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<body><div>Picture me scratching my ... head ... with left eye turned down in a wrinkle and right side of mouth agape.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm wondering why the wood has been labeled as "heat treated" as opposed to the term "kiln dried" that has been in use since long before I was born and I'm OLD, real OLD. (Okay, okay. Just "not so young anymore".)</div><div><br></div><div>Using dried lumber for any sort of building task is pretty much always a Good Thing. It provides a degree ("degree" depending upon degree of drying) of dimensional stability, less chance of distortion (ie twisting, warping, cupping, bowing etc.) and self-destruction (ie cracking and splitting) due to uneven/uncontrolled moisture loss during drying (from "green" lumber state) ... provided that the dried lumber is kept dry prior to and after installation at all stages (ie storage by supplier, delivery, on-site storage, in situ before finishing if finishing etc.) </div><div><br></div><div>I remember a little book from the olde days when the Whole Earth Catalogue was in vogue extolling the virtues of building with green lumber (in one word "cheap"). I think that the same author came out with a subsequent book with a title being something like "The Heartbreak of Building with Green Lumber"</div><div><br></div><div>Using "kiln dried" lumber as opposed to "air-dried" provides a higher degree of assurance that any bugs that were in the green lumber will have been killed, and that's also a Good Thing. (Not such a Good Thing from a cabinetry perspective though, but we're not talking about cabinetry here.)</div><div><br></div><div>So if the appellation "Heat Treated" is describing a process that is the same as "kiln drying", then one should be able to expect the same benefits as one would expect in using "kiln dried". But they don't use the conventional age-old term "kiln dried" which makes me wonder "Why not ?"</div><div><br></div><div>The suspicious part of me thinks "because it's not the same and is just a marketing term to make the product appear as though is they have done something done to it to make it better but in reality is just that -- a marketing gimmick that is akin to polishing a turd. But perhaps the reality isn't as bad as that. </div><div><br></div><div>(I know that "Heat Treated" is a term that is used in the wooden shipping pallet industry and I probably wouldn't lose a wager if I were to venture that the standards in the pallet manufacturing industry aren't quite at the same level as the home building industry -- or at least, I hope that's the case.) </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 16:56:55 -0500, Sacie Lambertson <sacie.lambertson@gmail.com> wrote:<br></div><br><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0.80ex; border-left: #0000FF 2px solid; padding-left: 1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I am interested in this group's opinion about using heat treated wood on the exterior of a house in NE Kansas?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Thanks, Sacie</div></div>
</blockquote><br><br><br><div id="M2Signature"><div>-- </div><div>=== * ===<br>Rob Tom DT7-64 <br>Kanata, Ontario, Canada</div></div></body></html>