[Greenbuilding] heat treated wood siding

[RT]

Picture me scratching my ... head ... with left eye turned down in a  
wrinkle and right side of mouth agape.

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".)

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.)

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"

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.)

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 ?"

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.

(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.)



On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 16:56:55 -0500, Sacie Lambertson  
<sacie.lambertson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am interested in this group's opinion about using heat treated wood on  
> the exterior of a house in NE Kansas?
>
> Thanks, Sacie



-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom DT7-64
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
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