In building and refurbishing houses, many people are opting to source reclaimed timber. It has become somewhat of a fashion as it helps a house look aged and ‘lived in’ and as such comes with the price tag to match.
Due to our high demand for timber these days, modern supplies are quick grown and thus of a lower quality. Reclaimed timber is often of exceptional quality and far more resilient, it will also match existing timber in older houses.
There is an obvious advantage to the environment by using reclaimed timber, firstly is the reduction in the need for cutting down trees but it will also reduce the volume of timber that gets discarded, burned or wasted. It also reduced the costs of logging, sawing, kiln drying and transporting new timber, the cost to the environment of this is far more than the cost of cutting a tree down in the first place.
It is very easy to cut the cost of construction using reclaimed materials, by sourcing it locally you will save on transport costs and it should be much cheaper than new timber. Although it can sometimes be the opposite as many people will seek out particular breeds and qualities of wood that are aged the way they want and possibly reclaimed from somewhere important which can often cost much more than regular timber.
Every year an area of primary forest land the size of Ireland, approximately 60,000 square kilometres, is being cut down for the timber trade. This does not account for illegal logging which occurs in many countries but has no way of being measured. This equates to roughly 3 – 6 billion trees each year.
Roughly 25% of this is used for construction or in forms which it can later be reclaimed, a figure which used to be much greater. This means there is a substantial amount of lumber out there that could potentially be recycled rather than disposed of.
Many timber suppliers deal in reclaimed wood but some argue that it’s trade is damaging the modern hardwood timber suppliers industry.