Ants: What to do?

[bbjr]

I have some reclaimed oak beams that I ran through my mill, and plan on using it to finish my staircase in my home.  I got the beams from a barn that was torn down, and they sat in the pile, untouched and exposed to the elements, for a couple of months before I got to them.  Naturally, the wood got wet with rain, and a few spots (mainly the most water saturated and punky areas) have nests of large black ants, I 'm assuming carpenter ants.  However, there are some areas that are still sound, that the ants are in.

My question is, should I be concerned about using this wood in my home?  I'm assuming that the ants prefer damp wood to make their colonies in, and I am hoping that they will not be a problem after the wood has been inside and all the excess moisture has evaporated, but I am not sure and don't want to take any chances without some recommendations from the more experienced.  All of the rotted and obvious areas of the wood will be cut off, but on some of the thicker pieces, there is no way of knowing if there are any live colonies in them.  For instance, I was in the shop today cutting a piece into a stair post, and there was a deep check in the end of the wood where ants had entered, and I cut off as much as I could (almost the entire checked area) and there were still ants in the inside of the post.  What would you do?

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Personally, I would not use the wood. You certainly would not want them to hide in the wood and then infest your house. Plus if you are finding them deeper and deeper into the wood, there really is no way to tell how much of each piece they have already attacked and weakened. Oak is not that valuable in my opinion to take the risk

[woodman58]

If ants are present in the wood I would not use it. Ants don't care if it's wet or dry. I had some lumber stacked at the back of my house that was air drying. They infested that wood and then began going behind my siding and got into the attic. I had to call an exterminater to get rid of them. It cost me $600 for 3 visits.

[hobbytrucker1966]

raid has a red bottle of stuff like syrup that the ants eat and take back to there queen and destroys the nest ive used it around my mill seems to work

[red oaks lumber]

kiln dry above 133deg.  it to kill the ants plus ant other bug that might be in there.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, carpenter ants don't eat the wood. They only make galleries for the grubs in it. All the wood is turned into sawdust form out their exit holes. Use some 20 Mule Team Borax, from the wife's laundry room, dissolved in hot water, a box full per 3 gallon pale and hose the suckers with a pump sprayer or something with more pressure. I usually mix a dryer concoction with some sugar and water to make a paste for the ants that make hills on the lawn. These are different ants than carpenter. Will knock them suckers out, but I'm careful around the shrubs and trees as it will kill anything it touches.

Kilning is another option and is sure to go deep into the wood if hot enough, around 140 degrees as suggested. Vaporize the suckers. :D

[bbjr]

Thanks for the suggestions.  I went and cut the rest of the stair posts and treads and did not see any more signs of ants, so that is a good thing.  All my other parts are 3/4" or less, and I don't remember seeing any signs of ants in those as I was milling them.  So, hopefully I will be alright. 

I don't have access to a kiln, but I was thinking about building a large insulated "box" and using a torpedo heater to heat up the thicker stuff.  Does this sound feasible?  If so, approximately how long would it take for the center of a 6"x6" post to heat up to 140 degrees?  If this is not a good idea, then I will spot treat with the borax solution.

[sigidi]

If it where me in that situation, I'd cut more timber and give this stuff the flick, no point risking it when it comes to your house.

[Tom]

bbjr, I don't know the species of ant you have as a visitor, but Bull ants and Carpenter ants here in Florida do not damage or eat wood, but rather just live in the voids of rot or termite damage.

I have sawn a lot of logs that contained Carpenter ants and when the log hit the bed of the mill, any that were in there would begin moving their nest.  During the period of lunch, the colony would move, eggs and all, to the voids in the legs of the LT40, or into another log.   

I've finished jobs and brought the mill home only to find the colony still in the mill.

I'd be willing to bet that you could take that beam and set it up somewhere near another nest site, hit it a few times with a hammer, turn it over a couple of times and they would begin moving their egg cache.

They don't like standing water.   If it is raining, they will move into a house from a log on the ground, looking for drier places.  When we have a lot of wet weather here, I will find an ant roaming around on the carpet.

I would think that you could get rid of the ants, worse case, with an insecticide spray can. 

A link to a Minn. Extension article.

[limbrat]

if you think they are still there use a pyrithin water based so it dont stain. its not poisin but its like tear gas for bugs. find a entry point use a spray tube like on wd40 and spray it up in the hole. fire up the shop vac and suck them up when they come running out the other holes.
dont use a treatment for ants in your yard that has pyrithin in it dont kill them it just moves them over a few feet, then you gota buy more.

[redbeard]

 

Opened up a nest in a old western red cedar with a bad center. Tordal is what i use got it from the pest control guys.

[Bibbyman]

The only thing I know to do is to imitate the Pink Panther and step on them and go, "Dead aint!, Dead aint!, Dead aint!"

