Roe Window Systems - Wooden Aluminium Clad Window

Why Wood?

Wood is nature’s own material - From forests we receive wood, a living material which for centuries has held its rightful place as the preferred building material.  Wood is a lasting raw material and we will always have it.

Preferred by the environment - When you decide on wooden windows and doors from sustainable forestry, you choose a solution which benefits the environment at the same time. The amount of nitrogen stored inside wood, is maintained throughout the entire life of a window or door. Meanwhile new trees are reforested to further increase nitrogen absorption. All in all a very important contribution towards minimizing the green house effect.

Comfort - Wooden windows and doors invite nature to your home - and provide a pleasant and healthy indoor climate with space to breathe and live. A natural product which will last for years on end.

Life Cycle Assessment - LCA is a technique which assesses the environmental impacts of a building component throughout its entire life. It is becoming increasingly important to take into account origin, application or conversion into a separate product and consequent use in a building, right through to disposal or re-use/recycling of a material, as more and more specifiers are required in considering environmental impacts of selected products and materials.

Energy use in extraction, production and transport to site - Energy used in the extraction and production of a material or product is called ‘embodied energy’. Generally speaking, the higher the embodied energy, the higher the CO2 emissions. Compared with the high emissions and embodied energy of alternative materials like steel, concrete and plastic, wood has low embodied energy and thanks to the carbon sink effect of the forest, negative CO2. Even though materials such as steel are often recycled, the process requires huge amounts of energy. By comparison, when the wood industry requires energy, it is one of the highest users of biomass power generation, often making a net contribution to national grid networks. The environmental impact of transporting materials to site is also taken into account in the LCA calculation.

Timber - The production and disposal of UPVC windows lead to the release of highly poisonous chemicals which threaten the environment and human health. UPVC production involves no less than 6 of the 15 most hazardous chemicals listed by European governments for priority elimination.  Wood sourced from properly managed forests is a sustainable resource. With the development in design of wooden windows as well as finishing treatments, modern, high performance wooden windows require minimal maintenance and have a significantly longer life than UPVC. Life expectancy of a UPVC window is 20-25 years compared to 60-120 years from a high-quality wooden window. Despite common belief, UPVC windows do degrade, they are not maintenance free and worst of all - they cannot be repaired if needed. The use of wood products encourages expansion of the forestry industry, in turn increasing the carbon sink effect and reducing CO2 admission.

Every m³ of wood used instead of other building materials prevents 0.8 tonne of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.