Using green white oak posts. How to treat? How to paint?

[bene.job]

I'm building an outdoor classroom. It is a pretty unconventional design. Lots of 6-12 ft posts supporting seating and shade sails. I plan to use green white oak 4x6s from a local mill. 

I plan to paint the white oak the school colors. 
What should I use to treat the area below ground? Can I prime the oak while it is still green?

thanks for any help. 

[scsmith42]

The best treatment that I'm aware of below grade is copper napthanate (CuNap).  You can purchase it in concentrate and then thin it with diesel.

White oak has a very slow absorption rate, so you'll need to soak the posts in it for a while.  Most folks will use some 55 or 30 gallon steel drums, set the posts down in them (you'll need to support the tops) and then fill with the solution, and refill as needed until it won't soak any more.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

You cannot treat green white oak wood effectively because it is full of water and no room for the treatment solution.  Plus the dry wood is not very porous anyway...that is why it is used for wine and whiskey barrels.

In the "Old Days" one treating technique was to heat the wood after it was partly dried  and then put it the hot wood in a barrel of cool creosote or other chemical.  As the wood cooled, it created a vacuum as the air in the wood cooled, sucking in the solution.  One advantage of drying ahead is that the cracks are there, so when put into a solution, the treatment goes into the cracks too.  If it cracks after treating and drying, you would expose fresh, untreated wood.  This will not work well with white oak however.

If you use white oak, you do need to remove all sapwood.  Even then,if you do not treat the wood with a preservative. in ten years you will see some failures...maybe even six years.