I worked as a research assistant at Oregon State University with wood decay and preservatives for 8 years. Both Douglas-fir and hem-fir are very difficult to treat, so they incise the surface of these species to open up more end grain prior to treatment. This increases preservative penetration to about 1/8" deeper than the incisions which meets the specs. However, it weakens the wood and increases the rapidity of moisture cycling of the wood in service. Southern yellow pine is about as strong as Douglas-fir, soaks up preservative well, and usually doesn't need to be incised to meet spec, so it is clearly the better choice.
FWIW: Tests (also from OSU a couple years back) showed Ponderosa pine had a waaaay better uptake on the pressure treatment than Doug-fir and was in most tests, as strong as Doug-fir.
The downfall to yelloe pine. Is its age. It's all new growth, farmed trees with rings 2" wide. No strength in it when it's grown like that. Being in rows spread apart from each other. They don't compete with one another for resources. So they grow stupid fast. Which makes em weaker than they would be otherwise.
I started out as a carpenter in the late '60s, when we used redwood instead of pressure treated lumber. Later, when redwood became more expensive they went to pressure treated for things like mudsills, fence-posts,etc. Most of it was hem-fir, The thinking was that hem-fir was less dense, so it absorbed the pressure treating chemicals better. You could plainly see this, if you compared it to a piece of doug-fir that was pressure treated. The pressure treating chemicals only went in about 1/8" with the doug-fir, but were more like 1/2" in the hem-fir, Of course, there are many ways that lumber is pressure treated, and many different chemicals have been used. Doug-fir power poles can last 60-75 years. Today you do see a lot of "brown" pressure treated Douglass fir in the lumber yards, here in Northern California. It is made from fast -growing doug fir, and twists and warps like you wouldn't believe. In my experience, lodgepole pine makes the best PTL ( not considering power poles, which use more heavy-duty chemicals, that are not available for light construction). Jeez, I guess I shouldn't have gotten started on this subject! i really like your videos. Keep it up!
In 1986 I built an 18' x 18' deck out of #1 treated southern yellow pine 2x6x18'. The were hard as a rock. I intended to use my nail gun with 3" ring shank galvanized casing nails but the nails stopped 3/8 to1/2" proud and would bend over when you tried to hammer the rest of the way. Ended up drilling pilot holes and hand driving all the nails. Those 18' boards were near perfectly straight - high quality that is non existent today.
One could've just cut random length pieces of random board for the containers base. But you used wood of the exact width of the cinder blocks and cut the wood to the exact length of the cinder blocks and stacked them neatly. My god that was satisfying!
Out East our pressure treated is usually yellow pine, considerably stronger than true firs. It does like to twist, bow, cup, etc when the moisture level changes, though. You don't want to wait too long to fasten it to something once it's unbanded.
around here most treated lumber is pine. some times refered to as sprucpinefure spf for short. now if you get Marine grade (40% treatment or more) it tends to be white pine. we gerneraly use white oak and treat it our selves for decking and as bottoml plates if need be. the density of the grain is much better. we use locust as well. nice video.
i've been a carpenter for over forty yrs and the quality of pressure treated wood has really gone to shit in that time , even worse than common lumber , definately a big factor in getting my own sawmill , now a bad board is my own fault lol
That's because the chemicals that worked really good 40 years ago are now banned. It's not the wood , I worked at a treating plant in the 70s that's when all this environmental BS . Started🎉
When I was a millwright we had a gang saw designed to cut 2x4 sized cants all day long. The market on 2x6's went through the roof so the boss said, "no problem, we can just put bigger round saws in the gang." The first couple 2x6 cants shot out like a bullet rolling over the saws. We put in bigger cylinders and could hold the smaller 2x6 cants. They wanted to run bigger cants, so I put in some really aggressive press rolls. The edges of the boards all had deep press roll marks that look like pressure treated boards. The quality guy went absolutely ballistic about the press roll marks. I told him to market the lumber as "PRESSURE SAWN STUDS". He was not amused.
Here on the east coast the pressure treated is almost always Southern Yellow Pine. I have never seen that perforated pressure treated lumber sold or used here on the east coast.
Lots of good comments here. One I'd make would be that there are PT woods for direct contact and others PT woods that are not. Additionally, treating the end grain of cuts IS important. All construction wood is not as "good" as "they used to be". But coatings and chemicals are considerably improved. That doesn't mean you can expect PT wood to be immune to the elements. Yeah, if you can keep a piece of non treated fir dry, even if exposed to weather, then it is going to be better than PT woods. But look at the most common place people use PT woods,...Fence posts. They definitely last longer than non PT woods. And that includes even old beautiful redwood! I personally don't put posts into concrete, (I prefer using column bases set in concrete, doing such will allow fences to last well over 50 years, maybe 100) but let's face it. MOST fences ARE constructed with posts set directly in the concrete. PT posts WILL outlast non pt posts at least twice as long. You do have to consider where you are using them.
