Engineered wood subfloor supports the Proud Green Home of St Louis

A durable home starts from the bottom up, and engineered wood flooring panels help create a home that can weather the perils of construction.

Fortunately, the Proud Green Home of St. Louis was in the framing stages during the summer months so it didn't have to suffer through winter. But the builders of the home chose AdvanTech engineered subfloor panels from Huber Engineered Woods for a number of reasons.

In this video, Kim Hibbs of Hibbs Homes, builder of the Proud Green Home of St. Louis, discusses his reasons for using AdvanTech subflooring underneath this high performance home.

To meet requirements for green building certifications, Huber Engineered Woods’ products, AdvanTech flooring and ZIP System sheathing and tape, were the first premium subflooring and combination wood structural panel and water resistive barrier panel brands to receive environmental product declarations (EPD), respectively.

The company submitted the AdvanTech flooring and ZIP System sheathing & roofing products through a Life Cycle Assessment to document the manufacturing processes in the most rigorous environmental reporting process, a cradle-to-grave EPD in order to demonstrate the products’ environmental impacts and benefits.

“Sustainability is one of Huber Engineered Woods’ best kept secrets, and the sustainability claims issued in these reports really formalizes what we’ve known all along,” says Michael Lloyd, Director of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability for Huber Engineered Woods. “Our involvement with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, commitment to safe and responsible operations, and product innovation allow us to feel good about these EPDs.”

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a comprehensive, internationally harmonized report that documents how a product is manufactured and how it impacts the environment throughout its life cycle. Similar to the concept of a “nutrition label,” an EPD tells the complete sustainability story of a product in a single, written report.

The cradle-to-grave EPD, certified by UL for both ZIP System sheathing & roofing and AdvanTech flooring, considers the environmental impacts throughout the entire lifecycle of a product (raw materials supply, production, transport, use, and end-of-life). Cradle-to-grave is the most rigorous EPD available.

Huber Engineered Woods’ environmental benefits, according to its EPD, include the following:

• AdvanTech Flooring and ZIP System Sheathing and Tape manufacturing processes are greater than 99% landfill free. Only 2% waste is produced, and most of it is recycled.
• Wood, which is 100% biodegradable, is the main component of ZIP System sheathing and AdvanTech flooring, comprising more than 90% of each product. Wood is also a major source of energy at Huber’s manufacturing sites.
• Huber Engineered Woods’ manufacturing sites are located close to the forests and communities from where the company sources its wood.
• ZIP System R-6 Sheathing requires just 10-16 months of service to make up for its global warming impact, thanks to its built-in continuous foam insulation.

AdvanTech sheathing is the first premium wood structural panel with code recognized design values that exceed traditional PS2 panels to release a cradle-to-grave EPD.

In a 30-day exposure test, AdvanTech flooring had less water absorption – or less moisture content – on average than the competitive OSB and plywood panels tested. AdvanTech flooring is the only 23/32" OSB product tested that did not drop below the PS-2 industry standard for subfloor stiffness. This stiffness retention could be an indicator of a longer product service life.

Read more about the Proud Green Home of St. Louis.