Posts Tagged ‘hardwood choices for the wise consumer’

Who is working on your project?

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Sometimes consumers will walk into a retail store such as Home Depot and order up a bunch of flooring and labor and assume everything is good to go. The biggest thing people are missing is that ALL of the labor that retailers use is entirely subcontracted from that point onward. This is where most communication breakdowns happen particularly regarding a site finished wood floor. Let’s look at why.

Most retailers have only ever sold flooring.  I have rarely encountered a retailer where the sales staff has ever sanded a significant number of floors. They rely on the people to whom they are subcontracting the labor to maintain a high standard. Any problems that arise with the floor at that point are being handled by the subcontractor and not the retailer. It’s like passing the buck and it puts relations at a tricky point.

The best way to purchase a site-finished hardwood floor is to hire a reputable wood flooring professional. Go to the National Wood Flooring Association website and evaluate from there who fits your needs.  All wood flooring contractors who specialize in site finished wood floors have access to wholesale distribution showrooms with equal or greater selection than most retailers. In fact, a lot of retailers purchase products from the same wholesale distributors as the contractor.  The contractor can handle all materials and labor and reduce or eliminate any mis-communication liabilities if they are more closely involved in the process from the beginning.

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FSC versus true sustainability

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification is a hot ticket item right now. It’s a pretty sweet concept regarding what it has done for educating countries globally about proper forestry. The essence of FSC relies in “chain of custody”, which in flooring basically means the people have are able to know exactly what tree in a specific forest created the boards in the floor. They can track where the wood was warehoused, etc… The process provides a real accountability for the logging industry in countries that used to clear cut and sell cheap flooring.

Let’s look closer at this though and look at the flipside.

1) The record keeping and data load from such a process is quite intense. It creates a demand for electronics and e-waste is  one of our biggest global threats.

2) Warehouses that distribute FSC certified material have to house the material in a separate location from non-certified material, thus increasing the footprint of commercial spaces in our community. Yet, we’re all complaining America is running out of farmland.

3) The FSC does regular site audits (by third parties) of all points within a chain of custody, thus requiring fossil fuels to be burned in order to get an auditor to and from the site.

Wanna read more about the other side of FSC then go here.

Sustainability is truly independent of standards set by a well marketed non-profit. It relies more on the measure of local economics, carbon footprint, and life-cycle analysis of a product or process. Flooring products from foreign countries that abide by arbitrarily governed associations don’t put money into the pockets of our domestic population and they require additional fossil fuel expenditure to transport. That’s why LEED gets it right because they give scores to building projects based a series of qualifications, some of which factor the origination point of building materials to the project location.

Ask any scientist and they will tell you that the proving or dis-proving of a hypothesis is given significant weight when you bring together multiple lines of evidence in the experimental data. I am not suggesting FSC is an evil entity by any means. On  the contrary they have done great things for education of forest management for countries with little to no understanding of these principles. I am suggesting that  granting the term “green” or “sustainable” to a product because it carries  the FSC label is simply a politically correct form of greenwashing that adds additional cost to products if you do not consider other factors, particularly life cycle analysis and local economic benefits.

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Beware of the boutique

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Recently our shop was approached by a  “boutique” wholesaler to subcontract installations and sanding. It sounded like an interesting way to grow our business possibly. I had my reservations based on conversations with other remodeling colleagues who previously used this group. Specifically I was concerned that they were unwilling to pay a fair market rate for top notch contracting because of the types of installers they typically use. A brief conversation with the outfit quickly verified that my intuition was correct. The rates that they were willing to pay to installers were about 60% of the going rate for the best full service hardwood flooring contractors in town.

Normally I don’t want to discuss price, but it is valid in this case. I know that quality service requires time and very careful effort. The mathematics of a service business require that to lower price you must lower service unless material costs are lowered.

What I urge consumers to do and always will is to specifically work with reputable small retailers with great experience. Flashy “high-end” boutique retailers pay considerable overhead in rent for facilities and staffing. To stay competitive they must create downward pricing pressure on subcontracted labor, which invariably results in mediocre work.

In these days of the internet research I advise consumers to really investigate service providing retailers before making an “impulse” buy with your hardwood floor. Stay informed with resources such as the NWFA.

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