I use oak cribbing for stuff like holding up conex boxes. I have one side of a container sitting on some right now. comes in real handy to have a big pile of milled oak
Having never been out of the southeast i didn't realize they did this. Around here if you go to the store and buy pressure treated it's always southern yellow pine. Having worked as a logger i'm used to what's done with this or that kind of wood but i know out west is a whole other ballgame. Sometime around here they will also pressure treat poplar but i've never saw it in a store. I have been told by guys i've sold to that white pine will blow apart and can't be pressure treated. I would think that would also be true for Hemlock if that's the case. I know hemlock has good rot resistance if it's not used for ground contact but i hate working with it. To me the grain is too strait and it's too soft and over time will bust all to crap. I used post oak posts to build my own sawmill shed. I put them in the ground upside down from how they grew. I also put the ends that went into the ground into a fire and got them good and black. After that i brushed on some used motor oil mixed with diesel fuel about 3 feet up. So far so good and time will tell i guess but i bet they out last me.
I am in the northwest and I have started doing the fire and diesel/motor oil too. The other option I have tried is painting on foundation sealer when I have to bury something.
30+ yrs ago on the east coast pressure treated was southern yellow pine and were treated after they were dried so you did not have all the side perforations needed to get the wood to absorb the solution
As a carpenter, i loathe our pressure treated lumber here in the PNW. It is garbage. I've resorted to eating the extra cost and using engineered PT for all my sill plates.
Here in Sweden it is made from low grade pine (pinus silvestris) while most other construction lumber is spruce (picea abies). My dad, who is a retired construction worker, usually mutters that most of the rot resistance is due to the pine itself rather the treatment these days. (Then there are the older treatments, which you should probably not touch with bare hands, which did something. Finally we have kreosote which was used on telephone and power poles that could stand outside for a century without rotting but would give you cancer if you looked at the treatment process the wrong way. :P)
I am an old carpenter and i have known pressure treated lumber is generally crap lumber and does fail in as little as 3 years this happened to 4x6 pressure treated lumber i used for fence post, 6 fenceposts rotted inside the concrete piers they had to be pulled the rotten part removed and new posts stuck into the existing concrete piers. this happened to 6 out hof 13 posts. The all were purchased at an homedepshit and did not appear to have something wrong at installation. Other than that i have seen rotten pressure treated lumber here and there. This told me that its not to be trusted at all times. In defense of the stuff it's ok in most applications, However all bets are off after 20 years in moist locations. It also is prone to turning into powdery soft wood when exposed to high heat in summer and very cold in winter areas like eastern Washington. Redwood is best there both for sill plates and decking material. In western washingon i have seen entire decks where the framework and the decking was made of 2x6 Pressure treated lumber fail because it split Rotted and warped horribly, and had to be entirely demolished and rebuilt. Redwood and cedar is King in most building applications. A lot of Pressure treated rot problems stem from carpenters not treating the cuts with preservative before installation. I understand because working with the stuff after painting it with preservative is very nasty cause it gets all over the place stinks and looks nasty soakes into your clothing and gets all over your hands.
Codes are useful - they provide a solid baseline for contract purposes and can help you make informed, thoughtful decisions balancing cost, safety, and longevity of the structure. My county does not enforce any code. Nonetheless, my home is mostly compliant, and the areas where it is not compliant were deliberate decisions I made at my own risk. When a code is strictly enforced by law, it becomes a problem.
More thoughtful content from the Land of Wilson. What do they use for pressure treatment in the USA these days? Over here they used to use copper chrome arsenate. It was green from the copper which is an effective biocide so they used to sheathe wooden ships in it. Chrome (Erin Brockovich) poisonous and arsenate poisonous like in a whodunnit novel. It was highly effective and they banned it in 2006 'cos it used to leach out and be poisonous where poisonous wasn't wanted, including in people... So if you unloaded a fresh lorry load with no gloves and it was still wet with preservative, you could end up in dead lumber. You can get better rot-resistance with any sawn timber by making sure you lay it sad. Look at the end and if the grain makes a smiley smile, then water can soak in the ends of the grain and soak down and pool in the smile because the 'winter' component of each ring is more resistant to water penetration. If you lay it sad, the water takes much longer to penetrate the winter wood and what gets through each annual ring runs out of the bottom of each annual ring without pooling. So best not lay your bearers happy. How do I know? Years of making, repairing and replacing bridges and boardwalks on nature reserves on public open spaces in the UK where it rains a very lot.
