The Wood Protection Association (WPA) has always believed that making the most of wood goes hand-in-glove with making the most of wood protection technology.

Treatment to enhance durability performance or fire safety properties is essential if the opportunities for wood are to be realised fully. Helping the wood treating industry get to grips with challenges to the reputation of treated wood and maximising opportunities to grow demand are key priorities.

Collaborative market research by the WPA and Timber Trade Federation (TTF) in 2017 indicated clearly that buyer confidence in the ability of treated wood to perform and knowledge about standards of treatment are the principal factors affecting demand and retarding the potential for growth.

There is no quick-fix to changing buyer perceptions on quality and improving supply chain knowledge but I am very clear about the key role the WPA must play to help the wider timber industry bring this about.

While other major markets for treated wood, such as North America, the Nordic countries and France, introduced an industrywide quality scheme for treated wood many years ago wood treaters have, save for a few exceptions, been reluctant to adopt similar third-party quality schemes in the UK.

It is vital that third-party verification of treated wood quality and performance is adopted more widely across the UK. A failure to do so will inevitably mean that wood will lose out to alternative, man-made materials. The WPA must take the lead in providing the major timber trade organisations with the encouragement and support necessary to ensure industry collectively raises the quality bar.

LEADERSHIP ROLE

Well over 1,500 softwood fence posts were installed in 2015 as part of a field trial commissioned by the WPA to assess the durability performance of pre-treated wood in ground contact.

This field trial at BRE has attracted major sponsorship support to the WPA from Forestry Commission Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Grown in Britain, Confor, the TTF and the UK Forest Products Association and has been made possible through the support of WPA members with an interest in the outcome. All sponsoring organisations are given advance briefings of the BRE progress reports. The field trial is intended to last for 15 years but indicative performance data is likely much earlier.

This field trial is the biggest scientific appraisal of treated wood in ground contact ever undertaken in the UK and the outcomes will help inform treatment standards and specifications in the future. Three years later and the first major inspection of these posts is under way. The results are keenly awaited.

For now though, the WPA’s immediate priorities continue to focus on the means to build buyer confidence in wood treating quality and improving supply chain knowledge about how to specify treated wood correctly. It’s reassuring to know that major organisations such as the TTF, Confor and LABC (Local Authority Building Control Association) are in conversation with the WPA on tackling these important matters. The field trial is one of three key elements in the WPA’s strategy to provide wood treaters with a credible and relevant means to respond to concerns about the quality and performance. The three elements are: A national quality assurance scheme – WPA Benchmark – that provides independent verification that a specific commodity such as a fence post has been treated correctly in line with the British Standard for treated wood (BS 8417) for its application and desired service life. An approval scheme for the wood preservatives used to independently confirm the minimum level of that preservative required to be effective. The WPA is currently considering an expansion of this quality scheme to include a nominated treater scheme and a performance warranty.  The BRE-managed WPA field trial involves over 1,500 UK-sourced pine, spruce, larch and Douglas fir fence posts installed across two test sites with differing soil conditions – one in Scotland and one at BRE Watford. The year three inspection of all the posts is currently under way.

Material health, indoor air quality and healthy buildings are a growing priority for construction companies and housebuilders. The need for the producers of building materials to take material health and indoor air quality seriously was highlighted by a number of speakers at the WPA conference in 2017. One speaker, wood industry PR Liz Male, told the conference that the only way to counter negative uninformed comments about materials like chemically-treated wood was to take ownership and produce credible and objective data. BRE was subsequently commissioned by the WPA to review current published scientific papers and data and identify any obvious gaps in information that needed to be filled by further work.

POSITIVE CONCLUSIONS

The initial report was submitted to the WPA at the end of 2017 and identified some very positive conclusions about treated wood. BRE has now been asked to draw these together into a form that will help defend our industry from unfounded claims that the mere presence of chemical treated wood must harm indoor air quality.

Delegates at the WPA Making the Most of Wood Conference on April 12 will be the first to hear the headlines about treated wood and indoor air quality from BRE’s sustainable materials lead, Ed Suttie.