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About Katahdin : Green / Environmental
Katahdin's Green Practices
Call us thrifty, but we Mainers have a long tradition of 'waste not, want not.' Katahdin has made it our business to reduce, reuse and recycle as much of the raw materials we use to construct our log homes.
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Precision manufacturing - Our mills make the most of the resources we use, through computerized manufacturing lines and sensible practices. Katahdin's state-of-the-art house manufacturing line, which we designed and built to our specifications, limits waste and errors in cutting and drilling logs.
- Turning waste into energy - Our 14-million-BTU biomass boiler cuts Katahdin's consumption of fossil fuels by up to 90 percent by providing steam heat to most of the company's millworks. The boiler consumes waste wood and sawdust that previously had to be trucked away. The steam produced by the boiler has other uses as well, including removing winter snow and ice from log truck scales, and heating finishing kilns.
- Using the entire cedar log - Katahdin also uses as much as possible of the cedar logs that come into the mill. Additional products are made from the cedar logs not used in the home manufacturing process, including rails, balusters, fencing, and decking, among others.
- Katahdin uses sustainable Northern White Cedar - Compared to the pine used in competitors' homes, Northern White Cedar is a rapidly renewable resource, regenerating harvestable growth with little intervention by man. Pine plantations require a tremendous amount of resources to stump, seed, and prepare seedlings. Unlike cedar, which has natural resistance to insects and other pests, pine plantations use phosphate fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides to maintain healthy growth.
- Logs from Certified Forests - Katahdin Cedar Log Homes has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The organization ensures that forestry operations meet or exceed the current state forest practice regulations, best management practices for forestry, and other protective measures for water quality. Additionally, by keeping most of their cedar tree purchases within a 100-mile radius, Katahdin is able to reduce long-haul diesel fuel consumption.
- Air drying saves energy - The lower moisture content of Northern White Cedar allows Katahdin to air dry, rather than kiln-dry our building materials. That amounts to a significant savings in fuel. And should the logs need some finishing in our kilns due to humidity or ice at the time of year, the kilns are powered by the biomass boiler rather than fossil fuels.
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