Posted: Wed May 04, 05 2:54 pm Post subject: Wood floors
I've been researching wooden floors and I can get Irish grown Elm from the Irish Forestry Commission, they do a wide variety of other woods too, all of which are FSC certified, firstly how do they get sustainably harvested Elm, and secondly is Elm a good choice wearwise?
sean Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 42219 Location: North Devon
Posted: Wed May 04, 05 3:02 pm Post subject:
There are different sorts of elm aren't there? Which are they offering? Did Dutch Elm Disease turn up in Ireland?
Just says Elm, there were two forms of the disease (or maybe the vector carrying it, a European one and an American one) there's probably more than one species of Elm that's used for timber but their site isn't specific on that.
Elm is a bit of a tart of a tree. While we might like to recognise English elm, wych elm and the like, it doesn't. Further North in the British Isles there were more Wych elm, and that showed greater resistance to the disease, and in various places in the UK elm did better than in others (various naturally occuring hybrids). So for example there's a spot in Cambridgeshire with some lovely old (mostly disease resistant) elms, and I do believe that by aggressively cutting and burning any diseased specimens (and a bit of luck with the local climate), Brighton mostly escaped the ravages of the disease.
I don't know how Ireland got on. And I don't really know how hard wearing the wood will be on a floor. I do know that in a lot of old furnishings it's a wonderfully tough wood, though. Pretty, too.
Elm is a wonderfully hard, close-grained wood with great resistance to warping and rot. It was commonly used for the seats on wooden chairs and for coffins, and I suspect it would make first-rate flooring - almost on a par with oak.
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