News
Accoya® Earns Role in “The House That Kevin Built"
Accoya®, the revolutionary modified wood, will be showcased on a new home built by design guru Kevin McCloud at the Grand Designs Live show in London next week.
Two doors and eight windows in the new house, which is to be built on-set over the duration of the show, will all be constructed from Accoya®.
Westgate Joinery, enlisted by BSW Timber to support the launch of Accoya® to the market, has used around 1.5 cubic metres of the timber to produce the windows and doors ahead of the event at the ExCel centre on 3-11 May.
The windows and doors will be factory glazed with Pilkington energiKare TM double glazed units and factory finished with a three coat paint system manufactured by Teknos UK.
Grand Designs Live approached Westgate Joinery to manufacture the windows and doors following recommendations from the project’s architect who was impressed with Accoya’s outstanding durability and performance credentials.
The house, designed by RIBA award-winning architect Duncan Baker Brown will feature cutting-edge building innovations with materials and techniques ranging from the traditional to the futuristic. Celebrities such as Janet Street Porter will all visit the house during construction, which will be featured on Channel Four each day from 4th to 9th May.
At the end of the event the house will be dismantled and re-erected at the UK’s Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) Innovation Park at Watford.
Accoya's starring role at Grand Designs Live underlines its credentials as the UK’s gold standard in modified wood. It has attracted significant interest since the full working stock for joinery, civil and cladding applications was introduced to the UK in June.
John Alexander, head of business development at BSW Timber, said the use of Accoya® at the show would demonstrate to end users the new potential Accoya® creates for timber.
"Grand Designs Live offers the opportunity to illustrate the practical application of innovative products such as Accoya®.
"Accoya® is the culmination of four years of extensive engineering, product testing field testing and market review by leading scientists whose aim was to create a more robust and sustainable material.
He added: "The market development and joinery manufacturers' reaction has been very positive and this will raise the awareness of this revolutionary modified wood. With its impeccable environmental credentials, we firmly believe Accoya® is set to become the industry standard for exterior applications."
David Pattenden of Westgate Joinery, said: “We were one of the first joinery manufacturers in the UK to commit to using Accoya® and regularly take deliveries of 15 to 20 cubic metres to use for a wide range of products ranging from bespoke conservatories and Victorian greenhouses to windows, folding doors, cladding and even windows and a wheelhouse for a Dutch houseboat moored on the Thames. In view of its credentials, Accoya® was an obvious choice for this project. I am confident that it will become the material of choice for exterior applications, particularly as it can be used for virtually everything, from doors and windows, to cladding and decking."
Commercial production of Accoya® by Titan Wood, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Accsys Technologies plc, is underway at a new plant at Arnhem, Netherlands. The plant is the first of its type and represents a multi-million pound investment in capital and research & development.
BSW has signed an exclusive agreement with Titan Wood to be the sole supplier of Accoya®, across the UK and Ireland, following four years of extensive collaboration between the two companies.
The start of commercial production is the end-result of almost 80 years of global R&D and field testing in acetylated wood modification - a patented process that protects wood from rot by making it inedible to most micro-organisms and insects.
Accoya® uses wood acetylation technology to deliver outstanding levels of performance, stability and durability. It also boasts excellent environmental credentials, using wood from sustainable plantations and being 100% non-toxic. The wood's appearance, natural colour and strength of the timber are not affected in the process.
Industry experts have supported Accoya's performance and sustainability claims, with both the British Research Establishment and Napier University’s Centre for Timber Engineering recently reporting an unprecedented minimum 60-year service life for the product in cladding and external joinery applications.
The Paint Advisory Bureau has also published research findings that show Accoya® windows are the most cost effective option over the standard design life of a building, outperforming PVC, hardwood and softwoods.
For more information on Westgate Joinery’s products visit their website www.westgatejoinery.co.uk
May 2, 2008
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