Going green…staying green…MAKING GREEN

Okay, time to put in new floors. Why are unfinished wood floors the greenest choice? We know all the choices, we see the cheesy box store offerings, we have had the sticker shock at the boutique, so now what?

Lets make this easy, shall we?

We KNOW we want to be sensible and be as green, Earth friendly as we can be…so no carpet, vinyl or laminates. We know we love natural products, so lets focus on ceramic, stone or hardwood. We know we hate hard and cold and the Doctor has told us that its why our back hurts…so hardwood.

Okay, we love hardwood…now what?

Well, we want to be green, as we said…so no engineered products.

We want to be able to keep it clean and not worry about potential health problems from food dust and hair between the boards…so no tacky pre finished.

We want to do it ourselves…won’t the unfinished be to hard to do? No…on the contrary, it is VERY forgiving because you are putting down a raw product, so you can make mistakes, drop things and do no harm. A quick sanding and the boo boo’s disappear… your left with smooth, flat and easy to coat. The new finishes on the market are stronger and more healthy then ever. A couple coats and your set for years or decades with a beautiful ‘furniture’ look on the floor, all sealed and as healthy, warm, quiet and soothing as any floor could ever be.

Great…can I afford it?

Unfinished flooring can be the MOST affordable choice you can make in your home. If you were to purchase online from a reputable mill that belongs to the National Wood Flooring Association, for your peace of mind, and one that sells direct to customers…such as Seneca Hardwoods LLC in Odessa, NY…then you can open up many doors for choice and savings.

It’s not uncommon for an appraiser to give pre finished hardwood a 2 to 1 price value (spend $1000 and add $2000 to the value of a home) but ALL appraisers will give a site finished (unfinished) wood floor a cost to value of as much as 7 to 1…now that is money!

So see…it is easy, just needed to work through it.

Be green…buy wood.

Stay green…buy unfinished wood.

Make green…instant value from buying your beautiful, new wood floor DIRECT.

And remember…use your heads! If someone says they buy from the mill and sell to you…they aren’t eliminating the middle man…they ARE the middle man!!!

Now…feel good, do good…look good!

We are becoming more aware as a people. In just my lifetime, I have seen great strides in our abilities to see mistakes and correct them…not always and sometimes its a trial and error at best…but I do feel we try.

I think back to when I was a kid and walked among the trash along the road picking up bottles to take back to the store for refund, 2 cents for a small bottle and a nickel for the quart size. There was litter everywhere, I remember the ad on TV with the American Indian standing along side the road and a car drives by, tosses a bag of trash out the window and it lands at The proud Indians feet…a close up of his face reveals a tear.

We do see, we do recognize right from wrong…we often disagree on ways of doing things but by and large, we eventually come together and discover that new and improved can sometimes not be. You can’t blame us for trying, and credit is due for us figuring out when we goofed…but still we try.

So, what’s this got to do with Hardwood Flooring? As we have mentioned before, the use of hardwoods as flooring has been popular for centuries. The advancements in machining and our understanding of different woods, effects of moisture, use of finishes…all this and more brought us to where we are today. Along the way have been many “bumps” in the road. Long wide boards from fresh cut timber looked great…for a few weeks, then the boards pulled the nails out of the floor as they dried and shrank sometimes leaving gaps you could fall into. We tried fast growing soft woods and discovered sap wasn’t fun to keep clean, slivers hurt and they wore faster then they grew. We learned that wood moved, wore and wasn’t easy to replace…but we also KNEW that it was plentiful, beautiful, structural, practical and long lasting.

We found out that oil or wax on the floor made it easier to sweep then bare wood…Wax caught on. It repelled water and was easier to clean…but the maintenance was back breaking. Lacquer and shellac were both used with some successes but they didn’t last long in traffic areas. Polyurethane seamed to be the answer, although early ones were difficult to apply, had awful odder and took forever to dry. Some manufacturers were putting wax and later polyurethane on the boards before they left the factory, telling customers that they would endure the odder and application headaches there instead of in the home. Problem was that the manufacturing tolerances were only so good, so the boards had to be made with large ‘bevels’ on each board so that the ‘up and down’ of the edges of the boards didn’t cause slivers, wear and cleaning problems.

Sounded good, problem was that those bevels filled with food, dirt, hair and other items and were hard to remove. So consumers went back to the unfinished…by now finishes were easier to apply, faster drying and had less odder. Still took longer although the final product was MUCH better to look at and live on.

