Solid wood floors are made of planks milled from a single piece of wood. Solid wood floors were originally used for structural purposes, and were installed perpendicular to the wooden support beams of a building known as joists or supports. So you know that hardwood flooring wood can come from different tree species, both domestic and exotic. But have you ever wondered where those trees come from, how they are grown and harvested, or, say, how many trees it takes to make a hardwood floor? Well, keep reading and find out how your soil was born.
Where do flooring trees grow? There are more than 20 species of trees that grow in the United States that provide excellent wood for floors. Most of them grow in the eastern part of the country (hardwoods tend to be broadleaf deciduous rather than West Coast point leaf evergreens). More than half of the hardwood harvested in the country is oak, which grows from New England to the Midwest. It also imports some “exotic” hardwood such as mahogany, rosewood, teak and wenge, which normally grow in more tropical regions such as Brazil and Indonesia.
However, we also receive a good amount of wood from Canada, including the maple they are so proud of (rightly so). How many trees do you need to make a wooden floor? Well, the number of trees you need will, of course, depend on the size of the floor you are making and the size of the trees the wood comes from, among other factors. However, to give you an idea, consider the floor installed in the AT&T stadium for the recently concluded NCAA Final Four men's basketball tournament. That floor, about 9,800 square feet of solid maple (70 feet x 140 feet, almost twice the size of a normal basketball court), has been widely published, requiring about 30 mature trees, although the size of the trees was not specified at harvest time.
As you approach home, one might expect to get from a tree about 18 inches in diameter with about 10 feet of trunk that can be milled something close to 100 square feet of floor, depending on the quality of the wood once it has been milled. If adding up the numbers above makes you run for bamboo or cork, wait a moment and consider the following. Over the past century, nearly every lumber manufacturer in the United States has found ways to harvest and replant that allow forests to replenish themselves at an even faster rate than they are sacrificing. After all, for people working in the timber and timber industries, nothing would hurt them more than seeing the end of the forest, which is the source of their livelihood.
In the US, annual net growth of hardwoods today is significantly higher than average annual demand. In fact, even though most hardwoods take 40-60 years to mature, trees that grow in forests that are used today for felling will probably not be needed for another 100 years. So, even though there seem to be a lot of trees, remember that trees are one of the most renewable resources out there. They don't require energy-consuming industrial production or even significant irrigation, and the carbon they trap as they grow remains trapped, even after it has been transformed into cabinets, furniture, floors, and works of art.
Are there rules about what trees can be used? There is certainly. Most people in the timber industry understand the importance of reforestation. For them, the fullness of the forest is not only an environmental issue, but also an economic concern. It is doubly important for those involved in the production and distribution of sawn timber that forests remain in good health.
Although opinions about how wood should be harvested vary widely, most wood in the U.S. UU. It originates from forests that are carefully managed in one way or another. There are also a number of organizations that exist specifically to ensure that trees have been harvested safely for forest, loggers and wood quality.
As for exotic woods, it's illegal in the U.S. Importing wood products that have been illegally harvested abroad. Although those governments are, of course, left to determine the laws related to logging in their countries, exotic hardwood floors now increasingly come from tree plantations or areas specifically designated for harvesting that, in most cases, are well managed for forest health. So what about the parts of the tree that can't be used as wood? In fact, this is one of the most interesting parts of the timber industry.
Throughout the entire process of milling and cutting wood for wood, every extra piece is used for something. Decent sized bits not suitable for wood are shipped to manufacturers of furniture and other things that require smaller, less uniform parts. Bark and shavings are sent for use as paper or mulch, or, together with sawdust, used to heat and sometimes even feed the mill. At MacDonald Hardwoods, we take care to ensure that our hardwood floors come from responsible manufacturers, people we trust to provide the highest quality product in an ethical and sustainable way.
With hardwood, you can be sure that your soil and forest will exist for a long time in the future. I can't say enough about MacDonald Hardwoods. We faced several challenges with our 1,400 square foot project, yet the installation began on the day we scheduled and was completed ahead of schedule. Bruce and Scott were extremely professional and insightful with their suggestions for hardwood floors for our second floor, measured and estimated in one day, and construction scheduled for the next.
