Why Wood?
Quality - esthetics - environment - well-being
Wood is nature's
own material. From forests we receive wood, a living material
which for centuries has held its rightful place as the preferred
building material. Wood is a lasting raw material...we will
always have wood.
Preferred by the environment
When you decide on wooden windows and doors from sustainable
foresty, you choose a solution which benefits the environment
at the same time. The amount of nitrogen stored inside wood,
is maintained throughout the entire life of a window or door.
Meanwhile new trees are reforested to further increase nitrogen
absorption. All in all a very important contribution towards
minimising the green house effect.
Comfort
Wooden windows and doors invite nature to your home - and
provide a pleasant and healthy indoor climate with space to
breathe and live. A natural product which will last for years
on end.
Life Cycle Assessment
LCA is a technique which assesses the environmental impacts
of a building component throughout its entire life. It is
becoming increasingly important to take into account origin,
application or conversion into a separate product and consequent
use in a building, right through to disposal or re-use/recycling
of a material, as more and more specifiers are required in
considering environmental impacts of selected products and
materials.
Energy use in extraction, production and transport to site
Energy used
in the extraction and production of a material or product
is called 'embodied energy'. Generally speaking, the higher
the embodied energy, the higher the CO2 emissions. Compared
with the high emissions and embodied energy of alternative
materials like steel, concrete, aluminium, and plastic, wood
has low embodied energy and thanks to the carbon sink effect
of the forest, negative C02. Even though materials such as
steel or aluminium are often recycled, the process requires
huge amounts of energy. By comparison, when the wood industry
requires energy, it is one of the highest users of biomass
power generation, often making a net contribution to national
grid networks. The environmental impact of transporting materials
to site is also taken into account in the LCA calculation.
The use of wood products encourages expansion of the forestry
industry, in turn increasing the carbon sink effect and reducing
C02 admission.
Every m3 of wood used instead of other building materials
prevents 0.8 tonne of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
UPVC, aluminium or timber?
The
production and disposal of UPVC windows leads to the release
of highly poisonous chemicals which threaten the environment
and human health. UPVC production involves no less than 6
of the 15 most hazardous chemicals listed by European governments
for priority elimination.
20-25 times more energy is used producing an aluminium window
than a wooden window and even more when it is recycled.
Wood sourced from properly managed forests is a sustainable
resource. With the development in design of wooden windows
as well as finishing treatments, modern, high performance
wooden windows require minimal maintenance and have a significantly
longer life than UPVC. Life expectancy of a UPVC window is
20-25 years compared to 60-120 years from a high-quality wooden
window.
Despite common belief, UPVC windows do degrade, they are
not maintenance free and worst of all - they cannot be repaired
if needed.
Sources: European Commissions DG Enterprise
2003, Greenpeace, Wood for Good.
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