In my experience pressure treated has held up well if moisture is an issue, and do similar under heavy loads like you have seen here. Best Ida is go with what code calls for or better because remember code simply means that is the minimum required and nothing more.
You have oak! I'm in Northern California but I first learned trees in the midwest. Im not sure what kind of oaks we have that would be closest to eastern white oak. I used a piece of local oak (blue?) For a chain tensioner on my old gator and it worked pretty well.
I think there are something like 27 species of oaks in Arkansas. I usually can tell the white oak and red oak, I have never learned to separate the pin oak, post oak, black oak, or even learned the other 20 names. But its still hard and strong.
The good stuff we use in the south is pine, marine grade treated to .8 pcf or higher with cca. it will last a log time, possibly 30 years or better. Can't buy it at big box stores it has to be a supplier for pier and bulkhead building.
Yes, I realize that. I've referred to concrete block as cinder block many times. I knew that was the situation in the video. But for those that don't know the history, I threw it out there.
The compression perpendicular to grain of douglas fir is 625 psi, compared to only 405 psi for hem-fir. I believe the "softer" species take less pressure to treat and if high compression strength isn't required, it's more efficient to use for common framing applications. However compression parallel to grain (such as a vertical post application) is much higher for both species. You can get doug fir treated also, but it's more expensive.
Problem is in the north west much of the 2x pressure treated lumber is made from white fir, 4x and up is doug fir. White fir, hem fir also called piss fir is so weak it's outlawed to use anywhere in most construction except as bottom plate. (Retired framing contractor)
I bet if you borrow your wife’s iron and use a nice wet tea towel you could steam those dents out of those blocks. I doubt however that the same method will remove the dents you’ll have in your head after you get caught trying to put her iron and tea towels back after you’re finished.
You want Canadian lumber for strength. The short growing season causes the wood to actually be denser by the time it gets to a marketable size. Many US railroads used to send out contracts for Canadian pine railroad ties.
I noticed you placed the new boards bark side down. I generally put bark side towards the weather, but I'm in the Southeast. Does bark side down work best in your conditions?
Don’t use pressure treated wood for your trailer deck either. No matter if you pre dry it for a year or more. It still warps and cracks like crazy. Weak wood is an understatement.
@1:01, just look at those huge line growths...that was a fast growing pine wood with lots of water to grow fast....of course a P.T.soft wood liek pine can't support weight. Just use a hardwood and you'll be fine.
Problem: Both weak wood ( fast growth ) and the impregnation drying out too fast. If you take a 6”x 6” x 16’ P.T. Timber and supported it at each end and weighted down the center you’ll find the timber bend like rubber before breaking.
Just to let you know I'm having a lot of trouble playing your last 2 videos, the screen gets al pixeled and the locks up. I have to restart TH-cam, try to replay either and get the same result. Doesn't happen on any other videos I watch. Just letting you know. I really enjoy your content. Have a good day
There is not just one grade of pressure treating. I understand finding the other, better grades are difficult to source. I believe it was Risinger who had a video on the topic.
code has a big factor if safty built in, so does the psi rating engineers use to calculate. the worst piece of wood you have ever seen sold on a shelf is more then strong enough 16 inches on center. if you wonder why big wood beams in buildings are always a bunch of 2x whatevers stuck together or super thick laminate its because actual solid timbers take a big hit in psi rating. because the interior cant be inspected it needs to be bigger for the same safety, they are also crazy expensive too forgot to mention that.
@@SteelheadTed yup psi, pounds per square inch the unit we use to describe the strength of materials. fun bit of engineering with psi you can multiply with your cross-section to get your compressive strength (pounds/in^2 x in^2 = pounds). and in a wall they are constrained from bukleing. backyard sheds commonly run on 24 with 2x3s and hold up fine. I assure you the guys building those arent picking through the pile to find the best ones. there is a large safety factor with 16 inches on center.
Even the Heartwood of Douglas Fir is soft wood. Pressure Treated Wood is soft Pine Species also, and makes no sense to use as a base for Steel Containers. Pressure treating doesn't mean Pressure Rated. And the only PT that might make it for very long, is Marine Grade Pressure Treated.
Your cement blocks need to have the solid side down. The solid side doesn't sink in the ground as much and the top gives a better support for the lumber.
They don't hold load in that orientation. Many shade tree mechanics have learned that the hard way. If it's that important, putting a cap block down first is the ticket.
@@johnritchie3889 I get it but it's a long span, time catches up, they were built to get stuff from one continent to another, after that, what were they designed to do ?
@@GlorifiedG-z9c I’m a retired structural engineer. When we build bridges with steel beams they don’t sag over time. That’s a property of steel. As long as they aren’t severely rusted, or overloaded they will not sag. Adding a center support may actually be bad in the ends drop like they did here. Now there’s a point load on a beam that wasn’t designed for point loads.
