Help!!
I went out this morning to look at my new stack of white oak. It’s all quarter sawn and most of it 8/4. The tree it was cut from had been down about 6 months before I rescued it.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear…ARGG…a bug hole with sawdust around it! I’ve got bugs! (Well, one at least and I’ve heard they travel in herds.) I checked closely and only found two holes..but…
I wanted to air dry this lumber. Am I going to have to kiln dry it to kill off the invaders? Are there any alternatives for pest removal?
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Cliff
Replies
If you are in the U.S., call your local extension service and get an entomologist to come out and determine what pest you're dealing with. He/she can also recommend your treatment options.
Agreed that you want to find out what the bug is, but as far as alternatives go, the one that comes to mind is tent fumigation. They'll cover and seal the stack with plastic and inject an incredibly poisonous gas underneath. When you see a whole house covered in plastic, that's what they're doing. I had it done to my home back in the 1980's -- as the only way AFAIK to get rid of "dry-wood termites".
If you want to look into this, try to find an independent fumigator to do it for you. When I called around, the big businesses wanted 2x or 3x the price of the guy who eventually did the job. Keep all pets and children safely distant (pets in the house) until the job is done and the gas vented. I forget the chemical involved, but its lethal at something like 16 parts/billion.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Edited 3/9/2007 12:18 pm by forestgirl
Go ahead and air dry it. By the time it's dry it will have what they call "character". As far as the fumigation tent goes, if you made the same tent out of clear plastic with a few flaps for air flow, in a month or two you'd have kiln dried lumber.
Might try some borate based treatment, as far as I know it's safe for us two legged creatures.
They are probably only in the sapwood. You can saw that off, and get rid of them.
The borate has to be used on the wood to prevent them from getting in. Yours were already in there before you had the wood sawn, so borate won't do any good at this point. The holes and frass is where the adults emerge to look for a mate. After they mate, it might keep the next generation from starting, but some of the ones that are already in there may go for two years before they emerge.
If you get the temperature up to 130ยบ to the middle of the wood, this will kill them.
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