Brent, who handled all the starting, labor and installation of the carpet, was thorough,. We had already picked hardwood from another retail market, but worried that they couldn't deliver on time. So we went to MacDonald Hardwood and couldn't be more satisfied. They were much more informed about our needs and.
Totally satisfied with the quality, craftsmanship and attention to detail provided by MacDonald Hardwoods. Our project couldn't have gone better. Communication and planning were top notch, as was the execution. Our installer Ben was exceptional and made sure.
We recently completed a kitchen renovation and needed floors throughout the main level. We went to several flat sites across the front before finding MacDonald Hardwoods. As soon as we entered, we saw the ground we were looking for. I needed a few linear feet of replacement oak flooring.
I stopped on a whim, because I didn't want to buy a whole box (which is what most sites wanted me to do). The Macdonald Hardwoods team is fantastic. We thought we knew what we were looking for, but after a few questions from Scott, we ended up with the right high quality floor that was ideal for our application. The species is a way of classifying solid wood.
Softwood comes from coniferous trees such as pine, while hardwood comes from deciduous trees such as oak. Species can be domestic, such as oak, walnut, walnut, maple and cherry; or imported, such as jatoba, cumaru, ipe and acacia. The marrow, in the center of the tree, is the original stem. Heartwood is the oldest, inactive, non-functioning wood in the center of the tree, which surrounds the bone marrow.
Heartwood is darker and denser than sapwood. The four to 20 outer rings of the tree are sapwood. The sapwood of a tree is living material and is light in color. Between the bark and the wood is the layer of cambrio.
This layer is responsible for the growth diameter of a tree. It is also the layer that responds to external damage by developing callus tissue to repair, for example, cuts in the tree. The outermost layer of the tree is the bark. Protect the tree from the environment.
The outer layer of the bark is dead, while the living inner layer of the bark transports nutrients throughout the tree. Tree Anatomy Image from NWFA University's “Basic Tree Anatomy” Online Course. The annual rings of a tree are composed of large pores that carry water to the leaves. Each annual ring acts like a vertical cylinder.
The medullary ray cells run perpendicular to the annual rings, carrying sap and delivering nutrients to the inner layers of the tree. If you look at the stump of a tree or a cut end of a tree, you will see medullary rays, or medullary rays, such as light-colored ribbons that seem to radiate from the center of the tree. These lines create some of the visual appeal seen on partially sawn hardwood floors. The cut of quartered wood exposes the rays as an added character on a floor.
Early wood, or spring wood, forms in the spring of each year. Late wood, or autumnal wood, forms during the winter. It is denser and occurs when the tree goes into a state of seasonal inactivity. Late wood creates darker grain in hardwood floors.
Light and dark variations in the grain of a hardwood floor show the seasonal patterns of early and late wood. They are trees with needles that stay green all year round. Examples of softwood trees are pine, Douglas fir, and cedar. Hardwoods come from broadleaf deciduous trees.
Hardwood trees lose their leaves annually. Examples of hardwood trees are oak, maple, ash and cherry. Janka Hardness Information from the National Hardwood Flooring Association Technical Manual. Hardwood floors produced from trees grown in North America are the most common of these seven species.
There are many subspecies of oak, but the most widely cultivated and used in North America are red oak and white oak. Red oak has a pink to reddish brown color and has a more open grain pattern. White oak has a light brown appearance and has longer, more noticeable rays in its grain. Red and white oaks take 40 years to reach maturity ready to cut.
But oaks in the U.S. They are usually not cut until they reach 60 years of age. This creates surplus inventory that protects the forest. There are almost 150 subspecies of maple.
Light-colored maple wood with a closed grain pattern. It is a common wood used in residential floors and gym floors. This species has a light to dark red-brown color. It appears with a fine, uniform grain that makes it useful for hardwood floors, furniture and musical instruments.
