High winds can cause major damage to homes, often starting at the roof. Learn why retrofit roof-to-wall connections matter, how they can reduce damage and how homeowners may qualify for residential property insurance premium discounts.
Hear from Dan Hesington, branch engineer at our office in McKinney, Texas, as he shares his experience at StickBuilt ‘25 — a hands-on, design-build event with considerations of sustainability and mass timber. Hosted in the woods outside Birmingham, Alabama, the event offered a unique opportunity to connect with current and future architects and explore innovative uses of wood with Simpson Strong-Tie fasteners and connectors.
Over the last decade — in outlets reaching from construction industry journals to the Boston Globe and the Economist; from CNN and Fast Company to Popular Mechanics; to Nautilus and TED talks — we’ve been hearing increasingly about mass timber and related phenomena: “CLT,” big wood, tall wood, tall timber, timber towers, ply-rises, plyscrapers, ply in the sky, super-ply, Brobdingnagian boards, and all manner of engineered arboreal futures.
One of the ways many homeowners increase the enjoyment (and monetary) value of their property is by adding a well-designed deck, pergola or other outdoor structure to their backyard. Whether it’s for entertaining or just chilling with a good read and a bracing beverage, a beautiful outdoor living space makes any backyard activity more desirable. Perhaps that’s why, in a 2017 survey, 25% of National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) remodelers reported adding a deck as one of their most common projects, and the figure was nearly identical for new home construction.
