Lumber Wrap

[kderby]

In an earlier post I complained about not being able to find lumber wrap.  Well, I found one source and there are likely to be others showing up. 

I have a mill and kiln for drying the lumber.  I also air dry a fair volume of heavy timbers.  Dry lumber is favorable to the customer (they don't have to ship/handle water weight).  It is a serious quality problem when lumber units get wet, stained or moldy.  Right now my poorly covered units are frozen together like a brick.  When it warms up those units will be fuzzy with mold.  I use lumber wrap heavily to protect the better grades of dry lumber.  I keep the inside of my warehouse reserved for work space, equipment and premium lumber.  Lumber wrap lets me store lower grade lumber outside.  I don't see much discussion on this forum about it. 

I would sure like to hear from y'all about the good and bad of lumber wrap in your experience.  The stock I have is paper lined.  The material I am looking to buy is woven poly...not paper lined.  The poly material will be recyclable.  I would really like to hear if the woven poly is a bad thing before I order up some rolls.

The price is hovering around four cents per square foot of coverage.  An 8'long x 4'wide unit of lumber would cost $3.50 to protect it from the elements.  That seems cheap to me considering the effort to create all that lumber.

Message me if you want the supplier I have located.  They have locations on the west and east coast. 

I encouraged this supplier to sponser an advertisement on Forestry Forum.  Response to this post will demponstrate if lumber wrap is a non-starter or if there is a potential market for the material.  Further advertising discussions I leave up to the supplier and "da Boss"...Jeff.

Thanks Y'all

Kderby

[backwoods sawyer]

The one thing that you do not want to do is tight wrap a unit that has been dried to 13% with the paper lined style of wrap and then ship it to phoenix AZ during the summer. It turns it into a Petri dish and grows allsorts of warm fuzzy things. By changing to a narrower wrap that just covered the ends and the top, it allowed for sufficient airflow. Later, increasing dry time by about 6 hours lowered the moisture content to 11% increased the drying defects by 2% but solved the fuzzy problem. As for using it to keep the units dry I would be concerned about the fact that it was designed to breath, and allows water in as well. There is no substitute for a dry shed. Take a min and compare the cost of the warp over a few years verses the cost of a dry shed. A dry shed dose not have to be anything fancy, just a roof, maybe even a couple of walls to protect from the elements.
But then again wrap is better then nothing at all.

[laffs]

the wrap that we used was just to keep the u v rays from discoloring the lumber, we kept it in a shed yo keep the water off it . for industrial lumber (the lowest grade) we had clear plastic bags and it sat outside. the covers and bags come in 1000 ft and 2000 ft.  the claer plastic also served as a way to identify industrial lumber too.