New York companies repurpose wood for more sustainable construction

Sister companies New Energy Works and Pioneer Millworks in Farmington, New York, are working to meet demand for earth-friendly construction amid widespread lumber shortages.

Over the past three decades, the RochesterDemocrat & Chronicle reports Pioneer Millworks has salvaged and repurposed over 31 million board feet of wood from rot and landfills. At the mill, wood from old factories, barns and countless other sources are repurposed as flooring, siding, paneling, cabinetry and more.

Meanwhile, New Energy Works—which is focused on highly crafted timber frames—designs, crafts and builds custom homes, buildings and enclosures across North America.

Examples of this include Lyons National Bank's Farmington branch, which pays tribute to the adjacent 228-year-old Hathaway House, and the nautical-themed Sand Bar and timber frame event barn at The Lake House on Canandaigua.

Megan Larmouth Avila, communications director for New Energy Works and Pioneer Millworks, said repurposing salvaged wood is a lot more involved than some would think. A careful process begins with each timber checked by hand to remove nails and any other metal. The wood is also kiln dried, ripped straight, and milled.

Teams skilled at grading and separating each board into the appropriate product line must know the difference between a settlers’ plank board, an American Gothic board, and scrap, Avila told the Democrat & Chronicle.

Timbers can later be customized with additional textures such as wire brushing circle-sawn marks, and Shou Sugi Ban burning (a Japanese method of preserving antiquing wood) or a smooth planing.

Given the growing reclaimed lumber market, which was valued at nearly $50 billion in 2020, an emerging trend of sustainable construction using cross-laminated timber (CLT) has gained momentum.

CLT is state-of-the-art hybrid construction by gluing together multiple layers of lumber. The result is a massive sheet of wood, an economically and environmentally conscious alternative to steel and concrete construction.

In 2017, New Energy Works became home to New York state’s first complete CLT building. The timber-frame CLT megastructure houses New Energy Works' fine woodworking division, NEWwoodworks.

The structure includes timber reclaimed by Pioneer Millworks from its Portland, Oregon location, the Centennial Mills campus. After the CLT opened in fall 2017, architect Ty Allen described how the structure was built from 38-foot panels that came from a company in Austria. New Energy Works passed over several other producers in the U.S. and Canada because the carbon footprint was less to ship over water as opposed to land.

Pioneer Millworks and New Energy Works also take advantage of the use of solar power and a high-efficiency boiler fueled by wood scraps. A sawdust collection system, which was repurposed from a company that closed in the Midwest, collects sawdust that is then shipped to a manufacturer of wood pellets.