Kinda like sausages. If you have a lot of crappy meat products that no one wants add some brine and spices and sell it as pepperoni. Lousy wood, stain it with chemicals and call it treated lumber.
Would I right be thinking that the orientation of the block makes a difference?? The squashed piece was, in effect, a vertical part of the tree being compressed from the side. Would it be better if you had just cut a ‘round’ from the tree and kept it in its original orientation… “Is any of that making any sense”??😂
The brown pressure treated seems to be total garbage. The green pressure treated that we can no longer get in California for some reason used to be excellent. I don’t know what it is with the brown pressure-treated but it does not hold up especially if it’s in wet conditions.
That’s dependent upon who you ask. I live in Arkansas so I know about what you speak. HOWEVER, in my opinion it’s not as strong with the small amount of DF that I’ve been exposed to, which isn’t much (1 2x4) that someone had blocking up 1 corner of a small building that they had. All of the yellow pine that I’ve seen has not been nearly as strong as the good old stuff either because it was bought at a BBS and it was definitely NOT top shelf stuff. 😢
I noticed the pressure treat is the worst wood. It's because value adding salvages useless for bottom plate etc which doesn't really have much quality requirement. If I am forced to buy it I select strongly.
.. The hardest wood on Earth is Australian Buloke with a Janka rating of 5,060 , white oak has a Janka hardness of 1,350 apples for apples use the right tiber for the right job ...Douglas fir has a janka rating is 660 ... Just sayin my man . Are tehy Rotten ? is their wood rot in their ?
I'll take Doug fir free of heart center old growth tight grane anyday. It will last longer , and more compression strength than anything you can buy anyone.
um, "Pressure Treated" does not mean that the wood is able to withstand high pressures. The term is used for the process of insect and rot resistant treatment that is applied in a vat with a lid on it, which is closed and pressurized with the wood and the chemical treatment inside. It is applied under pressure (in the vat) so that the chemicals permeate the wood. Youl see all the tick marks along the length of the timber which are to help the liquid penetrate during the process. "Pressure Treated" wood has nothing at all to do with the wood being able to withstand pressure. Its a chemical applied under pressure to help in rot/bug resistance.
I worked as a research assistant at Oregon State University with wood decay and preservatives for 8 years. Both Douglas-fir and hem-fir are very difficult to treat, so they incise the surface of these species to open up more end grain prior to treatment. This increases preservative penetration to about 1/8" deeper than the incisions which meets the specs. However, it weakens the wood and increases the rapidity of moisture cycling of the wood in service. Southern yellow pine is about as strong as Douglas-fir, soaks up preservative well, and usually doesn't need to be incised to meet spec, so it is clearly the better choice.
May not be available in his area.
FWIW: Tests (also from OSU a couple years back) showed Ponderosa pine had a waaaay better uptake on the pressure treatment than Doug-fir and was in most tests, as strong as Doug-fir.
The downfall to yelloe pine. Is its age. It's all new growth, farmed trees with rings 2" wide. No strength in it when it's grown like that.
Being in rows spread apart from each other. They don't compete with one another for resources. So they grow stupid fast. Which makes em weaker than they would be otherwise.
Very insightful! Thanks for sharing.
Don't they also use a lot of D grade spruce pine Pl for pressure treating ? Not going to send grade A structural lumber for pressure treating.
I started out as a carpenter in the late '60s, when we used redwood instead of pressure treated lumber. Later, when redwood became more expensive they went to pressure treated for things like mudsills, fence-posts,etc. Most of it was hem-fir, The thinking was that hem-fir was less dense, so it absorbed the pressure treating chemicals better. You could plainly see this, if you compared it to a piece of doug-fir that was pressure treated. The pressure treating chemicals only went in about 1/8" with the doug-fir, but were more like 1/2" in the hem-fir, Of course, there are many ways that lumber is pressure treated, and many different chemicals have been used. Doug-fir power poles can last 60-75 years. Today you do see a lot of "brown" pressure treated Douglass fir in the lumber yards, here in Northern California. It is made from fast -growing doug fir, and twists and warps like you wouldn't believe. In my experience, lodgepole pine makes the best PTL ( not considering power poles, which use more heavy-duty chemicals, that are not available for light construction). Jeez, I guess I shouldn't have gotten started on this subject! i really like your videos. Keep it up!
In 1986 I built an 18' x 18' deck out of #1 treated southern yellow pine 2x6x18'. The were hard as a rock. I intended to use my nail gun with 3" ring shank galvanized casing nails but the nails stopped 3/8 to1/2" proud and would bend over when you tried to hammer the rest of the way. Ended up drilling pilot holes and hand driving all the nails.
