solubor liquid

[WDH]

Yes Sir.  

[Sixacresand]

The local farm supply store orders it for me when I need it.  

[farmfromkansas]

Coop finally had a bag this morning when I went down there.  Still not sure about the price.  Have to wait till they get the bill from their supplier.  Brand name is 20 mule team borax.  

[Southside]

I don't think there is another brand name out there.  

[Ianab]

Solubor and 20 Mule are both brands of Borax. The Solubor is probably better because it's formulation gives the most dissolved Boron possible in the water, and it's small particles dissolve easier. It's designed to be added to hydroponics systems and liquid fertiliser to provide trace amounts of Boron.

20 Mule is just regular borax, usually sold as a cleaning product (It's now made by Dial, the soap company). It will work, even if your solution has slightly less boron, and you have to stir it more. 

Either way, both give you borate you can spray on wood to deter bugs. 

[doc henderson]

so if the borates protect from fungus and termites, what do the copper containing chemicals protect wood from, like in pressure treating.  I know that nothing is as good as pressure treating the wood for decay resistance, but is it better than nothing to soak post bottoms?  I think the borates wash away easily.  I am sure it is expensive and hard to find, so do not want to waste money if of no benefit.  thanks.  @GeneWengert-WoodDoc  @WDH  @Ianab   practically speaking is the solubor/timbor for spraying fresh milled green wood to protect it while it dries?  In what situation and species are you using it.  I assume not on all milled wood.

[Ianab]

Copper is even more toxic to fungus and bacteria, and isn't as water soluble. Throw come Chromium and Arsenic in the mix and it wont rot, but tends to be a bit toxic to people as well.  

So Borate treated is OK if the wood stays dry. If it's subject to weather the borate eventually washes out. 

Locally you buy pressure treated grade H1.2 and it's just borate (under pressure). Fine for inside use as the bugs wont touch it, but not out in the weather or ground contact. The grades go up from there till you get to stuff that's rated 50 years in salt water. Don't start licking that stuff, it's practically dripping metallic salts. 

[WDH]

I treat hardwood lumber off the mill for lyctid powderpost beetle.  This is the beetle that is most worrisome in hardwood as it infects hardwoods in the 20% moisture content range and below.  Ambrosia beetles, which are more common, cannot survive once the lumber dries and therefore is of no consequence in dry hardwood lumber.

The female powderpost beetle lays an egg on a drying or dry hardwood board, and the larvae hatch and chew/burrow into the wood by traversing the vessel elements (called pores or water transporting cells) and begin their life cycle.  They can be in the wood for several or more years before any evidence of their presence is noticed.  Once mature, they bore out and seek a mate to start the life cycle over again.  When they bore out, they leave neat little piles of mixed sawdust and beetle feces called frass.  Powderpost beetle tunnels are clogged and filled with this frass.  This is not what you want to see in or on your lumber. Their tunnels ruin the appearance and strength of the wood.  When the adults bore out and leave your board, they will re-infest the same board or other candidate boards in the vicinity.

The borate is sprayed on all surfaces of green hardwood lumbers.  It soaks into the wood thereby creating a barrier layer to thwart and kill the very small larvae and shut them out from the very beginning.  As long as the board is not repeatedly saturated with water like rainfall, the borate will remain in the wood and provide long term protection.  However, once the larvae are in the wood and you spray it after the infestation, the normal concentration of borate will not penetrate deep enough to kill the developing beetles.  When the adults hatch and bore out, they will consume the borate at the surface of the wood and the infestation is halted.  The original infested boards, though, will still be ruined. 

The beetles seem to prefer the coarse grained woods with the larger pores making it easier for the larvae to burrow deep into the wood.  These are the ring porous hardwood species like all the oaks, hickory, elm, pecan, ash, etc.  The beetles will also infest the smaller pored diffuse porous hardwood too like cherry, yellow poplar, birch, maple, etc.  But, the beetles seem to prefer the larger pored woods.  In most cases, the infestation is limited to the sapwood where the sugars that they feed on are located.  Fortunately, this lyctid powderpost beetle does not infest softwoods like pine, so no borate spray is needed for green pine.  If you are treating for termites, that is another story.

[farmfromkansas]

Woods I have had the most problems with are hackberry and ash, mullberry, even hedge, or osage orange and locust. Have not sawed the cypress logs yet, assume they would need to be sprayed as well. The brown wood in walnut seems to be immune.

[doc henderson]

So Danny, I just made my first pallets and that is why I ask.  so I guess I should spray my pallets.  Is there something better for the bases that will be set on concrete, and I worry that the bottoms may remain moist for periods of time.  the green copper containing stuff sounds interesting, but maybe it is advertising and my eye seeing green as rot resistant after years of seeing pressure treated lumber.  there is also a newer pressure treated wood I used in Co. building a bridge, and it was reddish brown.