Walnut color is much darker, from dark brown to purplish black. Walnut shows a straight, open-grain pattern that can also have a curly, curly character. Antique hard pine and southern yellow pine are used for flooring. Antique pine is darker and has a denser grain.
Southern yellow has a closed grain with a high level of character, including knots. Use the search bar at the top of this website to find hardwood floors by species. It's natural and continuous, even after cutting down the tree. The difference is the “weight of water”, so to speak.
The moisture content absorption and release of hardwood floors varies depending on how the wood was cut. As humidity increases, the floorboards swell and expand in. And vice versa, since moisture is lost in a drier environment. How much the hardwood floor expands and contracts, how reactive it is to changes in temperature and humidity in its environment, is known as stability.
The higher the degree of stability in a hardwood floor, the less it will react to those environmental changes as it contracts or expands. Sawmill and flooring manufacturers use air and kiln drying processes to reduce the moisture content of wood and prepare it for use. The moisture content of wooden floors must reach and be maintained at a certain level before and after installation. The level of moisture content a soil needs depends on the environment in which it is located.
We talked about the effect of geographic location, humidity, and temperature on hardwood floors in our “Acclimatization for Hardwood Floors” and “Moisture Matters” posts on this blog. What it takes for hardwood floors to succeed in Colorado is different than what is needed in the humid Pacific Northwest or Florida. Most domestic hardwood floors come from trees harvested in the eastern half of the United States. The Department of Agriculture now has more trees in North America than in the 1950s, with 730 million acres of forest in the U.S.
Eastern hardwood forests are professionally managed and grow more trees than the number being harvested. Limitations are established for harvesting old forests and endangered species. Because of the longevity of hardwood as a flooring material, which can last more than 100 years in a home if maintained, hardwood floors are considered an environmentally responsible option for flooring. Join Palo Duro on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Houzz.
Engineered or Solid Wood Floors Advantages of UV Finishes for Wood Floors EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIESPRIVACY POLICY. When imagining historic interiors, many imagine rooms equipped with extensions of shimmering wooden floors adorned with oriental rugs. This perception of the past is only partially accurate. In truth, polished wooden floors (and room-sized oriental rugs) weren't common until the late 19th century.
Before that time, wood was in fact the predominant material used in floors, but its appearance was much more humble than one would expect. The most common wood species used to make a solid wood floor is oak. Oak is used because of its wear-resistant properties and its high supply abundance. It has been common in the construction industry for centuries and has stood the test of time.
Everyone seems to love them, but what makes hardwood floors so special? Hardwood floors come in a wide variety, from the type of wood used to the way the wood is cut to the way the wood is assembled. Both Tommy and Jeffrey confirm that old reclaimed wood is more expensive than other hardwood flooring options. For finished solid wood floors, a clear or colored lacquer or oil is applied to produce the final product, adding additional protection and improving the appearance of the floor. Glue and tongue and groove are easier to install because the nail requires a wooden subfloor and special tools such as a floor nailer.
Some solid wood floors are recycled from reclaimed and refinished wood from old wood, including sources such as siding and flooring that were once used in old factories, houses and barns, and even from sunken boats or logs recovered from lakes and rivers. If you choose nailed hardwood floors, you might consider hiring the job to save yourself some time and potential hassle. Engineered wood floors are extremely popular because they are the most stable and versatile type of real wood floor. The sanding process is carried out by a sanding machine that can sand up to 100 square meters of soil per hour.
It's generally not recommended to use a mop to clean a hardwood floor because you don't want a pool of water to fall on hardwood floors. These rough sawn planks were finished with smooth, square edges; placed side by side; and nailed face to face into floor joists. Solid oak floors offer an attractive grain that is sought when a natural or rustic look is desired. But the Victorian and artisan revivals of the late 20th century saw renewed interest in hardwood floors, along with the use of reclaimed wood to replicate old floors.
For some, a pre-finished floor is more attractive because it's practical and ready to use immediately once installed. I noticed that some of the solid wood planks in the box have a joint mark, such as two planks joined together to increase the length. . .
