HOT READ
Building Materials Market News & Updates

Thursday, March 24th
Welcome to the Hamilton Hot Read, your regular source for lumber and building materials market news and updates. In this newsletter, you will find quick and informative takes on the building materials market and how Hamilton Building Supply is responding to assist with your ongoing projects. We hope you find this information useful and we encourage you to give us feedback as we develop this newsletter!

-Hamilton Team
Engineered Wood Products - The Saga
Engineered wood floor joists are making a run for the Most Difficult Product To Source award in 2022. What we've experienced over the past 18 months was an aggressive run up in price (+50%), extended lead times from the EWP mills, very little inventory at distribution centers and worse, inventory allocation from all suppliers to their dealers.

Why so hard to get floor joists? Mostly has to do with the OSB webbing that sits between the two flanges. Due to demand, OSB mills have favored producing the more profitable 4x8 sheets over the long and narrow OSB webs. 4x8 OSB sheets are like lumber gold - they're easy to bundle up into units, fill out tractor trailers and train cars efficiently and ship all over the country. OSB webs have taken a backseat to sheetgoods.

As a result, it is now more expensive and is taking a lot longer to produce floor joists. EWP distributors have put dealers across the country on allocation to ensure every dealer gets a fair shot at some material. Every dealer (like yours truly) is only allowed to buy so many floor joists each month before we're cut off.

Builder customers have felt the heat and the supply chain difficulty has slowed projects down and forced some builders to use different brands of floor joists on their projects.
Engineered Wood Products - The Solution
Because we can't wait weeks between running our first and second floors when building a house and because using different types of floor joists is highly frowned upon by your local code official, Hamilton has a solution.

Open Web Floor Trusses is your best solution for an alternative floor joist. Work with your Architect and Structural Engineer to design them into your next project. Right now, floor trusses are everything that EWP joists are not. There are no allocation issues, they're shipping with consistent lead times and you can run your mechanicals through the truss.

Alternatively, if you have to go with typical EWP joists, be prepared to face some delays between framing your first and second floor joist systems. We're seeing instances of second floor packages getting delivered 3-4 weeks after the first floor.

The EWP floor joist situation has been incredibly difficult to work through and what we're hearing is that the supply situation involving OSB isn't getting better anytime soon. Protect yourself and your projects and talk to us about alternative solutions.
NEW at Hamilton
Check out our NEW WEBSITE! Features Include:


New Product - Ram Board Pro Sheets. Ram Board Pro Sheets come in 4 x 8 dimensions and are great for protecting floors, counter tops and odd spaces that make rolls difficult to work with.
Delivery
Remember, delivery is ALWAYS FREE at Hamilton Building Supply, as long as you are an HBS SELECT member. Not an HBS SELECT member? No worries, you can join for $299 for the year. In addition, you'll get FREE RETURNS and a PURCHASE REBATE.

Do you have any unused pallets or crates on your jobsite? If so, don't waste your dumpster space - we'll come and pick them up from you for free! We use crates and pallets regularly for shipping material and like everything else these days, pallets are in short supply. Let your sales associate know that you have pallets or crates on site and we'll scoop them up from you.
Windows & Doors
Spring has arrived, the weather is turning and we're waiting for that last rogue snowstorm to come and go. With every spring comes an opportunity to rid our warehouse of all the mistaken and mis-ordered products we've accumulated over the years.

This April we'll have a bunch of windows and doors available for sale at blowout prices. In these times where window and door products are excruciatingly long to get, you can pick yourself up some diamonds in the rough. Be sure to stop by our warehouse this April to see the window and door products we will have for sale at deeply discounted prices.
Cabinetry
There's been added cost pressure lately on cabinetry production and some vendors are sending out price increase notices. Mouser Cabinetry announced a 5%-7% price increase and they're adding a 1.5% freight fuel surcharge on all orders.

We should anticipate other cabinetry manufacturers to follow suit. Building cabinets is very labor intensive and requires a lot of skilled people to do the job. Wage pressure, heavy demand and rising fuel costs are all contributing factors to the recent price increases.
Trim & Siding
Raw material inputs for PVC resin are rising with fuel and transportation costs, so naturally price increases are trickling through on PVC trim and composite sidings. Wolf Portrait announced a 17% price increase effective on April 1 (no fooling). We expect other trim board manufacturers to announce increases as well.

DURATION Siding has NOT announced any recent price increases and doesn't plan to at this point. They did announce a new product though - BEVELED SIDING STARTER STRIP, which easily sets the first full course of DURATION beveled sidings. The strip measures 1/4” at the butt end by 3” overall and works on both the 7/16” and 5/8” material. Save time and money with this new installation aid.
Like what you read? Want to read it again? You can read all of our past Hot Reads on our website at the Hot Read Archive
Our Vision
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"To be an equitable partner with our customers by providing unique and value-added building material solutions, supported by a dedicated team that always seeks positive experiences."

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Hamilton Building Supply | www.hbsnj.com