Choice of Materials for Sustainable Construction

(See also Ways to Make Your Home or Workplace More Energy-efficient, below)

Some Suggestions for a New Approach to Timber Use:

• Think about whether you really need to use new timber

- Would a secondhand material suffice?

- The common practice of ordering full lengths and then cutting them up into small pieces makes no environmental sense at all.

• Do not throw out offcuts

- Put them aside and use them on the next job.

- Particularly if the surface is going to be painted or otherwise hidden.

• Do not ask for blemish-free timber (clear-grade) and do not insist on stringent colour-matching specifications

- This leads to increased wastage and downgrading of timber to lower-value applications.

- It will not only be just as effective, more individual and visually interesting, it will also be cheaper!

• Use jointed timbers, whenever possible

- Timber can be joined on its ends by finger-joints and metal nail-plates, or on its width, by glue-laminating.

- They also use less timber in acquiring their strength than clear grade timber beams.

• Buy timber from (smaller) sawmillers who can demonstrate a commitment to optimising wood-recovery during milling

- ie, by radial sawing, band-sawing, laser sawing, portable milling, etc.

Ways to Make Your Home or Workplace More Energy-efficient

• Construct an entry 'airlock'.

• Create doorways between living/working areas, and sleeping/washing areas, etc - so only the living space is heated.

• Place a maximum number of windows on the north side of the building - minimise glassed areas on other sides.

• Create passive heat storage - place thermal mass elements in sunny spaces (eg, masonry or water).