Wooden façades offer a wide range of benefits

Wood has been used as an outdoor building material since the dawn of time. However, here in Sweden, the day that the town of Sundsvall burned more or less to the ground marked an almost century-long stop to the development of wood as a building material.

That trend has now reversed and the use of wood as a building material is making immense progress, marking a huge stride forward for climate-smart construction and future-generation sustainability since wood is one of the world’s most versatile building materials.

The global trend is for more wood both indoors and outdoors, and when we talk about outdoors we mean both for construction and for façade cladding. Buildings of up to nine storeys are being constructed primarily of wood. This is possible by using glued laminated timber and fire-resistant wood, such as Woodsafe Exterior.

Follows the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning’s guidelines for fire-protection

In Sweden the fire-safety regulations follow the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning guidelines 5:631, basic specifications chapters 1 and 2, guidelines for type-approval 1993:2 and production inspection and verified fire-resistance test as per SP Fire 105 – nothing else. According to the applicable legislation, it is not permissible to use Euroclass B as a façade cladding outdoors in Sweden. Euroclass B is a further development of a surface cladding, not a construction material, and as such it may only be used indoors. Furthermore, its fire-resistant properties must be verified, for instance, through NT Fire 054 EXT or corresponding data.

Woodsafe Exterior is available as spruce, pine, larch, cedar and plywood in the profiles and dimensions that the sawmills can produce. In other words, there are no obstacles to creativity. Woodsafe Exterior retains the feel of the wood through vacuum/pressure impregnation in which Dricon or Non-Com is absorbed. The impregnation agent is not visible and does not affect the wood’s structure, feel or strength.

Also available in a maintenance-free variant

The product is available in two variants – Woodsafe Exterior and Woodsafe Exterior Royal. Woodsafe Exterior must be surface-treated with an agent such as alkyd paint and maintained regularly as per the paint manufacturer’s instructions and when ocular inspection reveals maintenance is required. Woodsafe Exterior is available as standard in spruce and plywood, but can also be supplied in pine. Woodsafe Exterior Royal usually consists of larch and cedar since these materials are often intended for installation without any surface treatment.

Woodsafe Exterior Royal requires neither surface treatment nor maintenance since, owing to its unique composition, the fire-retardant protection is non-soluble after undergoing an advanced drying process. Examples of application areas are naturally aged larch or cedar-wood and installation in areas with extremely high humidity, for instance near lakes or the sea.