One product that is great for green building and is not new by any means is Reclaimed Wood. Many reclaimed products are showing up in some very prominent new green projects. Reclaimed wood is a form of recycling but with amazing beauty. Old aged wood products take on a very different look than new wood products. Many of the reclaimed products came from old growth forests that you just don’t see today.
Depending on what the wood was used for prior, gives the wood some unique character. Take an old pickling tank that has had vinegar in it for the last 50 to 100 years. You will not find wood with this character anywhere but from a company that has reclaimed pickling vats.
Reclaimed Wood is used to produce products like siding, flooring, timber beams, doors, trim and about any visual wood product you can think of can come from reclaimed wood. Certification programs usually award points for choosing reclaimed wood or recycled-content products. But there is even more, reclaimed wood will always have a story behind the product.
Buildings that once where a community hot spot may be too old to keep up and must be torn down, this is the source for the reclaimed wood. The products in this building can be reclaimed and used again in a new project depending on the application. These are great stories that can be told over and over. People love to talk about the past and rekindle past memories. "Hey remember the old warehouse on 33rd we use to play in as kids? They have torn that building down and now the wood is being used as the flooring in the new city library". These stories are being told across the country. Bill Gates mansion build many years ago used thousands of board feet of reclaimed wood. Many new city and government building being built as a LEED certified projects are using reclaimed wood is some aspect of the process.
Reclaimed wood comes from some very common place along with some unthought-of places. The most common place reclaimed wood is found is old buildings and barns. But the uncommon products come from old railroad box car bottoms, pickling vats, whiskey vats, wine vats, mushroom boxes, railroad ties, bridges, trestles, snow fences or even old log cabins.
One company that fits the niche of reclaimed wood and does not use the green issues to help promote their products is a company founded in Utah called Trestlewood®. Trestlewood®’s primary objective is to provide its customers with unique, high-quality, competitively-priced wood product options. Trestlewood® was founded and gained its name when a contract was formed to remove the railroad trestle from the Lucin Cutoff in the Great Salt Lake. This is an incredible story of US history and just as incredible salvage project. Read more here trestlewood.com/story.jsp. After the salvage of the railroad trestle, Trestlewood® continued to look for more salvage projects to help diversify and grow their product mix. Wood pickling or whiskey vats, grain silos, barns and even wooden boxes built to grow mushrooms have become reclaimed products in Trestlewood®s inventory.
If you are looking to start a new construction project and you want to go green or just want to have some unique character to your project think reclaimed wood. You will have a story to tell for years to come.