Those 18' boards were near perfectly straight - high quality that is non existent today.
It's all grown to fast. With perfect conditions to grow grow grow. Which makes em weak and weak makes em twisted
My whole house is built from southern yellow pine. Unlike me, the older it gets, the harder it gets!
It’s pressure treated not pressure rated.
🎉😂
One could've just cut random length pieces of random board for the containers base. But you used wood of the exact width of the cinder blocks and cut the wood to the exact length of the cinder blocks and stacked them neatly. My god that was satisfying!
Out East our pressure treated is usually yellow pine, considerably stronger than true firs. It does like to twist, bow, cup, etc when the moisture level changes, though. You don't want to wait too long to fasten it to something once it's unbanded.
around here most treated lumber is pine. some times refered to as sprucpinefure spf for short. now if you get Marine grade (40% treatment or more) it tends to be white pine. we gerneraly use white oak and treat it our selves for decking and as bottoml plates if need be. the density of the grain is much better. we use locust as well. nice video.
i've been a carpenter for over forty yrs and the quality of pressure treated wood has really gone to shit in that time , even worse than common lumber , definately a big factor in getting my own sawmill , now a bad board is my own fault lol
That's because the chemicals that worked really good 40 years ago are now banned. It's not the wood , I worked at a treating plant in the 70s that's when all this environmental BS . Started🎉
When I was a millwright we had a gang saw designed to cut 2x4 sized cants all day long. The market on 2x6's went through the roof so the boss said, "no problem, we can just put bigger round saws in the gang." The first couple 2x6 cants shot out like a bullet rolling over the saws. We put in bigger cylinders and could hold the smaller 2x6 cants. They wanted to run bigger cants, so I put in some really aggressive press rolls. The edges of the boards all had deep press roll marks that look like pressure treated boards. The quality guy went absolutely ballistic about the press roll marks. I told him to market the lumber as "PRESSURE SAWN STUDS". He was not amused.
Here on the east coast the pressure treated is almost always Southern Yellow Pine. I have never seen that perforated pressure treated lumber sold or used here on the east coast.
We’re really stretching today, you replacing treated shims, me, watching you do it. Allegedly
Just because I love your dry humor I always thumbs up your videos when I open one up.
Lots of good comments here. One I'd make would be that there are PT woods for direct contact and others PT woods that are not. Additionally, treating the end grain of cuts IS important. All construction wood is not as "good" as "they used to be". But coatings and chemicals are considerably improved. That doesn't mean you can expect PT wood to be immune to the elements. Yeah, if you can keep a piece of non treated fir dry, even if exposed to weather, then it is going to be better than PT woods. But look at the most common place people use PT woods,...Fence posts. They definitely last longer than non PT woods. And that includes even old beautiful redwood! I personally don't put posts into concrete, (I prefer using column bases set in concrete, doing such will allow fences to last well over 50 years, maybe 100) but let's face it. MOST fences ARE constructed with posts set directly in the concrete. PT posts WILL outlast non pt posts at least twice as long. You do have to consider where you are using them.
Another great video from you once again!
Exactly, I learned long-time ago, all pressure treated lumber Home Depot sells are styrofoamy hemfir, which they call it HF instead of DF.
Here on the east coast we have spf - spruce pine fir. I bypass that crap and go for the southern yellow pine, the east coast equivalent of doug fir.
Is Southern yellow pond in the Southeast for treated lumber. Really no issues with it here. It's good wood even better after being pressure treated.
I use oak cribbing for stuff like holding up conex boxes. I have one side of a container sitting on some right now. comes in real handy to have a big pile of milled oak
This guy is like the Paul Harrel of Forrestry. Glad I found the channel.
Having never been out of the southeast i didn't realize they did this. Around here if you go to the store and buy pressure treated it's always southern yellow pine. Having worked as a logger i'm used to what's done with this or that kind of wood but i know out west is a whole other ballgame. Sometime around here they will also pressure treat poplar but i've never saw it in a store. I have been told by guys i've sold to that white pine will blow apart and can't be pressure treated. I would think that would also be true for Hemlock if that's the case. I know hemlock has good rot resistance if it's not used for ground contact but i hate working with it. To me the grain is too strait and it's too soft and over time will bust all to crap. I used post oak posts to build my own sawmill shed. I put them in the ground upside down from how they grew. I also put the ends that went into the ground into a fire and got them good and black. After that i brushed on some used motor oil mixed with diesel fuel about 3 feet up. So far so good and time will tell i guess but i bet they out last me.
I am in the northwest and I have started doing the fire and diesel/motor oil too. The other option I have tried is painting on foundation sealer when I have to bury something.
Nice video.
