Eco Friendly Flooring Guide is a Great Resource

The product is essentially as veneer over a lower quality substrate. That allows the assembly to be engineered for optimum performance among its constituent parts, as well as stretching the use of the veneer material, which is typically more expensive and in scarcer supply.

However, one of the advantages of solid wood flooring is the ability to sand and refinish it multiple times. Veneer products have a limited ability to be refinished successfully, without fear of cutting through the veneer to expose the substrate.

How long the floor is likely to be in use, and how much wear it is expected to receive is an important consideration when specifying the material.

Please remember that there is a great deal more manufacturing effort involved in laying up the veneered flooring, compared to the solid flooring. Not to mention all the saw waste of slicing the veneers and the energy in the glues and curing.

Well maintained solid floors can last for hundreds of years, and look better for their age and wear. Composite floors are irreparable after brief exposure to bulk water, and are often unsightly when the veneer layer is chipped up at the joints.

The product is essentially as veneer over a lower quality substrate. That allows the assembly to be engineered for optimum performance among its constituent parts, as well as stretching the use of the veneer material, which is typically more expensive and in scarcer supply.

However, one of the advantages of solid wood flooring is the ability to sand and refinish it multiple times. Veneer products have a limited ability to be refinished successfully, without fear of cutting through the veneer to expose the substrate.

How long the floor is likely to be in use, and how much wear it is expected to receive is an important consideration when specifying the material.

Please remember that there is a great deal more manufacturing effort involved in laying up the veneered flooring, compared to the solid flooring. Not to mention all the saw waste of slicing the veneers and the energy in the glues and curing.

Well maintained solid floors can last for hundreds of years, and look better for their age and wear. Composite floors are irreparable after brief exposure to bulk water, and are often unsightly when the veneer layer is chipped up at the joints.

I wanted to start witing allmost exsactly like JON,

so I'll just say - ME SECOND.

The term Veneer is misleading. I own a sustainable material business in bend oregon called brilliant environmental building products.

We sell both solid and engineered wood flooring.

Wear layer is a better term.

On a solid wood floor you are only able to sand to the tongue and groove - this is the wear layer, once you sand to this point the flooring needs to be removed and replaced.

The engineered flooring sold by Eco Timber has a wear layer of 1/8" which is very similar to a wear layer of a solid hardwood floor.

Veneer - as discussed above is true in products such as pergo etc. which is typically 1/16" or less thick, and does not allow for the ability to sand and refinish the floor.

Good point but very misleading in his explanation.

Engineered wood flooring suffers from a bad reputation - it is viewed as being "cheap", and in many cases it is made using environmentally un-friendly processes and materials, and the construction is lackluster, leading to a shorter lifespan. I work for Pioneer Millworks, and we've worked very hard to produce an engineered wood floor that is beyond any of these issues.

We refer to the solid wood that is adhered to the platform ( plywood in most cases ) as the "wear layer". The thickness of this layer has a lot to do with how long the floor will last. On a well-made solid wood floor, there should be much more than 1/8" above the tongue - 1/4" at least - and in our case 5/16". This offset in the tongue makes for a longer lasting solid floor. Our engineered wood flooring has a wear layer of 3/16" ( 4.7 MM ) which is thicker than most others on the market, allowing for 2 - 3 sandings down the line, potentially more. With only 1/8" difference in wear thickness, our engineered flooring will last nearly as long as a solid wood floor of the same species. Additionally, our engineered and solid floors are available pre-finished or un-finished - so there are a lot more options than selecting from a few pre-finished options.

Did I mention that our wear layers are made of reclaimed wood? We source our materials from demolished barns and industrial buildings in a variety of very cool species. Some are rare, like Chestnut - so using it for our engineered flooring does indeed stretch its use considerably. Oak, Ash, & Elm round out the usual mix, with a reclaimed Jarrah / Karri available as well. Yes, it came from Australia, in one very large ocean shipment. But it was salvaged from demolished buildings in Perth - quite different than harvesting trees to fill the containers.

As shown in the diagrams above, a piece of lumber is re-sawn into thinner layers, the thickness of which depends on the manufacturer. We prep our stock in advance to maximize the yield on this as you might expect. The small amount of waste generated in the re-sawing process is mainly due to grading, and in our company, this waste is burned in a high-temp / low emission boiler ( along with the rest of our wood cut-offs ) and used to heat our kilns, shop, and offices.

The "lower quality substrate" is generally plywood. Every company uses something different, but most use a Baltic Birch plywood - it looks great with its 7 to 11 layers, and it does make for a nice platform. However, the overseas sourcing adds a great deal of embodied energy to the material, even if it is FSC Certified. We use a domestically grown, harvested, and manufactured FSC Certified plywood for our platform. It costs more, but we know that we're supporting not only the environment by using it - we're also supporting American labor and keeping our dollars in the domestic economy.

At the end of the day, none of this matters if the material is being sent overseas for manufacturing. Pioneer Millworks has our own in-house engineered flooring manufacturing line in Farmington, New York. We believe that even with the most ecological plywood we could find, very low VOC adhesives, and the best wear layers, it had to be assembled and milled in our shops to have the best control over quality. By doing so, we're supporting our family of employees, and using a minimal amount of embodied energy in the manufacturing process.

The bottom line with engineered flooring, or solid wood flooring, is what the actual species of wood is, and where it is being manufactured. FSC Certified tropical and/or Asian species still have to come from those origins. The platforms still come mostly from overseas sources. This does little for supporting domestic labor, and adds unnecessary transportation, handling, and packaging.

Consider all of your options, think domestically, and look for quality in your engineered flooring. Pioneer Millworks has some great options - check them out on our website.