Thermo-modified elm (karagach) from our patented production in Almaty. Real wood — living art, built for 20+ years.
Message us on WhatsAppPress-vacuum thermal modification. Patent holder — WoodPower, Almaty. We're the source, not a reseller.
The natural sugars cook out — rot and wood-boring beetles have nothing to feed on. The board won't absorb water. The color runs all the way through.
Stable in Kazakhstan's climate. Sanding and oil return the board to day one — for 20+ years.
A deck that will outlive the furniture on it. On thermo-treated joists or the DeckKing steel frame.
A house that ages beautifully. Color runs through the board — a facade you can renew for decades.
This isn't a coating and not an impregnation: the timber changes all the way through. Everything else follows from that — why it doesn't rot, why it doesn't move, and why the color is the same on the end grain as on the face.
Until now no clause anywhere said the board won't rot. "20+ years" appeared in every quotation as a promise, never as a term. Here it is four separate promises, each one an appendix to the contract.
10 years on karagach and ash, 5 on pine and birch. No care program required.
2 years Signature, 6 years Legacy. The term is set by the care program.
2 years Signature, 6 years Legacy. About color, not about the board surviving.
2 years on the installation: laying geometry, gaps, fixings.
Full terms, how compensation is calculated, and the exclusions →
Thermowood doesn't rot and doesn't need saving — it fades. Oil is about color, not survival. That's exactly why care programs exist: so the terrace looks like the photography every season, not just the first one.
| Program | Which species | What it covers | Value | Your price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flawless Finish Signature | karagach only | 2 years, 4 visits · 2-year "no warping" guarantee | 40,000 ₸/m² | 16,000 ₸/m² |
| Flawless Finish Legacy | karagach only | 6 years, 8 visits · factory oiling on every face free · 6-year guarantee | 60,000 ₸/m² | 35,000 ₸/m² |
| Color Care · factory oiling | every species except karagach | All 6 faces including the hidden ones, before installation | 20,000 ₸/m² | 15,000 ₸/m² |
| Color Care · annual plan | every species except karagach | 2 visits a year · price fixed for the term | 10,000 ₸/m² a year | 8,000 ₸/m² a year |
The split isn't marketing: karagach is our own timber, we know the schedule behind every board, and that's why we'll underwrite its geometry. On imported species we stand behind the coating, not behind someone else's wood.
Programs are paid in full upfront — prepaying is what locks the price for the whole term. The discount is for prepaying, not a giveaway. The full program breakdown lives on the Care Programs page.
Karagach Elit with the Signature program is 83,500 ₸/m². Wide ash with factory oiling is 90,670 ₸/m². We're 7,170 ₸/m² cheaper — and we're the only one of the two carrying a manufacturer's guarantee in this country.
About ash, honestlyAsh is imported. There is nobody here to guarantee it: the mill is far away and the dealer did not make the timber. We say so out loud because on our own species we have something to put against it — not because ash is a bad material.
Karagach Natur — 55,000 ₸/m², Karagach Elite — 67,500 ₸/m². What that price includes and what moves the total — honestly and in detail: what a terrace costs. We produce only about 900–1,000 m² of karagach a year.
Karagach is elm (Ulmus), a tree that grows here. Its timber is dense with an interlocked grain: the fibres cross rather than run parallel. It is harder to machine — and in exchange the finished board splits along its length far less readily and takes changes in humidity far more calmly.
Second: it is a local species. It doesn't spend a month in a container four thousand kilometers away, taking on moisture and giving it back. We take a log that grew in this climate and return a board to the same climate. The wood has nothing to relearn.
Imported thermo-pine is a good material and we won't pretend otherwise. But pine is soft: under a heel or a backyard chair it dents sooner. On a terrace people walk barefoot on and drag chairs across, the difference shows by the third year.
Crossing fibres: the board resists splitting along its length and moves less as humidity changes.
Grown here, working here. No acclimatisation after a container.
Denser than softwoods: fewer dents from furniture, heels and claws.
Karagach isn't the only timber that goes through our chamber. Thermal modification is a process, not a species; what differs between them is density, figure, and who answers for the result.
Our own species. Interlocked grain, local climate, hard underfoot. The only one whose geometry we'll guarantee.
Dense, with strong figure. Imported — there is nobody here to give a maker's guarantee, and we say so.
The dearest in the range and the most recognizable. For when it has to be oak.
A calm, even tone. It works where timber should not argue with stone.
Soft light, even color. A frequent choice for ceilings and soffits.
The most affordable way into thermowood. Softer than the rest — we say plainly where that will show.
The full range with sections and trade prices for builders, architects and procurement is on the specifiers page.
Between the chamber and your terrace there is a workshop: boards are sorted, cut to the drawing, oiled and made up per project. These are the same people who will come out and install it.
Thermal modification isn't paint, not impregnation, and not a scorched surface. It is a controlled change in the chemistry of the timber itself, at high temperature and without oxygen. Not one chemical is involved: only heat, steam and pressure. The cycle runs in three phases.
Temperature rises to about 100 °C, then slowly to 130–140 °C. Almost all free and bound moisture leaves the board — it enters the next phase effectively bone dry. This phase can't be rushed: internal checking is born here if the temperature is pushed.
The working phase, several hours at temperature. At this range the hemicelluloses break down — the least heat-stable part of the timber and, at the same time, the main food source for fungus. The free sugars go with them. Lignin partly reorganizes and the crystallinity of the cellulose rises. This is where the board darkens — all the way through, not on the surface.
