FSC Certified White Oak Hardwood Flooring

FreeGreen Green Home Project: Needham, MA

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Posted August 6, 2009 08:54 by Robert

Tags: white oak, hardwood flooring, fsc, fsc flooring

We are excited to be using FSC Certified Hardwood Flooring throughout the house. Our friend Jack at Sterrit Lumber introduced to a great supplier, Allegheny Mountain Hardwood Flooring. Allegheny is part of Hickman Woods, a family business whose commitment to sustainable forestry began before the popularity of “green” and before Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification even existed. We chose Allegheny’s 3” Clear Rift & Quarter Sawn White Oak for the first floor and the 3” Clear Plain Sawn White Oak for the second floor. If you want to learn more the advantage of Rift and Quartered, Click Here. As promised, the wood is beautiful and the grain is very uniform. The installers have even commented on the quality and said that it has made the installation go much quicker.

I have mentioned this in several posts, but when you are considering newer products to be used throughout your home without a proven “installed” track record, you are taking a big risk. The faults with most new products are usually discovered years down the road. Bamboo is a case in point. It gets a lot of attention as a “green” choice for flooring because it is harvested in a much shorter time period than oak. However, Bamboo comes in small strands which are compressed together with glue to create a plank, if you look at a cross section you can see all the individual strands. The glue used in this process may be a source of VOC’s or it may be a Low-VOC product without much “real world” experience. I have heard quite a few horror stories about bamboo floors delaminating after a few years. One prominent local distributor told me he would not use it in his own home.

Overall, we felt that going with oak flooring was a much better bet and in the end would be more likely to stand the test of time. My parents have a 100+ year old house with the same hardwood floors. We were really impressed with the Allegheny Mountain story and the quality of their product. The company also strives to utilize 100% of each tree that is harvested. The bark is sold as mulch, the chips are sold to paper manufactures, and the sawdust is burned for energy to dry the lumber. The low grade lumber is also manufactured into highly popular live sawn and natural grade flooring