How Many Trees Does it Take to Build a 2000 Square Foot Home and Other Amazing Facts

How many trees does it take to build a home? I had no idea that if you build a 2000 square foot home, it would require 26,700 board feet! This number just blew me away. One 20 inch, 42 foot long tree will produce about 260 board feet, a small fraction of what you would need to build one home. So if you are building this 2000 square foot home, it will take 102 trees.

This explains why you see these swaths of trees clear cut on the mountains around here when you take off on an airplane. Take a look the next time you take off from SeaTac. Many of these trees are going to be used to build homes all over the world.

A recent article in the Seattle Times talked about how much wood, concrete, glass, etc. it takes to build a standard home. It amazes me that we have not run out of natural materials thus far. It certainly puts building green way up there for consideration.