Reclaimed lumber
Reclaimed lumber is processed wood retrieved from its original application for purposes of subsequent use. Most reclaimed lumber comes from timbers and decking rescued from old barns, factories and warehouses, although some companies use wood from less traditional structures such as boxcars, coal mines and wine barrels. Reclaimed or antique lumber is used primarily for decoration and home building, for example for siding, architectural details, cabinetry, furniture and flooring.
In the United States of America, wood once functioned as the primary building material because it was strong, relatively inexpensive and abundant. Today many of these woods that were once plentiful are only available in large quantities through reclamation. One common reclaimed wood, longleaf pine, was used in factories and warehouses built during the Industrial Revolution. Longleaf heart pine was once the most functional wood for construction in America. The trees were slow-growing (taking 200 to 400 years to mature), tall, straight, and had a natural ability to resist mold and insects. More importantly, it was abundant. Longleaf yellow pine grew in thick forests that spanned over 140,000 square miles (360,000 km2).
Another previously common wood for building barns and other structures was redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) on the US west coast and American Chestnut. Beginning in 1904, a chestnut blight spread across the US killing billions of American Chestnuts, so when these structures were later dismantled, they were a welcome source of this desirable but later rare wood for subsequent reuse. American Chestnut wood can be identified as pre or post-blight by analysis of worm tracks in sawn timber. The presence of worm tracks suggests the trees were felled as dead standing timber, and are post-blight lumber.
Barns serve as one of the most common sources for reclaimed wood in the United States. Those constructed up through the early part of the 19th century were typically built using whatever trees were growing on or near the property. They often contain a mix of oak, chestnut, poplar, hickory and pine timber. Beam sizes were limited to what could be moved by man and horse. The wood was either hand hewn using an axe or squared with an adze. Early settlers also recognized the oak from experience with its European subspecies. Soon red, white, black, scarlet, willow, post and pin oak varieties were being cut and transformed into barns too.
Mill buildings throughout the Southeast also provide an abundant source of reclaimed wood. Some of these buildings and complexes cover more than a million square feet of ground, and can yield three to five times that amount of board feet of flooring. These buildings often have no economic or reuse possibility, can be a fire hazard, and may require varying degrees of environmental cleanup. Reclaiming lumber and brick from retired mills puts these materials to a new use instead of disposing them in a landfill.
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