The temperature comes down under control and moisture is put back into the chamber to bring the board to roughly 4–6%. Without this phase the board leaves over-dried and brittle. It is the most underrated part of the cycle and the first thing cut by anyone chasing volume.
The physics above holds for any thermal modification. Ours differs in a third factor: alongside temperature we apply pressure. The board is pressed inside the chamber and the timber "remembers" that geometry — which is the actual reason it doesn't cup or warp afterwards, rather than simply "absorbing less water".
WoodPower is the sole holder of the Press-Vacuum patent in Kazakhstan. The full cycle, log to pack, runs in Almaty. Not one chemical is involved: temperature and pressure only — safe around children, animals and planting. You can come and watch the chamber on any working day: how the factory works.
Thermal modification has a downside and we say it out loud. You buy stability and biological resistance, and you pay for them with part of the mechanical strength. For a deck, a facade and a ceiling that's the right trade. For a loaded beam it is the wrong one, and we won't sell you this board for a beam.
| Property | Untreated timber | After modification |
|---|---|---|
| Equilibrium moisture content | 12–15% | 4–6% |
| Food for wood-destroying fungus | sugars and hemicelluloses intact | broken down by heat |
| Water uptake | high — the board breathes and moves | sharply reduced |
| Dimensional stability | seasonal swelling and shrinkage | movement several times smaller |
| Color | on the surface, from the coating | through the section, from the timber |
| Bending strength | 100% | lower by roughly 10–30% by schedule |
| Impact toughness | 100% | markedly lower — the board is more brittle |
What sits behind that row: in the chamber the board is dried to zero — the water leaves the cells completely. It then comes back, but not to where it used to go: thermal modification has broken down part of the hemicellulose, so there is very little left in the timber for water to bind to. The board settles at 4–6% and stays there. Untreated timber in the same conditions holds 12–15%.
The ranges come from the published literature on thermal modification; the exact figure depends on species and schedule. Our own laboratory testing of karagach has not been done yet — we say so plainly rather than hide it.
Thermo-karagach is a finish and decking material: terraces, facades, ceilings, pool surrounds, battens, furniture. Not structure. Structure here is steel — on terraces that's the DeckKing frame, which is exactly why we can guarantee the flatness of the floor.
This is where most of the industry misleads people. Thermowood doesn't need rescuing with oil: it doesn't rot without it. But ultraviolet breaks down the lignin at the surface — to a depth of tenths of a millimeter — rain washes the breakdown products away, and the board silvers to gray. That's cosmetic, not structural: under the gray layer it is the same board.
So the honest choice is this: either you accept the silver, do nothing, and the board serves its life gray; or you want the warm brown, and once a year an oil with a UV filter goes over it. There is no third option in which the color holds by itself — not from us and not from anyone.
The oil penetrates rather than forming a film. So it doesn't peel off in sheets the way a varnish does, and renewing it doesn't mean sanding back to bare timber — a light abrasion and a fresh coat.
The board is oiled before installation, including the end grain and the back — the faces you can never reach again once a terrace is down. End grain takes up moisture many times faster than the face, and that's where most problems start. On site this is physically impossible to do.
15,000 ₸/m² · value 20,000 ₸/m²
An abrasion and a fresh coat of UV-filtered oil: the board goes back to day one. We come on schedule — you don't have to remember, or ask.
The Color Care, Signature and Legacy programs
Everyone has a piece of paper. The difference is what happens when, three years in, a board on the south facade doesn't behave the way it was promised to.
If the board was imported: the supplier has no legal entity in Kazakhstan, no installation crew here, and not one commercial reason to accept the claim. It has to go through a dealer who manufactured nothing, wait on the mill's answer, and then — at best — produce a few boards from the current run, a different year and a different tone. That guarantee is written on the assumption that nobody will ever drive out on it.
If we made the board, twenty kilometers from here: the case is read by the same person who ran the cycle in the chamber. We don't go looking for a replacement — we make it: same species, same chamber, same schedule, matched to the tone of your terrace. And we come ourselves, because the crew is ours.
It is also the reason we're willing to service a terrace for six years under Legacy at all. You can't underwrite someone else's material on that horizon: you don't know what was done to it before you.
From log to pack. We don't resell someone else's run under our name — so we know the schedule behind every board.
Our own crew. No argument between two contractors over "bad board" and "bad installation": one party answers.
We come in year one, year two, year three and onward under the program. The guarantee and the service are the same people.
Production in Almaty: cutting, sorting, oiling. None of it happens abroad, and none of it has to be agreed by email with anyone.
We produce about 900–1,000 m² of karagach a year. That isn't much, and we don't pretend to be a mill. But it is exactly why every project is known by name here, and why matching a replacement to your tone is a routine job rather than an exception.
Thermo-karagach isn't only a terrace. Below are real projects: facades, ceilings and soffits, pool surrounds, canopies and battens. One species, one process, one installation standard.
A vertical set-out with window reveals in the same material — the facade reads as a single plane.
Diagonal or straight on a ceiling — where the timber is seen from below every day.
A battened canopy soffit on a steel frame: shade, air and geometry.
Pool perimeter and plant-room cladding: water, UV and bare feet.
Decking across a lawn instead of paving — a line that leads through the yard.
Decking along the glazing: what the house looks out at all year.
Every project on this page is ours, in Almaty and the region. Installed by our own crew: 2-year installation guarantee.
Tell us what you want to build — and read our honest pricing guide before the site visit.
