Comment by quickthrowman
5 hours ago
There is zero wood in a data center (or commercial building in general) excluding doors, millwork, and fire-rated plywood for mounting equipment on. It’s simply not allowed.
Data center are tip-up warehouses with walls made of reinforced concrete, metal bar joists, metal columns, and metal roofs. Any interior wall framing is made of steel.
I don't know anything about this so I am curious: that doesn't sound like a lot of wood work so why are the AI companies recruiting so many carpenters?
The forms needed to pour concrete is my guess.
Steel stud framing is done by carpenters, any interior partition wall framing is done by carpenters. Also any soffits, front for gypsum ceiling clouds in offices, etc will be framed by carpenters. Maybe Meta has them install doors as well?
So there is wood.
Zero wood except all the things that are made of wood, got it.
All of that stuff is probably 0.01% of the building, by volume/weight/cost/labor or any metric you care to choose. The structure itself has zero wood in it.
Trim, cabinets, and doors can all be removed from a building and it will remain standing. If you remove all of the wood from a stick-built house there is virtually nothing left.