Subject: 140 lbs per square foot of snow. That is not a typo.
Preview: Wind, salt, snow, earthquakes — the numbers your site actually needs.

Hi [First Name],

As people begin planning an outdoor structure, they often focus first on what they’ll see and enjoy — the size, the style, the roof design, and where it will sit on the property.

What often comes as a surprise is how much the location itself can influence the design.

A timber frame structure on the Florida coast, one in the mountains of Colorado, and another in the Pacific Northwest may share the same footprint and design style. But the engineering behind each one can be very different — because the environmental forces acting on them are very different.

I thought you might find some of these considerations helpful as you continue exploring ideas for your project.

From Laurence

Why Where You Live Matters

“It doesn’t matter where people are — New York City, Florida, anywhere — they come to us because they have specific requirements. Maybe they’re in a hurricane zone but still want a structure that can pass a 160-mile-per-hour wind rating. We make sure we can engineer and design something that works. We had one the other day — a call comes in, ‘they’re telling me the snow load is 220 pounds.’ Turns out it was. Hit play — I’ll tell you the rest.”

— Laurence Bunker, President  ·  quick watch

02

Coastal Salt Air

Along the coast, the challenge is different. Salt air quietly works day after day, year after year — corroding exposed hardware and weakening inferior materials long before any visible damage appears. The storm that makes the news is not always the real problem. It is the thousands of ordinary days before it that do the most damage.

In coastal environments, upgraded hardware, marine-grade treatments, and more frequent maintenance schedules are often recommended to help structures withstand the effects of salt exposure over time. It is worth factoring these considerations in from the start rather than discovering them after the build.

And these are guidelines, not hard lines on a map. Prevailing wind direction, elevation, and local geography all influence how far salt air travels. A hilltop home two miles from the shore that faces directly into prevailing ocean winds may see more salt exposure than a sheltered valley home one mile away. We don’t just design to the minimum requirements. We design for the conditions the structure will actually face.

Many builders address coastal conditions through a combination of material selection, protected hardware, and joinery systems designed to accommodate humidity-related movement. The right approach depends on how close you are to the water, how exposed the site is, and what species of timber best fits the environment.

04

Seismic

In seismic regions, flexibility becomes an asset. Rigid materials resist lateral force until they crack. Timber absorbs and dissipates energy — moving with the force instead of fighting it.

The evidence goes back centuries: 1,300-year-old Japanese temples have weathered 46 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater. The joinery allows the structure to move fluidly and return to plumb.

Modern testing confirms it. In a landmark study funded by the National Science Foundation, engineers at UC San Diego and Colorado School of Mines put a 10-story mass timber building — the tallest full-scale structure ever seismic-tested — through 100 earthquake simulations equivalent to 10,000 years of seismic activity. The result: no detectable structural damage to timber members or connections. The building returned nearly perfectly to plumb after every test.

The principle behind those results — allowing the structure to rock and dissipate energy while protecting the main timbers — is the same principle behind traditional mortise-and-tenon joinery. It is what our Dovetail Difference® connections are designed to do.

The reason engineers spend so much time studying site conditions is that environmental factors rarely show up one at a time. Wind combines with snow. Moisture combines with freeze-thaw cycles. Soil conditions affect foundations. Elevation changes load calculations.

Every site presents its own unique set of challenges. That is why site-specific, PE-stamped engineering — calculated for your exact address, not a regional average — matters so much. It is the difference between a structure designed for where it actually lives and one designed for a generic set of conditions.