Accommodating Movement in High-Rise Wood-Frame Building Construction

Ease of construction and favorable overall costs relative to other construction types are making high-rise (i.e., 4- and 5- story) wood-frame construction increasingly popular. With these buildings increasing in height, there is a greater impetus on designers to address frame and finishes movement in such construction. As we all know, buildings are dynamic creatures experiencing a variety of movements during construction and over their service life. In wood-frame construction, it is important to consider not only absolute movement but also differential movement between dissimilar materials. As the number of stories increases, paying attention to shrinkage of materials has increased importance. At the upper building stories, it is possible for allowable shrinkage to be exceeded resulting in distress to exterior finishes. Further, distress repaired during the construction period or early in the building?s service life sometimes reappears each time it is remedied.

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