Five Facts About Accoya® Wood

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

In this blog, we’ll outline six facts about Accoya® and why you should be using it.

It is extremely 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 and preservative treated timbers over an extended time period, Accoya® wood came out top of the table, proving it has the highest possible durability classification – a key performance indicator when selecting a wood.

It is water resistant and does not rot.

Accoya® is good for applications where the wood will come into contact with water. When modifying 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 wood.

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 not be able to digest it. This further cements Accoya®’s reputation as a suitable specialist wood.

It 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 a good choice for garden decking, garden buildings, facades, boat decks and cladding.

Accoya® is sustainable.

Accoya® is produced sustainably meaning its carbon footprint is lower than that of popular alternatives. In fact, it is carbon negative over the full 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.

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® timber due to the roll out of the Accoya® training programme. When used according to guidelines, it is a highly durable and attractive material with good endurance against the elements.

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

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

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

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