The Versatile Building Material
Southern Pine Lumber:
The Versatile Building Material
Southern Pine lumber has been popular since colonial times and remains the preferred choice for today’s design/build professionals and do-it-yourself users as a versatile building material,
One of the most sustainable (and often long-term cost-effective) options, it is dependable for everything from building a deck to framing a five-story residential complex – and everything in between.
Plus, there’s no replacement for the natural beauty of real wood.
So how do people around the world use Southern Pine? Here are some of the main ways:
Flooring
Properly installed and maintained, Southern Pine flooring meets the challenges of the most demanding applications. Available in a variety of sizes and grades, Southern Pine flooring is an attractive and durable addition to homes, schools, churches, sports venues, and commercial buildings.
Interior Patterns
Many designers choose Southern Pine to lend warmth and charm to an interior environment. Southern Pine beaded ceiling, paneling, wainscoting, and partitions are widely available.
Marine, Bridge, and Highway Construction
Southern Pine is available in large sizes and heavy treatments, making it ideal for marine, bridge, and highway construction. American Wood Protection Association standards require different retention levels for treated material intended for freshwater, brackish, or saltwater exposures.
Material Handling
Kiln-dried Southern Pine, heat treated and marked “HT,” exceeds international phytosanitary requirements for wood packaging. HT Southern Pine is ideal for pallets, crates, skids, boxes, cable reels, and specialty packaging.
Millwork Stock and Furniture
Southern Pine has superior qualities for machining, fastener-holding and finishing that makes it suitable for use in a wide range of trim and industrial applications. Many manufacturers of mouldings, stepping, ladder stock, and door and window components rely on Southern Pine finish-grade material. Its strength and density also make it a premium choice for solid and upholstered furniture.
Outdoor Decks
Decks extend the living space of the home and offer many different design choices from simple, compact structures to elaborate multi-level decks with benches, planters, and railings. Southern Pine is the preferred species of choice for decks because of its visual appeal, inherent strength and ease of treatability.
Permanent Wood Foundations
The Permanent Wood Foundation (PWF) is an innovative building system for crawlspace, split-level, or full-basement foundations.
Post-Frame Construction
Post-frame buildings are economical, easy to construct, and code-complying. They also offer excellent performance under high-wind and seismic loads. These advantages explain their continued popularity in rural buildings and their expansion into commercial and residential markets. Southern Pine’s superior treatability and dependable strength makes it a popular choice for post-frame builders.
Raised Floor Systems
Homes have been built on raised wood floor systems for hundreds of years. Depending on the geographic region, a raised floor system may also be called a crawlspace, raised wood platform floor, or raised floor foundation. By design, a raised floor system elevates the living space off the ground, isolating it from moisture and pests. Elevating a structure reduces flood insurance premiums and can even prevent flood damage.
Siding
Nothing beats the look of real wood siding. Southern Pine siding is available in a variety of patterns and can be pressure treated for even greater resistance to termites and decay.
Trusses
The open web configuration of metal plate connected wood trusses leaves plenty of room for plumbing, electrical, and mechanical runs. Other truss advantages include design flexibility, long spans, and speed of construction. Southern Pine’s high density and range of strength and stiffness properties make it the preferred lumber species for structural building components, including trusses. Component manufacturers have the option to choose strong Southern Pine grades that can reduce the number of raw materials used in each truss.
Check out our Lumber Library of technical publications to learn more about how to use Southern Pine in many of these projects: