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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 17:04:46 :
In Reply to: Re: LOWES posted by Kaegi [24.113.81.122] on Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 14:01:59 :
Same thing when I lived on the coast (in Everett) Had to go to Dunn and pay a premium to get fir lumber; the box stores just had "hem-fir".
The only reason the box stores have good stuff in Cd'A is that we're in the think of the inland lumber country and so it's probably cheaper for them to buy D FIR/L locally than have HEM-FIR trucked in from the coast. The thing is, the building inspectors let you use D FIR/L, HEM-FIR, and SPF interchangeably in framing, with no credit for using the better stuff, so why should any commercial builder pay more for anything other than the absolute minimum that the building inspector will allow? It doesn't matter to the builder if mushrooms start growing out of the eves in 10 years -- he has his money and it's somebody else's problem now.
All the HEM-FIR I've seen has really been western hemlock, as evidenced by the black knots, but they grade it as HEM-FIR because all the true fir species (grand, noble, silver, etc) look too much like hemlock when milled to be able to tell the difference and they're all relatively weak and rot-prone compared to doug fir. Larch, if you can get it, is the best of all -- as strong as doug fir and as rot-resistant as cedar -- but they look almost the same when milled so unless you're milling your own logs, you'll probably and up with doug fir.
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