I worked in a sawmill in northwestern CA and all the Hemfir was sent to be pressure treated.
30+ yrs ago on the east coast pressure treated was southern yellow pine and were treated after they were dried so you did not have all the side perforations needed to get the wood to absorb the solution
As a carpenter, i loathe our pressure treated lumber here in the PNW. It is garbage. I've resorted to eating the extra cost and using engineered PT for all my sill plates.
Have you found it to be pretty brittle ?
Wait until Concrete is discovered for pads and footings!
Until then ..some rocks and stones.
*_Shockin'!_*
Here in Sweden it is made from low grade pine (pinus silvestris) while most other construction lumber is spruce (picea abies). My dad, who is a retired construction worker, usually mutters that most of the rot resistance is due to the pine itself rather the treatment these days. (Then there are the older treatments, which you should probably not touch with bare hands, which did something. Finally we have kreosote which was used on telephone and power poles that could stand outside for a century without rotting but would give you cancer if you looked at the treatment process the wrong way. :P)
I am an old carpenter and i have known pressure treated lumber is generally crap lumber and does fail in as little as 3 years this happened to 4x6 pressure treated lumber i used for fence post, 6 fenceposts rotted inside the concrete piers they had to be pulled the rotten part removed and new posts stuck into the existing concrete piers. this happened to 6 out hof 13 posts. The all were purchased at an homedepshit and did not appear to have something wrong at installation. Other than that i have seen rotten pressure treated lumber here and there. This told me that its not to be trusted at all times. In defense of the stuff it's ok in most applications, However all bets are off after 20 years in moist locations. It also is prone to turning into powdery soft wood when exposed to high heat in summer and very cold in winter areas like eastern Washington. Redwood is best there both for sill plates and decking material. In western washingon i have seen entire decks where the framework and the decking was made of 2x6 Pressure treated lumber fail because it split Rotted and warped horribly, and had to be entirely demolished and rebuilt. Redwood and cedar is King in most building applications. A lot of Pressure treated rot problems stem from carpenters not treating the cuts with preservative before installation. I understand because working with the stuff after painting it with preservative is very nasty cause it gets all over the place stinks and looks nasty soakes into your clothing and gets all over your hands.
I'm glad that I live close to several Amish sawmills. And the county I live in doesn't have any useless, uncalled for codes.
Codes are useful - they provide a solid baseline for contract purposes and can help you make informed, thoughtful decisions balancing cost, safety, and longevity of the structure. My county does not enforce any code. Nonetheless, my home is mostly compliant, and the areas where it is not compliant were deliberate decisions I made at my own risk.
When a code is strictly enforced by law, it becomes a problem.
The quality of PT wood varies wildly by the area you're in and the trees available.
More thoughtful content from the Land of Wilson.
What do they use for pressure treatment in the USA these days? Over here they used to use copper chrome arsenate. It was green from the copper which is an effective biocide so they used to sheathe wooden ships in it. Chrome (Erin Brockovich) poisonous and arsenate poisonous like in a whodunnit novel. It was highly effective and they banned it in 2006 'cos it used to leach out and be poisonous where poisonous wasn't wanted, including in people... So if you unloaded a fresh lorry load with no gloves and it was still wet with preservative, you could end up in dead lumber.
You can get better rot-resistance with any sawn timber by making sure you lay it sad. Look at the end and if the grain makes a smiley smile, then water can soak in the ends of the grain and soak down and pool in the smile because the 'winter' component of each ring is more resistant to water penetration. If you lay it sad, the water takes much longer to penetrate the winter wood and what gets through each annual ring runs out of the bottom of each annual ring without pooling. So best not lay your bearers happy. How do I know? Years of making, repairing and replacing bridges and boardwalks on nature reserves on public open spaces in the UK where it rains a very lot.
In my experience pressure treated has held up well if moisture is an issue, and do similar under heavy loads like you have seen here. Best Ida is go with what code calls for or better because remember code simply means that is the minimum required and nothing more.
Thank you very much for the video sir
Thank you for the update on the container temporary foundation. Did you have to top up the oil in that ten ton bottle Jack?
You have oak! I'm in Northern California but I first learned trees in the midwest. Im not sure what kind of oaks we have that would be closest to eastern white oak. I used a piece of local oak (blue?) For a chain tensioner on my old gator and it worked pretty well.
I think there are something like 27 species of oaks in Arkansas. I usually can tell the white oak and red oak, I have never learned to separate the pin oak, post oak, black oak, or even learned the other 20 names. But its still hard and strong.
@@camperjack2620 Black Oak Arkansas?? The Southern rock band?
The only reason we used treated wood here is to allow us to use softwood in ground or in structures to stop termites eating it.
