Five Facts About Accoya®/Modified Wood

Accoya® has hugely risen in popularity recently. It is a specialist, high-performance wood modified from the surface to the core to produce an extremely durable, quality material suitable to replace popular materials such as tropical hardwoods.

In this blog, we’ll outline six facts about Accoya® and why you should use it within your next wood-based project.

It is a treated wood, which makes it highly durable.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has found that Accoya® wood has an impressive life expectancy of 60 years when used in external applications.

When tested against other naturally durable treated wood over an extended period, Accoya® wood came out top of the table, proving it has the highest possible durability classification – a key performance indicator when selecting a modified wood.

It is a water resistant treated wood and does not rot.

Accoya® is suitable for applications where the wood will come into contact with water. When creating the modified wood, Accoya®, the process changes the free hydroxyl groups into acetyl groups, reducing the ability of the material to absorb water by 80%. This significantly improves the stability of the timber.

The change in cell structure also means fungi and insects do not recognise Accoya® as wood. Therefore, fungi will not attack it, and insects will be unable to digest it. This further cements Accoya®’s reputation as a suitable treated wood.

Treated wood has a wide range of applications.

Accoya® is perfect for outdoor applications such as doors and window frames, which will be exposed to weathering. It is also suitable for garden decking, buildings, facades, boat decks and cladding.

Accoya® is a sustainably modified wood.

Accoya® is a sustainably modified wood, meaning its carbon footprint is lower than that of popular alternatives. It is carbon-negative over the entire lifecycle of the material.

With this in mind, Accoya® is a popular choice to replace high-performance materials such as tropical hardwoods and aluminium, which may not live up to its competitive green credentials.

Modified wood training is essential

International Timber is one of four distributors of this wood in the UK.

We set merchants up on training courses with Accsys to enable them to get to grips with the material and everything they need to know.

This year has seen a rise in popularity in Accoya® treated wood due to the rollout of the Accoya® training programme. It is a highly durable and attractive modified wood with good endurance against the elements when used according to guidelines.

Find out today how you can get onto one of the International Timber training courses by contacting us at [email protected].

Customers are directly trained by the specialist Accoya® training team at their place of work.

The initial training is provided as a PowerPoint presentation, which takes about an hour. Following this stage, more in-depth training is available, which goes through the product’s properties and is tailored for joiners and carpenters, including applications in more detail.

For further information, check out our wood guides, available to download from our website, or get in touch for more advice on Accoya® applications.