[SwampDonkey]

They do not invade dry wood below 15%, but that is tough to maintain in my climate up here. The EMC can be a bit higher and the kilns only go down to 19%. I think you have to be careful with a dry heat process, that you don't get too hot and damage the wood. The wet heat in saturated air penetrates the wood better at 140 degrees, dry heat might need to be 220 degrees. Wood isn't a good conductor of heat and moist air is a type of catalyst to move heat in the wood at a lower temp. Heating the wood too much can reduce it's rot resistance and strength. I would suggest an inch an hour, like steaming, to get to the centre. After all that consideration I would get some kind of insecticide in there or just look for new wood. But get rid of those suckers one way or another.

[ladylake]

 I've made a lot of firewood with those big black ants in , after splitting and drying there gone. Steve

[fred in montana]

I built a log cabin and one log got a nest in at some point. I never saw them until I moved in. And I didn't know they were there until, for some reason, they all died at once and were laying on the floor in a heap by that log. Never saw any more after that.

Big black ants.

[Chuck White]

These ants were in a customers White Pine.







About the only thing you can do is saw around them and keep turning the cant!

[buildthisfixthat]

easy and safe  highly effective to kill ants in wood or logs ...submerge the wood in water if ants are in the wood you will see them emerge within a few minutes to the surface trying to get out of the water they are not good swimers and cant get air so they drowned ,,dead

[Schramm]

Interesting subject from 2011 and one that I have researched for about 1 year before buying my mill.  I have done so much research on it in fact that my head hurts from all the conflicting information.  No matter the wood moisture, age, species, location or density the bugs are going to come and get at them.  To say that you cannot use the wood is both true and untrue, what I mean by that is while I would not use the part that had the ants the rest of the log or barn timber can be used but with this note:  Kiln drying is a MUST but more then drying is heating the wood.  Even the barn siding that I am buying has to go to a local company that rents space in his kiln for $.30 per board foot to get dryed out as well as heating the wood to kill not only bugs but bacteria.  So many people when I was doing the reserch told me what they believed instead of facts, the fact is why air drying is fine on old wood you must heat it as there are UNSEEN parasites in the wood.
The way I was told to handle reclaimed wood is like this:
Thinner stock such as barn siding is to bring it into the building that you plan on doing your work and let it acclimate for no less then 5 days (longer the better), then once you have it acclimated you can cut and flatten (jointing 1 side and 1 edge) and then allow to again acclimate for no less then 3 days, this time stacking and spacing the boards running a fan through the slats.  Once you have jointed/cut the wood you open the wood which will then need to be given time to dry out some.  At this point you can take it to be kiln dried or plane the face (I would wait for kiln drying).  Kiln drying will bring the wood down to the 6-8% but also raise the temp of the wood to 150-170 degrees for no less then 24 hours.  Normal kiln time for reclaimed wood is norally 5 days depending on species/thickness and number of BF.

Timbers/Beams are a little different but treated more like cutting a log.  Square the 4 sides, cut into thickness and stack in building with spacers between the slabs and allow to air dry and acclimate to the area for 5 days and then transport to the kiln for heat/drying.

I am going to look at a used NILE kiln tomorrow as well as another kiln both will do 2000-3000 bf, hoping to work out a deal so I can control the cost of board feet produced and keep my over head down.

Rob

[YellowHammer]

Normally I do not worry too much about big black carpeter ants in wood that I am sawing, unless they are trying to climb on me.  They are very easy to spot and kill as the lumber is being sawn, either with physical or chemical methods, and their galleries are easily cut away from sawn boards.  However be cautious as lumber infested with carpenter ants is a sure sign that it may also be infested with much more damaging pests.
YH

[pyrocasto]

My mill is indoors so I'm more weary of any bugs inhabiting the logs. Kill most bugs as I see them, and  ants I use borax. I had ants get in my kiln once, they would stay in the cracks of the doors when it was hot, then go inside when it was cooler. Lined the doors with borax and again havent seem then since. I have some pine coming up that has maybe 3/8"-1/2" holes from some ugly looking bug that I'm gonna be paranoid about. Probably debark them out in the lot and spray them a couple days before, then maybe even borax around the area I'm working in.  :D

[Schramm]

Nothing beats old school BORAX, that stuff is a real killer.  Does the heat of the kiln kill the ants?  I know you said that they go to the doorway jambs while it is on just curious if the kiln heat would kill them.

[SwampDonkey]

A kiln should kill them. But that being said, up here the softwood kilns at most milled don't get the core temp up high enough to kill bugs in the middle of a board. I'm sure that they can get hot enough, but they don't run the schedules to get it hot enough in the core. They only dry to 19 % MC also.

Now this is second hand knowledge, not from experience.


I use Borax on the ant hills, but you must mix granular sugar in so they carry it to the nest.

[Solomon]

Kiln drying is always a good thing but if you want to be certian, I have one word for you.  "Chloradane".
And yes you can still get it.   agritrade.com

[pyrocasto]

And yes as long as they are exposed to high enough temp, which means either thin enough boards, or length of heat applied for thicker stuff. I had a bamboo bar we made for my buddy that got a bug infestation. Next day there were little piles of sawdust under it, so in the kiln it went. Next day there were little piles of bugs under it.  :D