Manufacturers eager to sell the more profitable pre-finished items, made the boards more exact in machining, smaller ‘micro’ and merchandising the drying agents (aluminum oxide and others) as being beneficial to the consumer. All of these efforts met with some success. Laminates and other ‘wood’ looking products hit the market hard and failed fast, actually hurting wood sales for a minute and helping them long term. The biggest threat to pre-finished wood sales now (other then lower value and higher maintenance) is the sanitary concerns. So here we are, back to site finished (unfinished) ALWAYS known to be better for looks, value and ease of cleaning…now being known for being SEALED after being installed. This seal is amazing in its ability to keep the floor hygienic and safe for HEALTH reasons as well as ease of cleaning, looks and value.

So here we are, refreshingly looking forward to what has been with us all along, although much evolved.

Simple floors that are easy to install, carbon neutral and good for our environment, faster to install (don’t need to be careful as we install it), flat and smooth for cleaning and furniture, and now more then ever SAFE AND SANITARY for our children to play on, elderly to rest on.

Sometimes its nice to go back to our future.

In the 1950′s housing starts were booming and most all of the homes had unfinished hardwood flooring.  It was beautiful, abundant, inexpensive and structurally sound. It was what one expected in a home. For the next two decades, it WAS the flooring of choice.

Then the late 60′s and early 70′s…wall-to-wall carpet hit the scene in a big way. It was quiet, soft, felt good on bare feet and could be had in many colors. Builders liked the fact that it was cheap, fast and covered up ‘less the perfect’ sub floors. Hardwood flooring was still used but only in high end homes or in just a room or two, it was still considered better in most every way…but we as Americans LOVE to have what’s the newest, latest and greatest…we just can’t help ourselves.

Fast forward to the late 80′s, Carpet wears out….huh, no one told us that. Now we have learned that replacing ugly carpet every few years isn’t such a great thing. The Hardwood flooring industry hasn’t stood still and they decided to  try to bite into the ‘fast and easy’ aspects of carpet by putting a finish on the boards before they left the factory, they knew it wasn’t as good as site finished…but to survive, they needed to give customers what they wanted even if it wasn’t what was best for them.

Then came all the ‘just-like-hardwood’ vinyl tiles, plywood veneers and wood looking pictures on hardboard backers…called laminates…these products were designed to have a wood look, kinda, and snapped or were glued together over a thin pad…and it was ‘new’…so the Americans flocked to them.  Again the hardwood industry flinched, but knew that it would only be a matter of time…and it was! The stuff started out at over $4 per SF and is now everywhere for 79 cents a SF or even less! It was a mess (although easy to pull out of the house when it failed) It sounded hollow, came apart, swelled with any moisture, was cheap and LOOKED cheap.

Pre-finished hardwood floors kept up the pressure with new advertising that took a factory problem (long drying times and defects from wet finish) and turned the solution into a ‘look what we have done for you’ ad approach. Aluminum oxide and other drying agents were put into the finish, this made the finish at the factory dry fast and hard, allowing for more production with less defects…so we tell the customer that we made it harder for them, we showed them how resistant the finish was to an abrasive wheel…customers ooooed and awwwwed. We didn’t realize that we don’t OWN an abrasive wheel and that the major thing we do is drop things…on the hard and brittle finish. And now the new clincher…there are small gaps between each board…a sanitary night mare! The dust mites the caused problems for some in carpet, could also live between the boards. Bacteria, food residue and hair also never completely cleaned out. So now we go back to UNFINISHED hardwood…more choices of species, more width choices, flat, smooth and sealed surface and all with more value and less cost then ever before.

Its humorous and enlightening as we learn from our mistakes. Will we make more of them? Of course! But through it all, quality will survive…unfinished hardwood floors will always be the ‘greenest’ most cost effective, longest lasting and lowest maintenance of all flooring choices!

United States Forestry facts:

FACT:  Forests cover over one third of all land in the United States.
FACT:  Over 72% of hardwood forests in the United States are privately owned.
FACT:  Over 70% of forest land that was here in 1600 is still forest…over 737 million acres!
FACT:  In 1952 the volume of timberlands in the US was 184,090 (in million cubic feet)
FACT:  In 1999 the volume increased to 335,722 (million cubic feet) an increase of 82.4%
FACT:  Forests in the US are increasing at an average rate of 5.27 BILLION cubic feet per year AFTER mortality and harvesting!

