get paid, and not suffer any hassles in the future from not “going by what the book says”
C) one great way for this person to get around “what the book says”, and avoid being hassled by you, and not face any hassles in the future… is by you submitting drawings using the materials you want to use… a set of plans that is stamped by a licensed architect, or engineer.
D) there are ways to get any material “graded”… google is a great start.
In short… I have met initial resistance throughout my career many, many times on a variety of issues… it is always an unnecessary hassle… I have built homes in a manner that is FAR superior to the standard homes going up today… but my homes don’t fit into the cookie cutter box the government increasingly wants to put all builders into… I have yet to fail in finding a way to get approved… it’s all about being friendly, understanding the position the inspector is in, and helping them avoid responsibility for granting you freedom.
The real shame is that building officials should not need to see wood that is graded in order for someone to build their home.
If those in power choose to enforce material standards upon us… that standard should be with regard to the quality of the material… and not whether it has a stamp on it. If they feel we should use a set standard for wood then they should have the ability to determine if the wood is satisfactory themselves. Any good carpenter can look at a piece of wood and know if it is good enough for what is being used for… I would think that would be a minimal qualification for any inspector to have. The need to have grade stamps put on wood lowers the job qualification level for inspectors, while increasing costs and hardships on those who supply materials and those who build homes.