Carpenters? Are we making the data centers out of wood?

Carpentry tends to span beyond direct woodworking. Installing Drywall over steel studs is one example that might apply to DC construction.

>Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpentry

I'm not sure carpenters do drywall, that's usually a specialized crew. But they might do the framing/assembly of the steel studs. And hanging doors, fitting the raised flooring, installing shelving/cabinets, etc.

There is frequently wood in buildings yes

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.

Homes, not these buildings. Wood's a liability when it comes to fire suppression.

> Homes, not these buildings.

I would bet that there is a ton of wood in these buildings that they are hiring thousands of carpenters for. They are not hiring carpenters to entertain the electricians.

Everything I'm finding is showing the opposite with the exception of Microsoft experimenting with timber datacenters. Just looking at photos of DCs under construction shows they're all steel and concrete.

My grandpa was a card-carrying union carpenter. But all I remember is him doing general labor... all the actual carpentry jobs were gone before I was born, and I hit the half-century mark myself a few years ago. He worked with concrete and steel alot. I'd seen him put up cinder block too, picked that up somewhere I guess. And this was in the 1980s.

I'd take your bet, while trying to hustle you to raise the wager.

Not usually, but the same standard framing and drywall techniques work using the more modern steel stud systems. Here are a few that came up at the top of a DDG search you can peruse to update yourself.

https://studcosystems.com/

https://www.clarkdietrich.com/products/structural-studs

https://www.steelconsystems.com/