Not All Pressure Treated Wood is Equal

[Wayne Carlisle]

I was reading another thread on Heat Treated Wood vs. Pressure Treated wood and wanted to post some information on PT wood. I was going to post this on that thread but the thread got off on campers and RV's. I wanted to make sure that this info was made available just in case others thought that the post I made was about RV's.

As the title states, not all pressure treated wood are equal. There are various woods for different use, depending on what that use is for. I feel this information will help HI's perform a better inspection on wood that is supposed to be PT.

Here is a web site with some real good infprmation on the classifications on PT wood.

www.anthonyforest.com/pdfs/AWPA-Use-Category-System-U1-07.pdf (http://www.anthonyforest.com/pdfs/AWPA-Use-Category-System-U1-07.pdf)

Here is a picture of PT markings and a brief description of what each symbol means. Hope this helps someone.

[Jerry Peck]

Wayne,

Very good information, thanks.

[Bruce King]

Wayne, thanks!

I think I posted this in another thread but I'll mention it here too, the stamps on lumber do not always include everything, the PT data is usually just on one of those plastic tags stapled on the end of the board which gets cut off or removed. So if you see HT on the stamp there's no real reason to doubt its treated.... but there is no way to know for sure on a brand new deck.


Heres another good link for future use

Pressure-Treated Wood FAQs (http://www.strongtie.com/productuse/PTWoodFAQs.html)