June 11, 2014
Currently the use of timber as a sustainable resource within the built environment is not maximised across Europe due to presumed low service life and high maintenance costs compared with other building materials, such as aluminium.
This perception will hopefully change over the forthcoming 24 months due to the ground breaking research that a specially selected group of industry experts are working on under the umbrella of the SERVOWOOD project, which has just been awarded €2.7 million in EU funding.
One of the 15 SERVOWOOD project partners is Stephen Wright, Managing Director of George Barnsdale. As Managing Director of George Barnsdale, Stephen is committed to rigorous testing and pushing the boundaries of technology to ensure that the end user has a timber window or door that is built to last, so he accepted a partner role on the SERVOWOOD project without hesitation.
“Being part of the SERVOWOOD project means that I can really contribute to the cause of getting the construction industry to take timber seriously. There are so many misconceptions about the service life of timber, including its lifecycle cost that key players in the UK tend to shy away from it. Timber is so versatile and sustainable and once we can disprove the myths, the industry and the environment, will be the better for it”
The overall objective of SERVOWOOD is to develop and establish European Standards that will facilitate the prediction of service life for exterior wood coatings; work which will hopefully result in the adoption of timber across the entire construction industry.