Total growth…12.22 Billion cubic feet
Mortality……..<2.50> Billion cubic feet
Harvest……….<4.45> Billion cubic feet

FACT:  Harvest has over doubled (102%) since 1952 and we are STILL showing growth in our forests.
FACT:  There is 82% more growing timber in the US now then in 1952
FACT:  Over 1.5 billion trees are planted in the US every year…that’s 4.1 million seedlings per day!
FACT:  Each year 6 trees are planted for every 1 that is harvested.
FACT:  43,700 companies in the US employ 1.75 million workers.
FACT:  Wood is recyclable, biodegradable and durable, lasting often for centuries and can be returned to the earth at anytime with a benefit to the earth!
FACT:  Wood is renewable while stone, iron or coal once used is gone forever.
FACT:  Wood makes up 47% of all industrial raw materials used in the US yet require only 4% of the energy used to produce these materials!
FACT:  Steel structure materials require 3 times as much energy and 16 times as much clean water to produce then wood.
FACT:  As an insulator, wood is 16 times more efficient as concrete, 415 times as efficient as steel and over 2000 times as efficient as aluminum!

We hope these facts ensure your stance that along with beauty, value and ease of maintenance…UNFINISHED HARDWOOD FLOORING will always be the right thing to do for our world.

Make the investment where it is noticed first. As we enter a home or a room, impressions are made, so WOW them from standing in the doorway looking in. An entrance way dome in a smooth, flat and decidedly REAL hardwood will give an immediate impression of quality as well as a psychological feeling of warmth and stability. These ‘impressions’ right off the bat, are very easy to obtain using even inexpensive unfinished flooring and doing a fair or better job of lightly sanding and finishing. A pre-finished floor will be seen as better then cold hard tile or carpet that has no resale value…but its still a cheap ‘quick fix’ look compared to a floor that is site finished. And NEVER insult your would be buyers with the laminate products, they are often seen as something that needs to be removed in order to even sell.

If you take the time to see how inexpensively you can buy unfinished hardwood flooring, how easy it is to put down and finish…weigh that with the sanitary aspects that we have talked about (no gaps between the boards for food, hair or dust mites) and just LOOK at the finished results, you will find the WOW factor is actually amazingly affordable. It is not uncommon to expect that a $2500 investment in unfinished flooring could result in a $10,000 increase in selling price and a far shorter time on market.

Conclusion, WOW them! Add a border, take maple with a cherry inset…a little extra time installing, no extra cost of materials…a million dollars worth of WOW when the client walks in. Be smart, and you will see there is still smart ways to prosper in this or any economy.

Never try to sell what you wouldn’t want to buy.

Unfinished hardwood flooring is classified as environmentally green.  And everyone is environmentally aware these days, and rightly so. As we learn more about our surroundings and our effect on them, we come to learn the importance of many of the little decisions we make and the long term ramifications of them. One such ‘small’ decision is in our choice of floor coverings for our home or office.

Carpeting
One choice that has been popular since the 60′s is wall-to-wall carpeting. A huge industry that is doing a good job of trying to police itself and move towards making a smaller impact on our environment. The chemicals that make up the vast majority of yarns used in the manufacturing process as well as some of the primary and secondary backings are fossil fuel derived. The industry has made large strides into using recycled plastics in the development of modern yarns, but more yet can be done. The foot print of waste carpet in the landfills has also come to light. Discarded carpet has a very long life after it is discarded and even causes trouble by getting caught up in the equipment working the landfills…bottom line…not green, but better then it was!

Ceramic Tile
Ceramic tile, an earthen product, sounds good so far. The ‘green’ properties of ceramic are that it is made of clay and sand…and even the glazes used are getting better in chemical content…firing the kilns on the other hand, requires large amounts of fuel, depleting some of our natural resources and adding to the poor air quality in the areas of the factories. Overall green factor is better then average.

Vinyl Tile
Vinyl tile and sheet goods. These products by nature can only do so much to improve their green standing. The vinyl used has a negative impact on our environment and until a substitute for vinyl is found, I am going to give them a failing grade…sorry vinyl.

