The use of wood in construction is being promoted due to the renewability, and carbon storage potential of wood and instability in the supply of fossil resources. However, if wood resources were used irresponsibly, the increasing use of wood could hamper its supply from the forest to market. One way to tackle this issue, is to use wood in an efficient and sustainable manner. Re-covering wood from buildings could contribute to this, by prioritizing the reuse and recycling of wood over energy recovery. Reuse and recycling also contribute to climate change mitigation by storing carbon in wood elements for long periods of time. However, reuse and recycling of wood is not a common waste management practice now. One of the reasons hinders reuse and recycling of wood is that there is not a good understanding of wood that can be reused and recycled from buildings. Currently, wood from construction and demolition projects are sorted into clean and hazardous wood wastes skips by weight. Moreover, every wood skip might contain other materials such as metals and insulation materials as material impurities. So, information on actual wood that can be reuse and recycled is clearly missing. To facilitate this, information about the quantity, type, characteristics, quality and when wood will become available is required to plan for its potential second use. Thus, the aim of this study is to describe three typical Finnish detached houses built in the 1950s, and to assess the volumes, dimension, and characteristics of timber within them, and their potential as a resource for future wood products. The aforementioned building typologies were chosen as they have been predominantly built with timber. Also, detached houses built in the 1950s accounted for 22% of demolished detached houses between 2000-2012 and around 20% of existing Finnish building stock.
Keywords: wood, reuse and recycling, Finnish detached houses
Authors
Bahareh Nasiri
Aalto University, School of Chemical engineering, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, Matinkallio 7 B, 82, Espoo 02230, Finland
Mark Hughes
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