Aah that’s why some engineers call for d.fir for the plates- bottom, double top. (and not the studs). At least up here in BC. Cool.
The good stuff we use in the south is pine, marine grade treated to .8 pcf or higher with cca. it will last a log time, possibly 30 years or better. Can't buy it at big box stores it has to be a supplier for pier and bulkhead building.
I think the production of cinder block stopped in 1947.
Most pressure treated lumber in my area is southern yellow pine.
It’s a holdover term for what is now called concrete masonry unit (CMU).
Yes, I realize that. I've referred to concrete block as cinder block many times. I knew that was the situation in the video. But for those that don't know the history, I threw it out there.
I remember a Ford pickup commercial where the truck proved it toughness by climbing a "cinder block mountain". Lol.
The compression perpendicular to grain of douglas fir is 625 psi, compared to only 405 psi for hem-fir. I believe the "softer" species take less pressure to treat and if high compression strength isn't required, it's more efficient to use for common framing applications. However compression parallel to grain (such as a vertical post application) is much higher for both species. You can get doug fir treated also, but it's more expensive.
Problem is in the north west much of the 2x pressure treated lumber is made from white fir, 4x and up is doug fir. White fir, hem fir also called piss fir is so weak it's outlawed to use anywhere in most construction except as bottom plate. (Retired framing contractor)
I bet if you borrow your wife’s iron and use a nice wet tea towel you could steam those dents out of those blocks. I doubt however that the same method will remove the dents you’ll have in your head after you get caught trying to put her iron and tea towels back after you’re finished.
All the pt I use is southern yellow.
Don’t you have any hardwood on your property to use?
You want Canadian lumber for strength. The short growing season causes the wood to actually be denser by the time it gets to a marketable size. Many US railroads used to send out contracts for Canadian pine railroad ties.
I noticed you placed the new boards bark side down. I generally put bark side towards the weather, but I'm in the Southeast. Does bark side down work best in your conditions?
I always look at the end grain , you want the growth rings facing down to keep rain from soaking in.
Like you described.
Don’t use pressure treated wood for your trailer deck either. No matter if you pre dry it for a year or more. It still warps and cracks like crazy. Weak wood is an understatement.
@1:01, just look at those huge line growths...that was a fast growing pine wood with lots of water to grow fast....of course a P.T.soft wood liek pine can't support weight. Just use a hardwood and you'll be fine.
Problem: Both weak wood ( fast growth ) and the impregnation drying out too fast. If you take a 6”x 6” x 16’ P.T. Timber and supported it at each end and weighted down the center you’ll find the timber bend like rubber before breaking.
Just to let you know I'm having a lot of trouble playing your last 2 videos, the screen gets al pixeled and the locks up. I have to restart TH-cam, try to replay either and get the same result. Doesn't happen on any other videos I watch. Just letting you know. I really enjoy your content. Have a good day
Neighbor built a new pressure treated deck 3 yrs ago @ $2700. It now looks like it is 1/2 way thru it's life.
There is not just one grade of pressure treating. I understand finding the other, better grades are difficult to source. I believe it was Risinger who had a video on the topic.
code has a big factor if safty built in, so does the psi rating engineers use to calculate. the worst piece of wood you have ever seen sold on a shelf is more then strong enough 16 inches on center. if you wonder why big wood beams in buildings are always a bunch of 2x whatevers stuck together or super thick laminate its because actual solid timbers take a big hit in psi rating. because the interior cant be inspected it needs to be bigger for the same safety, they are also crazy expensive too forgot to mention that.
PSI rating? That isn’t really a thing. And no, the worst wood sold is not good enough at 16” O.C. unless you are talking about a backyard shed.
@@SteelheadTed yup psi, pounds per square inch the unit we use to describe the strength of materials. fun bit of engineering with psi you can multiply with your cross-section to get your compressive strength (pounds/in^2 x in^2 = pounds). and in a wall they are constrained from bukleing.
backyard sheds commonly run on 24 with 2x3s and hold up fine. I assure you the guys building those arent picking through the pile to find the best ones. there is a large safety factor with 16 inches on center.
I just use railroad ties under my 40 foot contaners. Still like new after 10 years and a lot more support!
Even the Heartwood of Douglas Fir is soft wood.
Pressure Treated Wood is soft Pine Species also, and makes no sense to use as a base for Steel Containers.
Pressure treating doesn't mean Pressure Rated.
And the only PT that might make it for very long, is Marine Grade Pressure Treated.
The older I get the worse lumber seems to get. I don't know if it can get worse than we have now, but my dad probably thought the same thing.
LOL, the old growth is not as abundant, and nobody cares or wants to pay for good lumber.
southern yellow pine
So the short answer….quality of the wood is more important the the pressure treatment. Got it!!
that *did* rhyme!
