Looking to have some syp pressure treated. Wondering if I can air-dry to a certain moisture percentage or if I must pay to have it kiln-dried? Not sure what moisture content you must have to pressure treat. Located in Florida. Thanks for any info. :P
Air dry is fine. Around here, most want under 20% moisture content. You talking lumber or timbers ?
The drier, the better, Travis, but under 20% is OK. From What I've heard, the best place to go is the PRIDE mill in Raiford. The second best is Wood Treaters on Fairfax.
Where ever you go, make sure that the lumber has been cleaned of all sawdust. It jams up their filters and they don't like that.
Visit them ahead of time and make sure of the size of the stack that will make it easier for them to fill their tank. Don't take it to them stickered. Flat stack it. they can get more wood inot a load and the pressure is enough that it will get all the way through the stack.
It will have to be banded. They may want to do it themselves.
Thank yall for the info most helpfull ;D
WHAT ARE YOU PAYING NOW FOR PRESSURE TREATING PROCESS?
I must confess I know nothing about PT or if anyone even does it in my area. How much does it cost ?
Last time I checked, it was 15ยข a board foot in Chipley, Fla. They told me that 25% was fine, but obviously the drier the better. Kiln drying is not needed though.
can any species be pressure treated ?
Some will take PT well others not. We found that sweet gum will take well, and I believe black gum did also. Oak will take, but they recommend cutting up the surface will shallow slices first.
Mark
We have some treaters that will only treat pine. They say that they have to keep the chemicals stabilized and hardwoods have a different sugar and other chemical base. They made the decision to just do pine.
They also get really perturbed if you leave sawdust on the boards. It clogs their filters.
Any one ever used motor oil new or used on post in the ground ?
DEC gets real disturbed over old motor oil in contact with the ground, big fines.
Stonebroke
What the difference between oil and stain?
Heavy metals
Stonebroke
So would new oil be acceptable and or effective?
I think that there are metals present even in new oil. That is what kills the bacteria.
Stonebroke
The place I have found to PT my lumber will only treat pine. They want the MC down to at least 20%.
The owner said he could treat under high pressure in and hour and fifteen minutes. He is an hour away so I will wait and bring it home the same day. I have to call ahead of time and schedule a time when they are not busy.
The owner quoted me $75.00 per thousand for the fence/decking chemical.
Does any one know of a place in NH that does PT ?
Speaking of treating , has anyone done their own treating with Penta !I can get my hands on some but don't know formula to mix. Have treating tank , all componets, but just need mixing formula. Would appreciate info if someone knows. Thanks customdave
Tim L, I seriously doubt that the Gov't will get around to checking your fence posts right away, but there's another good reason to not treat them with oil. That reason is, it doesn't work! In an outdoor application such as a trailer deck, it will cause the wood to shed rainwater and preserve the life of it significantly, but in the ground it won't even slow it down a little bit. If you can't get your wood to a p/t facility, you're better off to just buy pt wood, imho.
Thanks Dang ,I'm not familiar with Penta . What is it ?
TimL, Penta is an old treating that you soak timbers &posts in , the longer you leave it the better. This product was outlawed years ago, envoirmentel issues I suppose its a darn good treating for pine, spruce, tamarack. I'm looking for recipe as I can obtain in crystal form.It has to be disolved in methonal first then added to desial fuel, just need to know these mixtures ? customdave
Does anyone have any leads on a company that will Pressure Treat in the NY, CT, PA, NJ area? Thanks in advance.
Check with Northeast Treaters in Belchertown, MA
There are different levels of treatment...more chemical is needed when the wood will be in contact with the ground than when above ground. Incidentally, PT usually uses a vacuum first to pull out the air and then when the vacuum is released, the wood sucks in the preservative and the added pressure pushes in a little more. Then, a slight vacuum at the end pulls out any loose preservative near the surface so the surface looks dry and has less oozing out of preservative initially.
The depth of treatment is also a factor...for large timbers, like a railroad tie, the chemical is measured in the outer 2" and not the core.
The reason for drying is twofold. First, when you dry, the wood may warp or crack or otherwise lose grade or quality. So, after the first drying, the "defective" pieces are withdrawn and not treated as it would be a waste of money. Second, to get the chemical into the wood, the water has to be removed so there is room for the chemical and the water or other liquid that carries the chemical into the wood.
Some people do pressure treat wetter wood. They put as much chemical in as will go in...usually not much. It is called "treating to refusal." It looks good on the outside, but is of little value. So, this is usually considered to be fraudulent and will not have a legitimate treating label or stamp.
If you dry wood to an average of 20% MC, the core may be still too wet for much chemical, but the outside will absorb a lot creating a barrier for entry of bugs or decay, until the wood cracks deeply, is drilled into, has a nail inserted, has an end cut, etc. All of these expose untreated wood. Sometimes drilled holes are swabbed with preservative before having a screw or bolt inserted. Likewise, fresh cuts are treated with preservative before use.