[doc henderson]

Does the borate go into the wood enough that it could be top coated to protect the borate from washing off?  or can it be added to a spar urethan as an example, to help maintain that barrier?  @WDH  does soaking help pernitrate.  I even wondered about making a vacuum chamber to adapt to say a 4 x 4 and pull a vacuum and then release borate liquids into the chamber to be pulled in as the vacuum is released.    I am busy, but occasionally let my mind wonder!  I know the tubes in the wood can be maintained.  When I did research at KU, we measured the tension inside a plant using a tool nicknamed "the bomb"  to measure the pressure needed to push sap out the bottom of a stem looking at water stress and plant adaptation.  Dr. Craig Martin told me "we are gonna rip plant physiologist a new EDITED BY ADMIN"  but we had a neg. result! :D :D :D

[doc henderson]

 

 

[Don P]

"Washing away" is not really the best way to think about how borate moves in wood and leads to a common misunderstanding of how it performs.

"Diffusion is the net movement of anything from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in concentration."

Borates typically move through wood that is above fiber saturation point by diffusion. What this means is that if you have successfully gotten borate to diffuse into the wood by saturating it well while it is above FSP it will only diffuse back out of cells if they are again above the FSP and there is a "sink" for them to diffuse into. So a post in contact with the wet ground will likely rise above FSP and the soil provides a sink for the borate to diffuse into, the borate will move from the wood at higher concentration to the soil until they reach a uniform concentration. However, even there the utilities have found that a borate bandage at ground level is often worthwhile.

Casual wetting of above ground wood probably isn't going to raise the moisture content of the wood to the FSP so this is where the concept of washing away falls apart. Assuming you did a decent job of building up a "bank" of borate just under the surface of the wood, if the surface is wetted and loses some of its borate the cells just below that are now at a higher concentration and as they saturate the borate will become mobile and diffuse toward that depleted surface. That is the happy part of leachability. In a bankrupt apartment complex where the units were framed but uncovered for 3 years out in the weather, the levels of borate in the wood were still sufficient to do their job. Casual wetting isn't that big of a problem. When using it on siding or above ground exposed wood the application of a water repelling top coat pretty much solves that issue altogether. Railroad ties that are borated and then creosoted perform better than either treatment alone, that is what is going on. The borate goes to the bone even in hard to penetrate species, the creosote provides the water repellency and surface protection.

Vacuum and pressure are ways of getting it in deeper as is dipping. I have a dip tray that I've used quite a bit, I need to build a third one, it's about worn out. Ive seen tanks at several log home companies that they dip bundles of logs in. Mixing it with your finish will not let it penetrate into the wood, it will also probably cloud the finish. My pallets are pretty well borated, I've used a heavy nap roller and borated lumber on them as I stack as well.

Beau-ron is another form of DOT that I've gotten here, that is from Drexel, there are several other sources.

[WDH]

Woods I have had the most problems with are hackberry and ash, mullberry, even hedge, or osage orange and locust. Have not sawed the cypress logs yet, assume they would need to be sprayed as well.

The hardwoods mentioned are all ring porous with the large earlywood pores.
Cypress is a softwood so the lyctid powderpost beetles do not infest it.  Cypress does not need to be sprayed to protect from these powderpost beetles.
Doc, woods with a finish like spar urethane are poor candidates for the beetles.  The finish provides a film that the tiny larvae do not penetrate.  Once a wood is dry, planed, and finished with poly, varnish, etc., the potential for powderpost infestation is very negligible.  The problem is having them in the wood before planing and finishing.  Then the adults will hatch and bore out, but it is unlikely they will reinvest the board or other boards with the finish applied to them. 


 
A WORD OF WARNING ABOUT SELLING AIR DRIED RING POROUS HARDWOOD LUMBER TO THE PUBLIC.  It would be very prudent to develop a disclaimer as to the absence or presence of lyctid powderpost beetles in non-borated treated air dried hardwood.
 
This red oak wainscott v-groove was installed in my bathroom in early 2013 before I got my kiln.  It was air dried to 13% under a shed, pre-planed to 7/8", stickered inside my house for 5 months From April to August.  It was not sprayed with borate.  Initial M% going in house was 13.5%.  Equilibrated to 9% through the Summer inside my air conditioned house.  Machined into v-groove in the Fall of 2013.  Sanded and finished with several coats of satin polyurehtane.  From the pic, you can see the sawdust and frass on the little table from the exit of an adult powderpost beetle.  All in all, I found about 6 of these little piles of sawdust.  I was sitting in the bathroom "doing my business" when I noticed this.  The date of the picture was March 15, 2018!!!  Almost 5 years from when I installed it, adult powderpost bettles bored out. 

Selling green lumber to the public is safe as the green wood is not dry enough for powderpost beetle infestation.  Selling dried lumber that has not has been pre-sprayed with borate while green or either not sterilized with heat in a kiln carries risk of powderpost beetles being in that lumber. In Middle Georgia, that risk is a significant one. 

[doc henderson]

I guess I am also thinking about the wood in contact with concrete or soil that remains most and begins to rot.  is that all fungal, or is there a bacterial component, and if so what can stop it.  is the copper better than the borate stuff.  sounds like it can be painted on.  thinking about the bottom of my skids on the pallet.

