Fighting mildew...again!

[Qweaver]

I think I'm spending as much time fighting mildew as I am sawing tember.  Almost every stack that we have made this summer is getting mildewed.  I did not have this problem last summer.  The only time that I had a problem is when I didnt sticker it right away.  Between the pressure washer gas and the bleach,  I'm spending more than the sawing cost.
Is it practical/beneficial to spray the boards with a light coat of bleach as they come off of the saw?  I'm getting pretty sick of this. >:(
Quinton

[DanG]

Having the same problem here, Q.  I doesn't seem to matter if it is stickered in the sun, shade, or shed.  I'm not sure what to do about it.  I have one idea that I haven't tried yet;  I'm gonna spray a stack down with the garden hose, then dust it with Solubor.  To do this, I'll use the leaf blower and pour the powder into the stream of air, in hopes that it will dissolve on the wet wood.  I have no idea if it will work.  I probably should treat a batch of stickers first, or I'll have green stripes across the lumber. : :D :D

[Fla._Deadheader]

Just a thought here. Are you wiping-brushing the loose sawdust off the boards before stacking ??  That's where a lot of mildew starts.

[Tom]

How wide are your stacks?
That's why I started making my stacks 4 and 6 feet wide.  If you don't get a good air flow, stuff grows on the moist surface.

It's really bad on an unprotected stack in the rain.  The rain is washing all of the spores in the county out of the air onto your stack of wood.

When we would stack in humid weather, we did spray each board with a 3:1 or sometimes a 6:1 water/bleach solution. Depended on the pocket book.  It heflped.  It's also important that the stack be covered good.  Preferably by an open barn.

Solubor might work.  Remember Rusty, from Jacksonville?  He used to make up his own Borax concoction and put on the boards and timbers.  Then he wrapped them in housewrap and built a cover over them.  He had very little mildew or fungus growth.

It's also important that you get rid of the sawdust when you stack.  Especially if you anticipate a problem.  The sawdust holds the moisture and acts like a seed bed.

[Qweaver]

We are being very careful to get all of the sawdust off and we're stacking in a shed that I built just for stacking wood...it's absolutely dry in there but we do have a lot of ambient mosture.  We have had some very wet periods this summer.  I know that I really need a kiln but as soon as we get the cabin dried in I am going to start stacking wood in there with heat and ventilation for the winter.  We had no mildew during last winter of course, but Sarah won't let me stay up here all winter :D unless I stay alone :'(  All of the timbers that we have stained are doing fine.  All of my stacks are 4' wide with 1" stickers.  Nothing cut and stacked from last year has mildewed during this moist summer...I guess they were dry enough before the rain started.

Quinton

[Don P]

On one job I sprayed a solubor solution on the house addition siding, stickered it, later staining it before nailing it up.
Later I brought out more poplar to replace some of the outbuilding siding that was shot. I didn't borate it, we wanted it to just naturally age like what was on there . The whole southeast side had to be replaced and there were 3 rows of siding over the door that were long. I didn't have them in one piece in the new stock, but I saw 3 long boards in the house siding pile.

I went by that place a few weeks ago. There's three shiny boards over the grainery door.

Its been bad drying conditions, that's for sure.

Plastic on a bermed up floor might help. Is the shed just a roof?

[limbrat]

what if you put up a sheet plastic vapor barrier in your shed. Through a cheap window ac unit in with it and make a dry spot for your wood. It might be ugly but it might help. The ac that i got was around $80 and the roll sheeting was around $30 a roll you could likley get the whole thing done in under a day for around $200. It wouldnt be perfect and it wouldnt be pretty but it might be a cheap quick fix.