Reclaimed wood flooring is becoming a major consumer choice in historic home renovations, new construction, and commercial buildings. As the green movement gains momentum, reclaimed wood becomes the go-to building material for the eco-conscious builder. Wood floors are the best choice for the environment for several reasons.
- Manufacturing is cleaner. Steel products emit 24 times more harmful chemicals than the manufacture of wood products. Concrete loses a large amount of carbon dioxide.
- Wood requires less energy to manufacture. Brick requires four times more energy, concrete six times, and steel 40 times more energy to make than wood.
- Wood actually conserves energy. It takes 15″ of concrete to match the insulating qualities of just one inch of wood.
Wood certification is a growing trend. Regulations on the logging of harvested species began in the 1980s and led to plantations of teak trees and various species of mahogany timber. Another result was the start of forest certification in Europe. Today almost 10% of the world’s forests are certified as sustainable; 39% in North America, 54% in Europe, but only 8% in the rest of the world.
The problem is that most of the certified forests are in the boreal forest regions where we are already managing the forests in the long term, and not in the tropical forests. There is good news in a study published by the Lincoln National Academy of Sciences founded in 1863, using satellite data to scientifically prove where deforestation is occurring. Previously, the data was self-reported by countries to the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, which made the data suspect. Now it is possible for developed countries to work together with factual data to help underdeveloped areas.
reclaimed wood is recycling.
Logs recovered from the river were once lost and presumed gone forever…waiting perfectly preserved. Warehouse beams from the industrial revolution are another good source. Existing hardwood floors have a long life and can often be reused. Many old flats are in 18th or 19th century houses and are still walked around every day. They offer a huge variety of designs and the look of an old floor can be completely transformed with stains, faux finishes and inlays.
Health and happiness
Wood floors are the healthy option. They require fewer chemicals to clean than other floor coverings and won’t trap dust, smoke, or mold in the fibers or grout. Wood is a good flooring option for anyone with allergies. Depending on the subfloor or subfloor, a hardwood floor may be better for your spine and joints. The wood yields a little and is more comfortable for the legs and feet, more or less depending on the type of installation.
As ‘green’ construction has become more prominent, more products are available with environmentally certified ‘green’ faces and backs. International currencies make it much less expensive to ship lumber from the United States to China to be turned into flooring and then ship back to the United States. Not all of these products may use NAF or ‘no formaldehyde added’ glues. When the author of Idiots Guide to Green Living tested her engineered wood floor for formaldehyde, it read 23 to 51 ppm compared to 1 that was set in the 1960s in Swedish and various other studies as the level higher insurance. The California Air Regulatory Board has now adopted that standard for composite lumber. Look for a product with certified formaldehyde emissions from glues and backings.
Reclaimed Wood Manufacturing
Reclaimed wood flooring, made without cutting down trees, is a niche industry and is often made by small businesses like the one shown in the slides. Reclaimed woods generally require more labor and craftsmanship. There may be 100 or more nails in an old stud, all of which must be carefully located and removed. Wood must be carefully sawn to isolate defects in a log or beam that may have been growing for several hundred years. It takes more time to produce the highest quality wood while keeping waste to a minimum. Wood should be air dried to thickness and carefully kiln dried to establish a moisture content baseline for proper acclimation to the expected average RH and temperature of the building. Reclaimed lumber is often graded multiple times at the sawmill, after kiln drying, after milling, and finally during packaging to ensure you receive the grade you requested.
Engineered wood flooring uses a smaller amount of high-quality or rare wood for the face. Some of the worst engineered flooring contains smaller pieces that are not suitable for use on solid flooring, resulting in a fragmented appearance. However, a well-made engineered floor can be produced from full-size boards and maintain the same aesthetically pleasing appearance and average length as the solid.
A wear layer in engineered wood comparable to a solid wood floor can be achieved by using a precision “framing” saw rather than slicing or stripping the faces; however, a thicker wear course requires even more attention to profile detail or balance of milling. An example is the location of the tongue and groove; placing them too high on a plywood-backed product or not using the same plywood on the bottom of a balanced construction when using a thicker wear layer increases the risk that the floor will not lie flat.
diversity available
Reclaimed woods are full of history. All antebellum plantations built along the Mississippi in the early 1800’s were made entirely of old heart cypress and are still walked today. Settler cabins in the South, Victorian mansions on the East Coast, and hotels and palaces across Europe were built from the once vast ancient ecosystem of Heart Pine. Then Redwood and Doug Fir supported the expansion of the country as people moved west.
There is a tremendous diversity available including: Oak, Beech, Cedar, Cherry, Chestnut, Doug Fir, Maple, Redwood, Heart Cypress, Hemlock, Poplar, Fir, Hickory, and White Pine among other species. To ensure you receive reclaimed wood, ask for documentation of the source and the approximate age of the tree when the wood was harvested. Age may be the most important factor, particularly in old reclaimed wood, and can usually be determined by growth rings in the heartwood.
Grades, grain patterns, and aged milling options often set reclaimed woods apart, and especially old ones. It requires larger logs or beams and wastes some wood to make vertical grain with only striped grain patterns. Plain-sawn lumber is much more widely available and has arches and much more movement in the grain pattern and has a less formal appearance.
Grades can range from very characterful with cracks, cracks and various marks to medium grades to select for clean and in between. Be sure to ask for details about grades, including: grain pattern, heartwood content, maximum knot size and approximate number per 100 square feet, growth rings per inch on average, degree of color variation, nail and bolt holes and how many to expect per 100 square feet, available widths, and any other features the manufacturer feels are important to share.
Scuff marks include saw cuts that are artificially introduced today (circular saws waste much more wood and have been all but abandoned in developed countries). Wire brushes can be used to emphasize earlywood and latewood differentiation and introduce a pronounced raised grain pattern. “Hand scraping” is most often done on a shaper with specially scalloped blades, and often gives a repeating pattern appearance in more commercially available flooring. Actual hand scaling can be done on site as it was done 100 years ago for a more natural appearance. Many scraping patterns are available from deeply scalloped to a ‘foot wear’ look.
So build green and build beautiful with reclaimed wood.