Laminates
Laminates, these products came into popularity about a decade ago as an affordable substitute for wood flooring, which although the most desirable flooring product, was found to be hard to find, expensive and in the pre-finished form, hard to maintain. So along came these “pictures of wood” on a hard board backer. They were cheap to produce, easy to imprint and fast to install. The actual wood and cellulose fibers in the backer are fairly green, although the binders used to hold them together aren’t. The printing and bonding of the top picture…get HUGE failing grades for the environment. The fact that the product looks cheap was surprising as the initial products actually cost quite a bit. Now that the prices are down bellow a dollar in many cases, the product at least has a place. Substitute for wood flooring? Not by a long shot, but the fibers in the backer are at least using some natural products wisely. These products will always look like they do, and they are what they are…so for the green score…better then some.

Unfinished Hardwood Flooring
Solid unfinished hardwood flooring has ALWAYS been the choice when people had the choice. Availability and high cost along with people being afraid of doing it themselves have hindered this otherwise most green of all floorings. With improvement in manufacturing, anyone can install, lightly sand and finish a unfinished wood floor and be proud of the results. The fact that unfinished floors can be put down without being overly concerned about denting or scratching is a real load off peoples minds, the fact that the final product is smooth, flat and sealed by the finish makes it the absolute easiest floor to maintain…sorry pre-finished, but the gaps between the boards are NEVER going to go away. The sanitary and health concerns being brought to the public’s attention are going to continue to plague this product. Pre finished is fast and easy, but those health concerns stemming from food, hair and dust mites between the boards will never go away. Unfinished floors require less knowledge of installing because the floor gets lightly sanded before the finish goes on, thereby any ‘oops’ can be corrected. On a pre-finished floor, turn around and drop your hammer and your floor is scared for life or you go through a difficult fixing process. The finish applied at the factory and the ones applied at home each offer some plus and minus for us as consumers. Durability about even, no smell (in the home) of factory finish vs. the flat, sealed final finish of a floor finished in the home. As far as our green score…”A+” for site finished and an “A” for pre-finished.

World wide recognition of communities such as “ECO VILLAGE” in Ithaca, NY have seen many innovations used in an environmentally sound manor when it comes to home construction. With much pride, Seneca Hardwoods of Odessa, NY was chosen to furnish the flooring for a large part of this project. The first and foremost requirement was the impact building materials have on our world. Solid unfinished hardwood flooring, from sapling, growth, harvest, manufactured product, life of use and ultimate return to the earth has been and will always be carbon neutral. It gives but never takes.

We are PROUD to manufacture a product such as this.

As we become more informed, we can prosper. We learn from our mistakes and we strive to not make the same mistakes again.

Wood Flooring - Why?

Obviously I could be talking about hundreds of topics, but today I’m speaking about wood flooring! We have learned about the beauty and durability of wood flooring hundreds of years ago. Then we got tired of the labor of waxing and we were covering up all our wood in the late 60′s and early 70′s with wall to wall carpet. Not long after we replaced or carpets for the ump-teenth time, we started to hear about the ease of maintenance of the new poly urethanes on the market. We KNEW the value because anyone that appraised a home or considered buying a home ALWAYS wanted to know if there was hardwood under the carpet! So back to wood we all went…but wait, there is cheap ceramic tile, how about that?

Ceramic tile, while durable and available in many shapes, sizes and colors, was plagued by hard to clean grout and demands for very expensive installation. Any movement in the sub-floor also led to heartaches as the grout broke out or the tiles came loose. Then came the back aches from standing on it, the coldness and the fact that anything dropped, BROKE! So, back to wood…hey, how about this new pre-finished wood?

Pre finished wood floors are probably here to stay, weekend warriors can do a small project fast and easy in a small amount of time without sanding or applying a finish…sounds great, except…limited choices, lower value (up to 40% less value then a site finished floor) and the sanitary concerns of food, bacteria, hair and dust mites between the boards…hey, what about the laminate floors, they look like wood and don’t have the gaps between each piece…what about this?

Laminate floors are available in wood grain looks as well as tile, cork, wicker and other looks as well. But it is just that, a look. These are pictures on hardboard backer that lay on a foam and click or fit together. They started out as a popular way for retailers to sell “wood”…problem is that many found out the hard way why a product that sold early on for about $4 square foot can now be found for 79 cents a square foot. The laminates add no value to the home, sound hallow as you walk on them, they look and feel (and are) very fake. They often come apart and seldom are in a home more then just a couple years. People that actually know wood are often offended by these floors. Okay, we get that…hey how about a real, solid hardwood floor…installed, lightly sanded smooth and tight and then a layer of poly urethanes applied to seal the whole floor…wouldn’t that be perfect?

