Element5 at the Forefront of a Revolutionary New Way of Building

A feature article in the London Free Press on Monday (3-14-22) highlights a St. Thomas, Ontario manufacturer at the forefront of what is becoming a revolutionary new way of building. The company is Element5.

Element5 manufactures wood beams and panels used in building construction. The company designs and cuts panels that become walls and ceilings. They are flat-packed and shipped to a construction site where they are assembled to make a building, all from wood.

Speaking about the products, Sarah Hicks, manager of marketing and communications at Element5 said, “This is good for the planet, and we need to radically change how we build buildings. Mass timber is a way we can do that. Wood is sustainable, renewable, and steel and concrete are not.”

Element5’s building technique is “cost competitive” with steel and concrete and much faster to build, she said. When it landed a deal to build the new YWCA in Kitchener, the material was on site in six months and the building was up in 20 days, Hicks said. It also has built a new Indigenous family center on Hill Street in London, called Nshwaasnangong Child Care and Family Centre, operated by the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre.

“The technology available to create prefab panels has evolved and we have adopted that technology. Pre-manufacturing solutions are faster, safe and the results are precise,” Hicks said. Element5 uses mostly two-by-six sections of spruce, pine, and fir. It laminates together sections as large as 16 meters long, 3.5 meters wide and 40 centimeters thick, she said. “We make panels and cut out everything. We design all the openings for connections required for electrical or plumbing down to the last screw hole. The panels are cut out to be a perfect fit, flat packed and shipped,” Hicks said.

Carol Phillips, an architect with Toronto firm Moriyama & Teshima Architects, knows Element5 well, having designed three mass timber buildings. She is in the process of designing two more. “It’s remarkable, it’s influencing my practice and how I work,” Phillips said. “It’s rooted in low carbon and renewable energy. We’re the gatekeepers to reduce carbon emissions in the industry.” The construction industry contributes about 40 percent of all global CO2 emissions and steel and concrete, about five per cent each of that total. Mass timber can reduce that total, Phillips said. “The amount of carbon involved in mass timber is so greatly reduced from traditional materials like steel and concrete,” she said, and it’s also beautiful.