PT Lunber --Poll!

neolitic

Don't want to further muddy up Mac's great thread, so I thought we could try this.
How many here believe that treated lumber (ACQ,AC2,Borate, CCA....) is treated all the way through--in every cell?
Let's keep it gentlemanly.
Civil like.

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silvertree

I dont believe 100%, but we probably dont need 100% treated. I worked on homes in New England that were over 200 years old and the wood plates were still good. Now these houses probably leaked air all over and never stayed wet.
Anytime I cut treated lumber it's always less than "green" in the center, so I assume it's not treated in the center. But maybe it's only the dye that doesn't make it that far. 100% for anything doesn't happen often.

John Hyatt

Over here in Cow Town the .40 pt acq is 80% yellow 1/8'' from the out side,total junk it looks like spray paint.The CCA from the same supplier and treater was always green to the center in fact every unit had plugs in a few boards where they had tested the penatration. The change from cca was a big mistake nothing else is coming close to the long life it provided. John

Ahren

John, is the PT you get Doug. Fir, Yellow Pine, or something else? I think despite all the chest pounding going on, we are realizing that SYP takes much more of the ACQ than the western species that they treat. Until I came in here I didn't even realize that they treated Fir. PT has always been PT, which has always been SYP to me, even after they switched from CCA to ACQ. I think this whole thing is going to turn into an East Coast, West coast thing. Representin' y'all!

BuiltByMAC

Damn, dude, nothing like walkin' in with your big deck swinging! My way or the highway! Until you realized that PT comes in two flavors...
Chest pounding started with your proclamations that nothing was wrong with your methods and continued even after the East/West information...

Why use glue? 'Cause it helps solidify the joints -
Why shouldn't everyone use your dado method? 'Cause some us want to hide our pt lumber -
Why use end cut treatment? 'Cause the pressure treatment doesn't go to the core - out here in the great beyond, it's pressed into the wood with cleats, which makes the outer 1/8"- 1/4" treated. Everything in the middle is pure doug. fir...not so good for outdoor use.
I will end by saying I've never used SYP, pt or not so I have no experience with it and will defer opinions to those who use it. (That's a nice humble attitude, eh, Ahern?)

Here's a pic of a cut 2x12 pressure treated doug. fir - there's your proof...

Mac

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neolitic

Since yellow pine is more dense than fir, I think one can assume that it's even harder to treat.
That said heart pine is a fairly resistant wood because of the resin.
But the sap wood isn't any better than fir.

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curapa

All of my PT is SYP. The SYP is green all throughout, I didnt realize until I joined this forum that Doug Fir was treated and commonly used in other areas of the country.

I have never seen treated lumber like in MAC's pic, with the natural color of the wood in the middle.

curapa

Also, SYP is treated by by being immersed in the liquid preservative and then placed in a pressure chamber to force the chemicals throughout the lumbers entirety.

Ahren

Thank you sir. Next oppurtunity I get I'll post a pic of PT SYP. Like I said, I only use the dadoed stringers on wood decks. PT deck, PT stringers. Ipe deck, Ipe stringers. If I'm doing a composite deck or a hardwood deck w/Azek fascias and riseres, I notch the stringers like everyone else and clad the outsides of the stringers with composite/Azek. All I was ever trying to do was make a suggestion as to how to make a strong set of (wood) stairs with minimal materials and minimal fooling around with blocks, bracing, or supports. There are times to glue, but it's not necessary here.

deckman22

Awhile back I used to buy my PT directly from a treatment plant. The old man that ran the place taught me quite a bit about the lumber industry & about treated lumber. Unfortunately he's no longer with us & his family had no desire to continue with the business. This was with the old cca treated lumber which is still available just not in 2x6's or smaller sizes.

The heartwood would not take treatment only the sapwood. Pine heartwood is very resistant to rot/decay so it's not needed anyway. Only kiln dried lumber will take treatment. Some mills will kiln dry their 4x lumber the same amount of time as 2x lumber thus it will not take treatment properly. This why you'll notice some 4x TP looks like it is only treated on the surface. If the growth rings show it's cut from the center of the log then it's not treated because it's heartwood.

