Posts Tagged ‘sustainable hardwood’

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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Posted in hardwood floor choices | 1 Comment »

Sustainability and the homefront

Monday, September 21st, 2009

I have to write this blog as a celebration more than anything. For those that have ever visited our website you may know that we are fans of sustainability from a bigger picture view. I am an avid fan of domestic wood species and local sourcing of material. Domestic species have less of a carbon footprint with regards to transport and they have a great dimensionality with regards to potential for appearances. In addition our domestic economy is strengthened from buying in our borders and as everyone knows right now we need that more than ever.

This is the latest news I received today from the National Wood Flooring Association:

“U.S. House Passes Pro-Hardwoods Resolution
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed Resolution 81, non-binding legislation that urges American hardwood products be “given full consideration in any program directed at constructing environmentally preferable commercial, public, or private buildings” because U.S. forests are a legal, abundant and sustainable resource. The resolution passed with unanimous support. Integral to the resolution passage was Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana. “We want to thank everyone who took the time to encourage their Member of Congress to support this resolution,” says the Hardwood Federation’s Deb Hawkinson. “The resolution needed 50 co-sponsors, and thanks to the industry’s efforts there were 52.”

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Posted in Hardwood floor Portland, portland hardwood professional, sustainability | No Comments »

Product expectations and sustainability

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

I was out for a run this morning and I saw a jobsite/retaining wall that looked like a hurricane had come through. In fact, it appeared that maybe the retaining wall was started and maybe the contractor was asked to leave possibly. It made me really think about how many projects, products, or services are partially or fully completed and then torn out for one of many possible reasons. Was the job oversold and under-delivered? Was the contractor’s experience not up to par with the requirements of the homeowner? I know few fellow contractors who would ante up for this one. Was there a good match of product performance with customer expectations?

Everyday I hear the words green and sustainable tossed around in an attempt to create customer buzz and sell a job. If the project was loaded with green and sustainable products, but had to be torn out and redone, this is in no way a sustainable process. I would urge readers of this blog who are contractors or retailers to consider that quality is a willingness to provide the best product and service ONE time for a price that provides a good living without compromising project fulfillment and product performance. In my eyes this is a vastly overlooked component of being a sustainable home services provider.

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Posted in Hardwood floor durability, sustainability | 1 Comment »

To salvage or not to salvage that is the question!

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

One of the latest rages in hardwood flooring materials is to use salvaged flooring materials. As you know we are all fans of the motto “reduce, reuse, recycle”. The word reuse is in play with salvaged materials and there are some things to consider when you reuse material that was already an existing floor.

Most hardwood floors have approximately 6-10 sandings available depending on the type of material and the aggressiveness of the sanding. Less dense hardwood floors such as old growth fir may be closer to six available sandings whereas a more dense material such as Brazilian cherry may be able to be sanded up to 10 times.

Keep in mind that every wood floor is connected to a subfloor, which is connected to the foundation of a home. While homes settle and shift over the years the hardwood floor follows suit. After a few sandings and a number of years your wood floors may be sanded to a thinner dimension in a hallway than in a bedroom, etc…

The salvaging process that we speak of is the removal and reassembly of an existing wood floor into a new area or home. When you remove and reassemble a floor that has been sanded multiple times, the true variances that are exascerbated by the settling process will be even greater. In reality when you reassemble a salvaged wood floor, there is an extreme amount of what we refer to as “over/under wood”. This greater amount of variance requires a greater amount of sanding in order to achieve a flat wood floor.

So what does all of this mean? If you install a salvaged wood floor in your home the consequences are good for the environment and possibly bad because you will need to pay more for the floor to be sanded because there is more effort to remove the necessary material to achieve a flat floor. A second consequence of the additional sanding efforts is that your floor will be closer to the end of its lifespan. This is especially important because with all of the interest in people requesting salvaged wood floors these days, after sanding I am seeing floors that literally have no more sandings available because there is virtually a paper thin wear layer remaining.

It is most important for me as an ethical wood flooring professional to advise you that salvaged wood floors have a lesser value for the life cycle of your project because of the greater reduction in wear layer. If you choose to use salvaged flooring, then I have two suggestions. The first suggestion is to either remill the flooring material or have flooring milled from dimensional lumber. The other suggestion is that if you choose to reuse salvaged flooring material without doing a remilling that you adhere to a very strict maintenance schedule of recoating the finish on your floor. This will greatly prolong the life of the wear layer of your floor and add more value to your efforts.

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Posted in Hardwood floor Portland, Portland fir floor, Uncategorized, hardwood floor, sustainability | 2 Comments »

Understanding Flooring Choices

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

This will serve as a quick refresher on bamboo as a flooring alternative. The material has taken place in many people’s minds as being the most green and renewable resource. I would urge everyone to take a closer look at the bigger picture for this material. The NWFA recently released a simple article about the basics of this material. For a copy of this article in PDF format, please click here. While bamboo seems to be a miracle flooring option, there are some unknowns you need to investigate when choosing a flooring company. Most bamboo used for flooring is produced in China and other countries where labor practices are questionable. Many overseas farms and factories have no guidelines for fair labor practices. There are no regulations in the United States as to where the bamboo originates. Also, in China there are no set government standards for bamboo flooring production and construction or for air quality standards. For these reasons, it’s possible that production of bamboo flooring produces toxic byproducts and expends large amounts of energy. Many bamboo floors exported from China contain high levels of urea formaldehyde that do not meet safety standards in other countries.

The U.S. forestry system has been sustainable long before the word caught fire with the recent trends of the green building movement. The reason is simply that the clear cutting of our forests without replanting would devastate the forestry industry as a whole because the jobs would have been lost long ago without sustainability in mind. In addition to being sustainable, domestic wood species have a distinct advantage for two reasons. The first reason is that buying flooring produced within the United States supports the nationwide economy rather than a competing economy. The second reason is that wood flooring produced locally has a lesser impact in terms of carbon footprint because the material requires less fuel to transport.

The point of my blog is to encourage those of you to look at the bigger picture when selecting a flooring material with regards to sustainability. If you are working with a retailer, then please make sure that they are a reputable retailer that cares for your floor well beyond when you leave the store with your new flooring material. In the next blog, I will address the properties that go into the quality and durability of your floor.

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Posted in hardwood floor choices | 2 Comments »

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