[Greenbuilding] Timbersil (and alternatives to)

[Benjamin Pratt]

RT--
Very interesting post.
I believe that pressure treated wood has not been dried before
treating, so the DIY'er, using dried wood, might have an easier time
getting the preservative to penetrate.
I had no idea the penetration of treated wood was such a small depth.
next time i have to put posts into the ground ill make sure the end I
put in the ground is not one I have cut off!
Ben


On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 1:16 PM, RT <ArchiLogic at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:03:38 -0400, Ron Cascio <roncascio at verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Having had the developer of TimberSil (Karen Slimak) at our house for
>> lunch last year and getting into the process enough to get confused, I can
>> say that simply dipping SYP in sodium silicate and air drying it doesn't
>> even come close to what it takes to make the product Rob.
>
> I don't recall ever having used the word "dipping" as being part of the
> method but I'm not surprised that the developer of a proprietary product
> would
> describe her product in such a fashion so as to make it sound so
> complicated and confusing as to discourage potential customers from making
> it themselves.
>
> The reality is that using sodium silicate solutions as a preservative has
> been in common use for long before Ms. Slimak (and her great-x-##
> grandparents) was born.
>
> In fact, I have a carton of duck eggs so-preserved (as has probably been
> done by the Chinese for millennia) sitting in the pantry  ... and a couple
> of reprints of a little book (if anyone wants one of them, you're welcome
> to it) that was first published a century ago (1910) in which the original
> author gathered
> together a collection of useful home-made items and practises that were
> probably common knowledge to many farmers back then:
>
>           "Handy Farm Devices "
>            ( and how to make them )
>
> (reprinted in Y2K by one of Leonard Lee's (ie the founder of Lee Valley
> Tools  http://www.leevalley.com ) companies "Algrove Publishing" just up
> the road in Almonte)
>
> At the back of the book where there is a collection of miscellany, there
> is a ~page-long section (my guess ~800 words or less) entitled "Preserving
> Wood" wherein about a half-dozen or so different treatments and how to
> achieve them are described.
>
> One of them is a description for using borax (ie like the
> proprietary product "TimBor" ?) and another is one using silicate of
> potassa which, if one is familiar with waterglass, is often mentioned in
> the same breath as sodium silicate.
>
> Curious then, how simple and probably uneducated farmers (who probably
> never learned how to read) a century-or-more back were able to utilise
> waterglass solutions to effectively preserve stuff like eggs and wood  ...
> but 21st C. urbanites (probably with post secondary educations and
> super-powerful computing devices and a world of knowledge at their
> fingertips) are befuddled by the whole thing.
>
>
> re: BCJohn's point about knowing how effective a DIY treatment is:
>
> I've never seen the Timbersil product and don't know anything about its
> production process but I'd be confident in wagering that it's similar to
> that which is used for making pressure-treated lumber using CCA or ACQ as
> the preservative.
>
> I would also be fairly confident in wagering that the target depth of
> penetration of the preservative would be similar -- for CCA-treated lumber
> the standard used to require a mere 3/16" for lumber intended for
> above-grade use and a whole 3/8" (!) for lumber intended for below-grade
> apps (ie PWFs).
>
> To imbue the wood with the preservative (whether it be CCA, ACQ, sodium or
> potassium silicate etc) all require soaking the wood in a heated saturated
> solution for about a day (varies depending upon wood species/dimensions),
> drying and repeating.
>
> Commercial pressure-treating as the name implies, uses a pressurised
> chamber ( and heat of course) to accelerate the preservative treatment,
> not unlike the difference between using a pressure cooker instead of a
> stock pot to poach
> a bird.
>
> I would hope that an aspiring Greenie doing their own waterglass wood
> treatment would try to develop a solar-powered cooker rather than one that
> uses non-renewables.
>
> The point that I was hoping to get to before rambling on about the
> particulars, is that it should be relatively simple to test the
> effectiveness of a DIY treatment.
>
> ie I would probably
>        1. Cut a piece of the treated wood and measure the depth of
> preservative
> penetration and if it's better than the industry-standard minimum (ie the
> worst allowed by Law) then you've met one of the criteria and then
>
> 2. Take a piece of the treated wood and subject it to fire. If it doesn't
> burn within the time specified by industry standard for the proprietary
> product, then I'd say the treatment was effective.
>
> ... and so on.   No ?
>
> As for convincing a Code official ... if they have a functioning brain and
> at least one good eye, ... well, you know.
>
> --
> === * ===
> Rob Tom
> Kanata, Ontario, Canada
> < A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
> manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply"
>
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-- 


b e n j a m i n p r a t t

professor art+design
the university of wisconsin stout