All Solid Floors are not Created Equally

While we knew that we did not want any carpet in this house (see topics on allergies/health), we did want some variety in our choice of flooring. We found it in a mix between an eclectic recycled product and two very different rapidly grown, sustainable ones.

Walking on Used Pallets
I’m a sucker for innovation. When I read about the work that a friend with the U.S. Forest Service was doing with North Carolina State University to create a high-value product from recycled wooden pallets, I had to learn more. Phil Araman, the Forest Service scientist behind the innovation told me how Joe Pryor and his family-owned Oaks Unlimited in Maggie Valley, North Carolina (just over an hour and a half from Upstate House) were attempting to take the product to market.

Each year the U.S. uses and disposes of an estimated 170 million wooden pallets. Pallets consume almost 40% of all of the hardwood lumber produced in the country. All-too-many find their way into landfills while others are recycled and still others are burned for fuel. Oaks Unlimited, a hardwood lumber manufacturer, figured that getting into the niche market for specialty hardwood flooring wouldn’t be too much of a stretch from their traditional work.

We decided to give the product a try in the “office” portion of Upstate House. Each plank is slightly thinner than traditional hardwood flooring and shows the old nail or staple holes from the portion of life as a pallet. Another difference over traditional flooring is that the wood isn’t from a single species of tree. The roughly three-foot planks come from red oak, white oak, yellow poplar and even sweetgum, yielding a much more diverse and random look. The eclectic nature of the look and the fact that scientists and entrepreneurs are finding ways to convert erstwhile waste to a high-value item made the product a natural choice for Upstate House.

High-Quality from a Plantation Wood
On the main living level, we specified a new product developed by Aracruz in southern Brazil and now marketed via a joint-venture by Weyerhaeuser Company to the rest of the world. The product – Lyptus® wood – uses the wood of eucalyptus trees grown in short-rotations (typically 15 years) on old farms. The tight grain and clear wood yields a stunning product in just a fraction of the time that it takes to grow quality hardwoods in North America. We chose the pre-finished product in “Fire” – a look that rivals rich cherry.

Lyptus® is the product of a cross between two of the world’s more than 600 species of eucalyptus -- in this case Eucalyptus grandis and E. urophylla. Lyptus wood is so beautiful and so workable that it is finding its way into a range of products from fine furniture to cabinets as well as flooring. With a long list of environmental benefits -- among them, the fact that the wood comes from a rapidly-renewable forest, that it provides a new product for farmers, that it comes in pre-finished options so there is no need for surfacing or use of VOCs on site, and that it possesses a hardness rating greater than white oak, jatoba, mahogany, red oak, hard maple or beech – combined to make Lytpus® a very easy choice.

Rounding out the Choices
For the two guest rooms, we went with another “hardwood” or in this case ¾” bamboo. Another rapidly-renewable product, bamboo offers a slightly different look with all of the long-lasting and durable benefits of the strongest hardwoods. Too, the pre-finished version met our desire to limit on-site finishing and treatment to only the stairs.

Adding Color – Green+

For the first time in our "home building years" we have a house with color. Like many we have always built knowing that at some point we would be relocating so we would go with neutral colors to enhance resale. As this is our last house this side of the nursing home, we did not feel those constraints. Too, it offered the first chance to use the new generation of paints that do not come with the terrible off-gas issues common with traditional paints.

Interior -- The Goal is Beauty and Air Quality ... The Wide Spectrum of Green
We opted to use one of the best-known names in paints, Sherwin-Williams. Their new line of "green" paints --Harmony® Interior Latex (http://www.sherwin-williams.com/) -- can be mixed to match any palate. Yet, more importantly they have a low odor and no volatile organic compounds (the traditional smell of paint). The base formula comes in eg-shel, flat and semi-gloss. Harmony also is a good combination for our paperless wallboard in that the paint has anti-microbial properties.

We were very pleased with the quality of the paints and the great covering capability. But, we were most impressed with the fact that even while painting was in progress, there were none of the noxious fumes that often lead to headaches and allergic reactions. In the past we have often had to sleep with windows open for days or even weeks before the smell would diminish. With Harmony you can change your room color and enjoy the comforts of your room immediately without problems. While we chose a range of colors from Adobe (brown) to CityScape (blue/gray), all of the interior colors are truly "green".

Exterior -- The Goal is Low Maintenance
For those areas of the exterior where we need paint, we stuck with Sherwin-Williams. There we went with their Duration ® Exterior Latex Coating line. We were not concerned with off-gassing; rather the issue was durability. The advanced PermaLast(R) technology promises durable, long-lasting paints that are self-priming and promise no blistering, peeling and low maintenance.