No More Chainsaw Massacres: The Comeback of the Urban Sawyer

July 8, 2011

Matt Grocoff, an Ann Arbor resident and green building expert, describes his own eye-opening experience in using urban wood in restoring his historic, net-zero energy home on Old House Web. He explains: "It would have been really easy to drive over to the big box store and buy cheap, low-grade wood that was clear cut from a forest thousands and thousands of miles away. Yet right nearby the city was removing trees from parks, neighbors were cutting trees that fell in storms, and the utility company was trimming or cutting trees from around power lines. We’re talking good wood here: walnut, ash, sycamore, sugar maple, and other hard and exotic woods. The saddest part was that almost all of it was going into chippers, cut into firewood, torched in burn piles or sent to a landfill. But, there is a revolution underway among urban sawyers across the country who are harvesting dead and downed trees, milling it into high-quality lumber and selling it locally for use by those smart enough to find them." Visit Old House Web to read the rest of Matt's story.