Southern Pine lumber has been popular since Colonial Times and remains a preferred choice for today’s design/build professionals.
Southern Pine provides great value in a wide variety of applications. From framing a house to building a deck, Southern Pine is a dependable product for any project.
Here are a few inherent advantages of Southern Pine:
Comparable Strength and Stiffness
Design values for Southern Pine are comparable to other softwood species used in residential and light commercial construction. Users can choose from a variety of visual grades and an increasing supply of mechanical grades providing a wide range of dependable strength and stiffness properties to meet the needs of most any project.
Highest Density
Southern Pine has the highest specific gravity of all common structural lumber species, providing superior fastener-holding power and load-bearing capacity.
Dimensional Stability
Southern Pine dimension lumber 2˝ and less in thickness must be dried to a maximum moisture content of 19%. This minimizes shrinkage associated with green lumber and provides long-term stability.
Best Treatability
Southern Pine has long been the preferred species for pressure treatment because of its unique cellular structure that permits deep, uniform penetration of preservatives. Some 85% of all pressure-treated wood produced in the U.S. is Southern Pine.
Natural Beauty
Southern Pine offers a distinct grain pattern and an appealing golden color. Because of this natural beauty, exposed Southern Pine provides architectural appeal.
Widespread Availability
Southern Pine is an abundant and renewable resource, growing in a vast band across the Southern United States from East Texas to Virginia. These forests are in close proximity to hundreds of Southern Pine lumber manufacturing facilities, offering ready availability to major markets.
Green Building Material
Southern Pine consists of four main species – longleaf, loblolly, shortleaf and slash. Southern Pine forests are some of the most productive and sustainable timberlands in the world, capturing large amounts of carbon from the air and storing it in lumber used every day. Southern Pine is grown and manufactured in the U.S. South, further improving local economies, reducing transportation costs and minimizing impacts on the environment.