[doc henderson]

Maybe at Jakes (if I get to go)  we can do this as a side topic.  best to apply while green? so it stops it as well to migrate into the wood!?  how wet to apply it meaning what dose to wood, how do you practically get all sides,  before stickering?
I know the bottom plate on concrete has to be treated.

[samandothers]

Danny,
If hardwood was cut and air dried then sprayed/rolled with Solubor mixture and kept in the dry will this deter the adults from boring the wood?  

[WDH]

That would work as long as the beetles had not already infested the air dried lumber before it was sprayed.  As far as I know, there is no way to tell when the female beetles have laid eggs on the lumber and if the larvae have hatched and worked their way into the wood.  It would certainly deter any future infestation of that lumber. 

[doc henderson]

it was stated that the lumber should be green so a aqueous milieu exists where a concentration gradient can exist, and the boric acid can migrate in.  how much do you spray on the wood.  just a misting, or wet it well, all sides. is the copper stuff better or worse in any way.  sounds like you can roll it on.

[Don P]

Dripping wet, to the point of runoff, all sides with a 10-15% solution which is 1-1.5 lbs per gallon/ H2O. This ain't fancy French perfume, get it saturated, lots of it. A few drops of dish soap helps break the surface tension so it wets out better. DOT is actually borax+boric acid. If applied to dry wood mix it with up to 50% of a glycol which is very slow drying so helps with deeper penetration, look up the MSDS's for TimBor vs Bora-Care. (I've had to treat old buildings for instance, in one case I kept a log cabin wet for 30 days using 2 sprays a day for a month, I finally used a syringe on the few remaining active holes, that historic structure was et up with them.) I'm not sure if the Viking ship Vasa is still being PEGged and borated, its been going on for years trying to stabilize it. Read up on borate and dip diffusion on the USFPL website for more third party info on all this, lots there.

What we are talking about here is protecting our sawn lumber from infestation. In a situation that calls for treated lumber you are not going to get the kind of protection in any of these home applied methods compared to treated lumber. Not all treatment is the same, look up "Use Categories" for treated wood and learn to read the tags UC numbers, most of the stuff sold at the big box is not very well treated, generally above ground non ground contact use. I have to specify and often special order heavy treatment for ground contact or foundation uses. Our paint on or spray on's are not the same as pressure treatment. If it is important or hard to replace factor that into these decisions.

[farmfromkansas]

Doc might consider using concrete blocks under his pallets on the ground, they are hollow so if you put the block with the hollow part on the ground, maybe with a flat board under, to keep the concrete block from pushing into the ground, would help keep his pallets dry.  Forgot to mention elm, cut up a big tree, and the entire pile collected PPB, and tried to get it hot enough to kill the bugs by putting it in a old metal grainery, just too much wood, not enough heat.

[farmfromkansas]

Could someone post how much RV antifreeze per gallon of mix, to slow the drying of the solubor?

[doc henderson]

great info and ideas guys.  I am in the process of pouring 4.5 foot wide sidewalks along the retaining wall that separates family area, from Dad/Man area.  the pallets will set on the concrete with a 1/4 inch slope over the width for run off.  It will be stamped to look like wood, so some ridges and valley to set on.  if no soil,rot should not be as bad.  I was worried about the wood on concrete for month and constant dampness.  so as much mold and bacteria worries as infestation.  so you spray before you sticker.  cannot see achieving the saturation you speak of just randomly spraying a whole pallet full of wood

[WDH]

Yes, you spray before your sticker.  I stack boards one on top of the other as they come off the mill in a single  tall stack as high as I can go before the danger of tipping over becomes too great.  This way, you can spray all the edges of all the boards on both sides all at the same time.  Then spread them out flat in a single long horizontal row, spray one side, flip, spray the other, then sticker.  It is a pain, but powderpost beetles are a bigger pain. 

[Don P]

Danny beat me to it while I was typing slow.

It is a layer by layer process, do one side, flip the boards and do the other. Hit the edges while flipping. I've pretty much given up on sprayers whenever possible and either dip or roll. The house I'm working on will get sprayed down in the next week or two, prior to letting the trades in, don't want to wet wiring. BTW it is not corrosive to metal.

Glycol is expensive. Bora-Care is 50% ethylene glycol replacing that much water. One of the other brands uses propylene glycol, another uses polyethylene glycol, all are slow drying alcohols. Being cheap I gauge the drying conditions. If its a slow drying day I use less, if it is hot, low humidity and in the sun and breeze it takes more. I usually mix in 5 gallon batches unless filling the dip tank. When I need to add glycol I usually add 1/2 to 1 gallon per batch so I'm a good bit leaner than Bora-Care. If the wood is green don't waste the money on glycol, that is only needed for old work. I'm not sure how it does with mold and bacteria, bugs and decay fungi have been more my focus. I've never used straight borax so not sure how it will perform. One side note, ppb's are feeding on starch rather than sugar from what I've read. They are both carbs present in the wood so not sure that it really matters.