If you dry under 20% MC, you will get more retention of chemical, all else being equal. This is expensive, but for ground contact may be worth it. At 25% MC retention can be less, but still ok for above ground. The treater can also vary the retention amounts by the way the equipment is operated. Even so, if the MC of incoming wood varies greatly, preservative amounts will vary.
The chemicals used for treating can vary...not all PT is the same. Government control.
After treating, the wood must be "dripped dry" and the chemical that drips off is recaptured. Sometimes, to get better retention and lock the chemical in the wood better, and get an drying defects to show up, the wood is also kiln dried after treatment (KDAT) at certain temperatures. Costly but worth it for some uses. Sometimes we are concerned about residual chemical deposited on the surface as it can rinse off in the first rain storm.
A key consideration when doing PT is the cost of failure of the treated wood. That is, if the failure causes a deck to fall and injure people, or the fence post fails and expensive animals escape, or a tie fails and a train wrecks, it is worth the cost to have a well treated wood product.
Mention should be made that scrap and sawdust from treated wood should never be allowed to be on the ground or left on the building site, as the poison will be available for animals and people to come in contact with it and it can seep into ground water. Therefore, capture treated wood debris and dispose of properly (municipal dump landfill sites are ok, at least last year). In a playground that uses treated wood, it is especially critical to avoid sawdust and other debris etc.
Using oil is likely to increase flammability (issue with a grass fire), plus gravity and heat from the sun will pull the oil down the post and into the soil. Not good. Probably illegal due to the environmental damage. Ever wonder why creosote treated poles have a dark ring in the soil around them and the upper sections appear to have little creosote?
I am new to the site as well and trying to see if there is any locations in East Texas to get SYP pressure treated.
Thanks
Gene nailed my own experience with failed PT pine!
In the 1980's my wife was working for the USDA, Daniel Boone NF and when picking her up at work one day I noticed that they were having rough sawed pine PT for their own forest uses.
Given that our home is a rustic structure, i.e. a self built log cabin, I liked the rough surface for building a large deck I'd designed.
I learned that a PT facility outside Mt. Sterling, KY, ~ 30 miles from me had done the treating. I went there and ask them if they would treat my lumber, was told that the moisture wasn't real critical because the chamber pulled a vacuum thus the water came out and the preservatives went in. My wood was not at 20% for certain but I went with what the PT plant foreman had told me. Moving forward some years, maybe 10 or so, I began to notice some 2" rough sawed deck floor boards begining to fail. I went to the same company to ask what they'd be willing to do about my problem of several thousand BF of deck failing. They had moved to what is likely still their current location in Winchester, KY by that time. The two people in the office were the owner and the secretary who told me she'd been with them the entire time they were in operation, including prior to the newer owner I was dealing with. I tried to be civil but the guy got real angry and asked me what I'd expected, etc.. The secretary chimed in that the only failed PT wood she'd ever heard of was from horse farm fence boards chewed beyond the PT treatment barrier thus into untreated wood. They were then a Geogia-Pacific wood treatment facility, before a no brand I guess. So I asked the owner what the meaning of the PT tags was on all his PT products. I sort of knew that answer as I'd used the free Ozmose mail-in, teaching program with my own carpentry students in the past. It was a basic wood treatment tutorial on how to use, build with PT lumbers based on specific use and best practice. Students would do a lesson then I'd mail in their answers and at the end they'd get a cute PT Diploma.
So the guy goes into a file cabinet and pulls out what looks like a pile of cell phone service contracts :D and proceeds to tell me the lawyers have made his plastic board end tags irrelevant as it were.
In the end I was told they treat a new batch of wood I provided for no cost but not cover the considerable cost of me failed deck. Since I'm not much of a sue people sort of man I ate a very bad experience. I do feel that moisture of my wood was an issue for certain. Some lasted, much did not! As I tore down this huge deck I kept those boards which showed no weathering damage and still have some on a stickered pile these many years later and looking great and waiting for another reuse. I did use a bunch of them to frame my WM sawmill shed some years back. I'll probably go through most of the rest as porch floor joists for my current off-grid small cabin.
That deck was given liberal applications of proper preservative stains once it had dried enough to hold a stain.
As many of you know that PT chemical plays havoc with regular steel nails!
As a side note I'll add this tidbit: That same PT facility yard where my failed PT lumber was (supposedly) treated is now a small subdivision just outside Mt. Sterling, KY. A few years back it became a big news item that the soil in those home owners yards was heavily contaminated from that PT plant. I honestly have no idea what happened after the Feds became involved as there were many homes in there and don't know of what resolution came about?