Your cement blocks need to have the solid side down. The solid side doesn't sink in the ground as much and the top gives a better support for the lumber.
They don't hold load in that orientation. Many shade tree mechanics have learned that the hard way. If it's that important, putting a cap block down first is the ticket.
That lumber looks more like cedar rather than the fir they sell in the big box stores.
Weak wood,they make a pill for that now.
Lol! Bout spit my drink on that one. At least it didn't attempt to exit by nasal cavity. 😅
@ 😁
Your luckey the pt lumber did not eat the metal on your trailer
Seems like a support in the middle might spread out the distortion, and might allow less of a bow in the middle.
Containers are designed to be supported at the corners.
@@johnritchie3889 I get it but it's a long span, time catches up, they were built to get stuff from one continent to another, after that, what were they designed to do ?
@@GlorifiedG-z9c
I’m a retired structural engineer. When we build bridges with steel beams they don’t sag over time. That’s a property of steel. As long as they aren’t severely rusted, or overloaded they will not sag. Adding a center support may actually be bad in the ends drop like they did here. Now there’s a point load on a beam that wasn’t designed for point loads.
@ good info, thanks
I like to coat mine with used motor oil and diesel
There may be a need for more cut lumber.
Kinda like sausages. If you have a lot of crappy meat products that no one wants add some brine and spices and sell it as pepperoni. Lousy wood, stain it with chemicals and call it treated lumber.
Would I right be thinking that the orientation of the block makes a difference?? The squashed piece was, in effect, a vertical part of the tree being compressed from the side. Would it be better if you had just cut a ‘round’ from the tree and kept it in its original orientation… “Is any of that making any sense”??😂
The brown pressure treated seems to be total garbage. The green pressure treated that we can no longer get in California for some reason used to be excellent. I don’t know what it is with the brown pressure-treated but it does not hold up especially if it’s in wet conditions.
find somebody with some Ipe scraps to replace those half inch pieces with.
we use southern yellow pine that is pressure treated as well and it stands up just like dougfir with a close strength as DF
That’s dependent upon who you ask. I live in Arkansas so I know about what you speak. HOWEVER, in my opinion it’s not as strong with the small amount of DF that I’ve been exposed to, which isn’t much (1 2x4) that someone had blocking up 1 corner of a small building that they had. All of the yellow pine that I’ve seen has not been nearly as strong as the good old stuff either because it was bought at a BBS and it was definitely NOT top shelf stuff. 😢
I never have these concerns. I build with concrete & welded steel only. 😂
Just paint your strong wood with used motor oil. IMO, its as good as pressure treated.
I noticed the pressure treat is the worst wood. It's because value adding salvages useless for bottom plate etc which doesn't really have much quality requirement. If I am forced to buy it I select strongly.
I thought treated wood is made out of yellow wood
I'm not positive but treated lumber east of the Mississippi is made from Southern yellow pine.
If you look on the grading stamp you'll often times see the intials SYP.
No kidding pressure treated lasts in ground contact 25 years. If your looking for better try red oak
Looks like you treated it to some pressure. I wouldn’t put that much faith in the breeze blocks.
You better be wearing a bullet proof vest from now on.
Solution: Buy Used RR ties 🤠.
Skill issue. Wood is not meant to support 1000 psi in that orientation. Use solid concrete for compression applications.
seems logical, but it did work for an amount of time, then didn't anymore.
The Doug-fir seems to be doing just fine.
.. The hardest wood on Earth is Australian Buloke with a Janka rating of 5,060 , white oak has a Janka hardness of 1,350 apples for apples use the right tiber for the right job ...Douglas fir has a janka rating is 660 ... Just sayin my man . Are tehy Rotten ? is their wood rot in their ?
Let's just say their treatment wasn't rated for shipping container pressure. In psi.
I'll take Doug fir free of heart center old growth tight grane anyday. It will last longer , and more compression strength than anything you can buy anyone.
um, "Pressure Treated" does not mean that the wood is able to withstand high pressures.
The term is used for the process of insect and rot resistant treatment that is applied in a vat with a lid on it, which is closed and pressurized with the wood and the chemical treatment inside. It is applied under pressure (in the vat) so that the chemicals permeate the wood. Youl see all the tick marks along the length of the timber which are to help the liquid penetrate during the process.
"Pressure Treated" wood has nothing at all to do with the wood being able to withstand pressure.
Its a chemical applied under pressure to help in rot/bug resistance.
Loblolly verse tight grain Douglas fr
Fir is rated at about 200 lbs a sq. inch in cross section. The wood didn't fail, your design failed.
The editing is weird
that pt wood called yellowood is garbage like that. i made stuff out of it and it rotted pretty much like untreated lumber would.