Benefits of Spruce Houses

All over the world, spruce and pine are traditionally considered the best wood species used as the wall material of a wooden house, but not cedar or larch as some mistakenly consider.

3 important differences between spruce and pine
10 advantageous characteristics of the houses made of spruce

From time immemorial, and not only in Finland, where wood was the main building material,
people built houses out of pine and spruce, and much less, of larch, cedar or oak. Houses made of spruce and pine, are more qualitative than buildings made of any other type of wood, mainly for three reasons:

3 important differences of the houses made of spruce and pine

1. High thermal insulation properties.
Houses made of pine and spruce, are the warmest, since pine and spruce has a low density. Larch, cedar and other hardwoods have lower heat-insulating properties, so the walls built of that wood should be much thicker than the walls made of spruce or pine.

2. Natural ventilation system.
Houses made of pine and spruce, are not heated in the hot season. Due to the structure of the wood, a constant air exchange, which takes place within it, makes that timber houses possible to "breathe", i.e. to pass air through the fiber structure in both directions. This process eliminates possibility of heating the interior, so air-conditioning systems are not installed in the wooden houses made of spruce and pine.

3. Texture of pine and spruce timber is more attractive.
Unlike other types of wood, the color and texture of spruce and pine are distinguished by their beauty. Over time, many people sheathe their houses made of larch with spruce boards, due to the fact that the walls of larch become non-presentable appearance.

The spruce has 10 advantages over the pine

We produce wooden houses from spruce and pine. Spruce, when compared to pine, is more difficult for processing. However, spruce is the most quality and the most durable material for a wooden house - so, 99% of our customers prefers spruce.

Wooden houses made of spruce were considered of higher quality than the house made of pine, for the following reasons:

1. Spruce timber has a better hydro-tightness than pine, because structures of their pores and cells have significant differences.
Namely:

• When drying, the cells of spruce wood, as well as pine wood, are closing in direction from sapwood to heartwood. However, due to the structural features of spruce, it absorbs moisture less than pine.
• Spruce has no difference between its sapwood and heartwood, in terms of moisture absorption. The pine sapwood and heartwood have difference in their getting wet: the sapwood is actively absorbs liquid, but the heartwood - vice versa.

The spruce high moisture resistance produce a beneficial effect on its reliability:

• When it's raining, outer walls of the houses, made of spruce, just get wet on the surface, while walls of the houses made of pine soak deep inside.
• Permanent wetting and drying of wood leads, eventually, to cracks in the walls of the houses made of pine because of their frequent deformations.



• Because of low moisture resistance of pine, wooden houses made of pine will be susceptible to mold and blue.
• When processing the pine and the spruce with tint glazing, the end result will be different – there will be a motley color on the pine, and uniform color on the spruce.
• In the Scandinavian countries, people do not use pine as a raw material, in impregnated wood, etc.

2. Uniform white color.
Spruce timber has homogeneous white color, because it has the heartwood and sapwood of the same white color. While pine timber has a large-diameter pine resinous and therefore, bright yellow, heartwood and narrow white sapwood, placed under the bark. Variegated surface of the pine gives, to the wooden house, appearance of a hut in a rustic style, while homogeneous white color of spruce gives the wooden house elegance and elitism.

3. Invisible seams after gluing boards.
Since the laminated veneer lumber and laminated timber have been recognized as the most quality materials for the construction of elite wooden houses, homogeneous white color spruce has an unbeatable advantage: one cannot see seams after gluing boards of spruce!

4. Spruce timber will not darken with time.
The resinous timber of pine has ability to become more yellow with time, and sometimes, it becomes brown. Unlike the house of pine, the house made of spruce is not going to become yellow with time, but remains light.

5. Small bright spruce knots, unlike large dark brown pine knots, look better, especially in the interior of the wooden house. Quality of their knots is different too: spruce knots always remain healthy, when pine knots, often die, and look very unattractive.

6. Spruce timber seams are more reliable.
Since the spruce is more water-resistant, it is subject to less distortion than the pine is, and the spruce timber is glued better.

7. The resin does not flow from spruce.
Large yellow knots of pine contain so much resin, so, during the manufacturing process, the resin flows constantly on the surface of the timber. It complicates the processing of pine wood and deteriorates its appearance. Spruce timber also has the resin, but that resin is a placed in small knots and is released in small amounts, because it is contained in small bags.

For this reason, people in Finland have traditionally used not pine but spruce panels at the outer decoration of their houses and saunas' interior. Pine is strictly prohibited for use in interior decoration of saunas, as its resin flows when heated more.

8. Spruce timber is warmer and "breathes" better, because the density of the spruce wood is less than the density of the pine wood: 1 m3 of spruce weighs, on average, 100 kg lighter than 1 m3 of pine.

9. The cracks do not occur.
It argued that the spruce is a softer material than the pine, but, in fact, the spruce is more solid. In industrial processing of spruce timber, it can be strongly bent, so spruce timber is difficult to "tame". The spruce's "flexibility" gives it an advantage over the pine. The pine is a stronger in bending – i.e. at the same pressure, pine breaks down, when the spruce bows. It is also one of the reasons why there are no cracks in wooden houses made of spruce, and wooden houses of pine have a lot cracking. For this reason, industrial wood beams and rafters made of spruce in Finland.

10. Wooden houses made of spruce, even a hundred years later, look better than houses made of pine.
This fact has been proven by scientific study recently conducted in Finland - quality of wooden houses built of spruce over 100 years ago, has surpassed quality of wooden houses made of pine.