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| Bamboo...The Fastest Growing and Most Renewable Resource on Earth
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 The Sustainable Hardwood Alternative
As an alternative to hardwoods, bamboo is one of the most sustainable building materials you could select for your garden or home project. Bamboo isn't even a wood at all. Bamboo is a grass and it is the fastest growing woody plant in the world and has been known to grow as fast as 47 inches in a day!
To fully understand the advantage of bamboo over hardwoods in terms of sustainability, contrast bamboo with the Northern White Cedar. The Cedar takes forty years to reach post size and is destroyed when harvested. Loblolly pine is harvested after about ten years of growth and the plant also is destroyed. Bamboo will be ready to harvest after three years and will re-grow after each harvesting if properly managed. Mature bamboo benefits from yearly harvesting about a quarter of its culms (poles). Read more about Bamboo and sustainability.
Bamboo as construction material
Bamboo has remarkable properties as a construction material, being both lightweight and extremely strong and durable. It even has better tensile strength than steel. Bamboo's tensile strength is 28,000 per square inch versus 23,000 for steel.
Bamboo fibers, unlike those found in trees, contain silica, the substance associated with the glassy sturdiness of sand. This silica content also helps bamboo resist rot and termites.
Bamboo is easy to work with, having a hollow cylindrical shape and a very straight grain. Most bamboo will split over time. However, because of bamboo's hard and dense skn, the poles remain strong despite splitting. The larger the diameter, the more likely it is to split.
When designing structures there is often a “relief split” which relieves the hoop stress of the bamboo and makes it unlikely to split again. Any relieved bamboo, slats, or half rounds are safe against further splitting. Whole bamboo kept in dry conditions is at risk of splitting. Bamboo with a diameter of less than 3/4" is less likely to split. "Iron Bamboo" (Dendrocalamus Strictus) from the Yucatan is also very unlikely to split.
Bamboo Color
Bamboo is attractive and colorful. The plant is usually shades of green but certain species have a yellow, purple, brown or black hue. Cured bamboo is a creamy white to brown color, depending on species and curing method. Over time, bamboo fences weather to a uniform silvery grey in sunlight. Once fully weathered, the bamboo surface can take almost any stain or wood preservative, some of which can return it to its original color, if desired.
Bamboo Varieties
There are around 1,000 species of bamboo. Varieties of bamboo Bamboo Fencer supplies for many different uses include Tonkin Bamboo, Taiwan/Phyllostachys bamboo, Iron bamboo, Black bamboo, Guadua bamboo and Moso bamboo. |
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