Well…yes, we think so! HUGE return on investment, easy to install, fast and simple to sand and coat and a lifetime longer then that of the house.

So, maybe its true…we CAN learn from history and what goes around can come around. The fit and finish of today’s unfinished hardwood floors are worlds better then they once were, choices are greater and costs are down. Environmentally we KNOW that solid unfinished wood floors are the ultimate in ‘green’ floors and new health awareness also speaks volumes of there place in our homes. We will try to touch more on the ‘green’ issues in more blogs to come.

Let’s start with the cons, If you are a visual person that prefers to walk into a box store, liquidator (cough, cough) or a traditional retailer and see a host of samples and displays…then you of course will ‘pay’ for that presentation. And for many, there IS value to that presentation. How much value? Expect to pay about 25 to 60% above the manufactured cost. The convenience also of making your decision and going home with the material (in some cases) also has some benefit although hardwood flooring is seldom a spur of the moment purchase.

The pros are many, obviously cost, but let’s go deeper. When you ask a question, you will be given answers FROM the manufacturer and not from sales people that only repeat what they have been told, often 3rd or 4th hand from…yep, the manufacturer.  And each time information is repeated, it often looses content or gains a certain sales pitch…so for pure information…nothing beats the horse’s mouth! Also selection, or choice. No mater what store you shop at, you are seeing only the product they have chosen to sell and to be fair, they can only afford to show a small selection of what all is available. For example, as a mill, manufacturing 5 1/4″ solid American Hardwood  Cherry is an easy process for an established manufacturer such as Seneca Hardwoods yet to go into a box store and ask for it would be near impossible, and in this example, you will end up paying as much or more for a common product such as 2 1/4″ red oak as Seneca could have given you the wide plank Cherry!!! Other pros can be as simple as paying for shipping to your site and not having to arrange to pick it up and remember, no sales tax for out of state purchases. You may be required to claim the sale and pay tax, but that is up to you to report and varies from state to state (not a long line of people reporting that we can see).

So cost…yes, of course cost, it all comes down to your need to have your hand held throughout the process and what’s that worth. Although a quality mill such as Seneca Hardwoods , will go out of their way to assist you with advice and free samples, it’s still not the same as standing there talking to them. Is that worth the limitations in selection, sketchy knowledge and 25-60% premium in selling price? Your make the call But we know what we would do, we WOULD call the mill!  (by the way…607-594-4877)

Select Cherry

For fun, we included a couple pictures of Seneca Hardwoods products that are easy for them to produce and almost impossible to find at a store.

Natural Cherry

Unfinished Flooring

Unfinished flooring products will always have their promoters as well. To see a finished unfinished floor product alone is worth a million words, there are few visible similarities between the two. Unfinished floors still hold a huge value edge to home appraisers (often up to a 40% difference) when compared to the same species and width in a pre-finished version. The cleaning aspects of an unfinished floor have always been superior due to the smooth and flat properties of a floor that is sanded in place and then sealed as a single sheet of protection. Width choices and species availability have also been key factors in the decision to choose a site finished floor.Potential Flooring Health Issues
Today I want to focus on a new and growing concern that may change the mind of MANY that are considering a pre-finished hardwood floor…and that is potential health and sanitary concerns. Our photos that are shown here will show what happens when something (in this case Caesar salad dressing) is spilled on a floor and then ‘cleaned’ the way most of us would clean a spill. We started with a pre finished floor sample and a sample of unfinished flooring with just 3 coats of clear finish. Both samples were white oak, the pre-finished had a gunstock stain, the unfinished was natural. The photo’s clearly show that after a good scrubbing with a paper towel the difference in what was actually left behind, judge for yourself. Look at the seams.

Unfinished Oak Floor Before Spill

Unfinished Oak Floor With Dressing Spill

Unfinished Oak Floor After Wipe

Pre-finished Floor Before Spill

Pre-finished Floor With Dressing Spill

Pre-finished Floor After Spill

Many Doctors have warned of potential for dust mites and dog hair left in the space between boards in pre-finished floors and therefore pushed site finished, but as this impromptu demonstration points out, mold and bacteria may be of even greater concern.

In conclusion, will there always be pre-finished and red oak unfinished  floors? Of course, but will these new concerns raise some eyebrows? I hope so. Are ALL wood floors more sanitary then carpet? Absolutely…but the difference in what’s good health wise for you and your family could be as simple as putting the floor down and then putting a solid layer of finish over the whole floor.