His process was pretty interesting. He had these large cylinders that the lumber would be rolled into on small carts that were on rails. He had a removable section of rail at the door so the end of the cylinder could be shut & bolted up. He had a big pump which would suck all the air out of the cylinder creating a vacume. The pump would then be shut off & a valve opened up allowing the vacume to suck in the treated liquid into the cylinder. Then the pump would be reversed pressurising the liquid into the lumber. The remaining liquid would then be sucked back out into the holding tank, doors opened up & lumber pulled out. The lumber would then be stickered into stacks to air dry. Needless to say his TYP was the best I ever used, he only used #1 yp.

Al

BuiltByMAC

Looking forward to the pics! If you read through some of my threads, you'll see I'm very visually oriented...the more pics, the better. Do you have any pics of your finished staircases too?

Mac

A W Smith

cant get treated doug fir here in the northeast, stuck with southern yellow pine. I often wondered why. As far as the difference in ACQ content between species. I thought that it was required to meet the .4 or .6 pounds of acq per cubic foot of lumber regardless of what you were treating?


hey anyone remember good old Creosote?
I used to love the smell of that stuff.

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John Hyatt

Its all SYP over here from a plant in Ark they have the same kinda plant Al was talking about same deal with the sapwood they claim thats the only part of the tree that can be treated.

My local lumber yard is the only one for miles that sells .40 if fact its hard to get from the treater I had to pull some favors to get my Father in Law in the plant to pick up a few units of the .40 he could not find it anyplace in Ark. All the box stores sell .25 so thats what the plant makes. Its a funny deal my Local Boys sell the .40 for less.25 us usless might just as well build the thing out of Dough Fir framing lumber.

Ahren comes on a little strong but I think he means well, He just needs a little time running his own business. Nothing like leaving money on the table and eating the whole thing to humble a Contractor.

Yo Mac,the last I heard it was Hemlock they were treating up there,you know Hemfir they call it. When I was running a saw in the woods we called it Bamm.

Anyway the stuff I am using it total junk unless like the guy said the green stays on the outside with the chem geting in further but I really doubt that.
I had great hopes for the envirosafe product but they just cant seem to get off the ground with it. John

deckman22

It's a shame the treatment plants don't treat 2x8's & up with .40 cca as it's still legal to do so. It just shows how the big box stores are screwing up the lumber industry.

A plant in Htown makes the TP I get now & they do a lot of cca treating for the coastal areas. Amazing how well the 1.0 cca saltwater immerseable lumber last down there.

Al

Ahren

All of the stuff in CT here, except 5/4, is .40. Even at Blowes and Home Cheapo. All of the 2x, 4x, & 6x stuff here is rated for ground contact.

Bone Saw

its definitely not the big box stores doing it, its environmental lobbiests doing it, same types as the bylaw nazis

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A W Smith

don't even get me started on environmentalists. if I lived in the pacific northwest 15 or 20 years ago I would have gone on a shooting rampage for northern spotted owls., Which reminds me. Around that time i volunteered along with about 150 other people to build a pressure treated playground next to a school. What a great event. It was huge with perhaps 30 something structures to climb on, swing from, balance over and rock. Today its sits practically abandoned like a times beach or love canal neighborhood probably because of the CCA scare.


edit to add
oh i see now they tore it down because it didnt meet current codes, wasnt cca problem
and this was designed by architects touring the country. there was at the time a series of similar plat grounds across the USA designed by this team

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Ahren

All of the cool PT playscapes here have been torn down because of the CCA concerns as well. People were all worried that their kids were going to get cancer because they got a splinter. However, I never heard anyone being concerned about guys like us who spent years breathing that crap in day after day.

A W Smith

And it was the neatest playground i ever saw. The architects had quite an imagination. They were close together though. In an effort to fit it all in. I brought my son there all the time. he was 3 at the time it was built. I see now they are putting mulch or whatnot on the grounds on playgrounds but it also has to meet accessibility standards so you can pull a wheelchair through it. Whats this world coming to? Why not just push your kid out the door wearing a a parka stuffed with Styrofoam shipping peanuts?

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Ahren

Actually, here now, they are starting to do away with the mulch, too. There were kids falling and getting chunks of mulch stuck in them. Whatever happened to the good ol' days of lawn darts and roman candle fights?