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With an increasing demand for greener, healthier and more sustainable construction solutions, we believe that wood can deliver countless possibilities to the ever-growing built environment.
WOOD: designed by nature, protected by innovation
The Wood Protection Association and its members champion the use of building with timber – influencing, developing and promoting technologies that enhance its performance and value as a building resource for the future.
What is wood protection?
If you’re an architect, engineer, landscaper or contractor working with wood, you’ll know your choice of timber is vital to the look and cost of a project. However in terms of longevity and performance, it’s also important to consider specifying an industrial, factory applied pre-installation treatment – they fall into 3 categories:
Wood Modification
Flame retardants work by making wood more difficult to ignite and by slowing the rate at which a fire can develop – allowing more time for escape
Heat or chemical modification processes change characteristics of timber – such as improved durability and dimensional stability
Timber preservatives for softwood components applied by pressure impregnation, provide tailored levels of protection from decay and insect attack.
Why and when does timber need protection?
Both softwood and hardwood timbers have an amazing variety of natural properties that lend themselves well when used in building applications. Properties differ between species but timber products are generally thermally and acoustically insulating, easy to work, residually strong and lightweight to list a but a few.
This of course is in addition to the fact that wood is recognised as being a 100% renewable resource – modern forestry standards ensure wood is harvested in a sustainable way so we need to make the most of this amazing natural resource.
In order to meet today’s building standards and codes of practice and to enhance its performance in service, timber's natural ability sometimes needs additional help. We can categorise these situations simply into two areas:
Enhancing timber’s performance in a fire
The fire performance for wood and wood-based panel products used in buildings are set out in Building Regulations, in line with British Standard or European Standard Test Methods.
Extending the service life of timber by enhancing its durability: resistance to decay and insect attack
Wood modification processes can provide increased durability. The WPA can give guidance on selecting products by identifying performance criteria and suitable end uses.
BS8417 British Standard for industrial preservative treatment of wood, considers timber species, durability requirements and desired service life (15, 30, 60 years). Treated timber applications are grouped into Use Classes.
Assured Quality from the WPA and its members
The WPA operate a series of industry recognised Quality Approval (QA) schemes branded as WPA Benchmark. These cover formulations, processes and products – providing valid independent assessment and verification.
In addition, our members can supply timber treatment formulations, process treatments and complete treated products – find them in the appropriate sections:
Take a look around the Resource Centre
FAQs - Codes of Practice - Guidance Notes - Training
All of our resources are free to view and download. Please contact us if you have questions about any aspect of wood protection specification, quality assurance or application good practice.
Timber as a sustainable building material
As they grow, trees absorb Carbon Dioxide.
By building with timber, carbon from the atmosphere is being stored in the built environment. So it follows that using wood stimulates the expansion of managed forests and reduces the levels of global warming gas. Why wouldn’t we encourage the use of wood?
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