Stop fungi?

[Glider]

Hi! I have several large unseasoned (green) timbers. They are stored in the shed, but there is rather high humidity. And I see that fungi spots started developing on them. It already penetrated about 5 mm in depth somewhere :(

One problem is that we have a cold winter here (-25 C currently) and hence I cannot apply wood preservatives right now...

I know that "blue stain" does not affect wood strength. Hovewer, I have heard that as it penetrates deeply into the timbers, rot may starts there. Again - timbers are very green (high MC).

These timbers should become a backbone of my boat, so I'm rather scared. What should I do?

[Andrew]

Antifreeze will stop fungus growth. It will wash off if store in the open.

[Bruce Hooke]

Can you get some more air circulation around the timbers? That would at least help to cut down on more fungus and the like developing. I hope you have dry stickers (small pieces of wood to allow for air circulation) between all the timbers so that the wet timbers are not in direct contact with each other.

Fungis shouldn't be doing anything much at -25C, so you should have some time to work on your solution...

[Glider]

Certainly, I will try to get more air circulation now (will use some blowers). The problems started *before* I was able to do anything with timbers. Now, timbers are stacked properly, but fungi already are growing. May be, I'll be able to plane infected areas down, but not sure about it.

Will think about antifreeze, thanks! I wonder at what temperature should I apply it... Above 0 C, probably?

[Bruce Hooke]

I have no experience with using antifreeze for this purpose, but it seems to me that to work it would need to soak into the wood, which is unlikely to happen if the wood is frozen solid. So, I would wait to apply it until you get a little warm weather.

I am not sure what, if any, advantages antifreeze has over more standard "wood preservatives" -- the kind of stuff you would paint on fence posts, wooden porches and the like. It seems to me that this is what those substances are designed for, whereas antifreeze is designed for something totally different.

[Glider]

Thanks, Bruce!

Regarding antifreeze - I know there are opposite views on using it for wood treatment. However, I briefly studied information on wood preservatives available on the market (here locally), and it looks like that none of them are intended to penetrate *deeply* (5 mm) into the green wood. On the other hand, antifreeze *probably may* penetrate that depth, so I'll read about it more. I'm not trying to argue, just my thoughts...

[Jay Greer]

US Borax makes a water soluable antifungus product called "Timbor".
JG

[pcford]

Move the wood to proper storage.

Antifreeze rot proofing is promoted by one enthusiastic individual who has also said it works for bed sores and penile infections. I'm not kidding. Draw your own conclusions.

Mr Greer's suggestion seems more sound to me. Put the antifreeze in your car.

[Alan D. Hyde]

Use RV or boat antifreeze, and you won't have to worry about dogs or children gettin into puddles of the ethylene glycol...

Alan

[Cullen T.M. McGough]

Very few fungi grow below 50f (10c). So little is actually happing at the moment. My favorite non-baby killing preservative is a generous mixture of kerosene and boiled linseed oil. Just slosh it on there.

[rmiller3]

I would use a fungicidal solution (several on the market) specifically designed to stop rot/fungus in wood, not antifreeze.

Depth of penetration is, as noted above, the unknown here. I think 5mm is perhaps a high expectation for penetration. You'll have to test that.

The weather will need to be warmer before much of this will be of real use. Plenty of ventilation, though, as you are now providing, is probably the most important step in preventing further fungal growth.

If after using a fungicide, and subsequent testing, you find greater wood breakdown than expected, perhaps bad sections can be removed and new timber scarfed in. Strength should not be affected much with good scarfs. Think of the now common practice of laminating a keel timber from scratch... lots of scarfs, several layers. Why should scarfed in regions to replace regions of damaged keel be less reliable?

My thoughts only.

Robert

[ 01-19-2006, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: rmiller3 ]

[FSS172]

Hello Glider - Do your timbers include any of the sapwood, the outer layer of the tree, usually lighter in color? In case you're not aware of it, this layer of wood is the part of the tree involved in transporting the tree's sugary nutrients between leaves and roots. So it makes an inviting lunch to fungi, insects, etc. Structural timbers are generally specified to be all heartwood for this reason. I'm just wondering if this may be contributing to the fungus bloom on your timbers.
Jim

[Glider]

Thank you for your answers, I see more or less clearly that should be done.

No, my timbers do not include sapwood, I'm aware of it. Anyway, thank you for the warning.

[Dave Carnell]

I am the person who has most often promoted ethylene glycol antifreeze for curing fungal problems from wood rot to bed sores. I discovered the antifungal properties of ethylene glycol in connection with wood rot back around 1980. Later I translated the action to curing athletes foot and toenail fungus. I amazed my urologist by quickly curing the balanophosphitis on my penis with ethylene glycol as the alternative to his recommended circumcision in the early 1990s. In 1999, my beloved wife became bedridden and a complete invalid. After a while in bed she began to develop incipient bedsores. I spiked the ointment the caregivers were using with ethylene glycol. The sores disappeared, so I gave the caregivers a dropper bottle of ethylene glycol to use on the sores. When Eleanor died in 2002, the caregivers told me they had never seen anyone bedridden so long with such unblemished skin. Just last year, one of these ladies who still works for me had her 97-year old mother in hospice dying of cancer. When the old lady developed bed sores, Louise spiked the lotions the nurses were using with antifreeze. When the bed sores healed, the nurses and doctor were most interested in what she had done.

It is not unusual for chemicals to have a wide range of interactions. Because of strokes I have had, I regularly take a blood thinner to reduce the likelihood of clots and further strokes. The generic name of the thinner is warfarin. Warfarin was developed during WW II as a rat poison by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. It kills the rats by causing internal bleeding. My dose has to be carefully regulated, of course.

Back to wood. Nontoxic propylene glycol antifreeze is useless against rot and insects because it is nontoxic.

Ethylene glycol has properties very similar to water. It is extremely hygroscopic and is powerfully absorbed by wood so that it is not easily washed out. Apparently, only a low concentration is required to kill rot based on my observations of the sustained resistance of glycol-treated wood to rot in bilges regularly submerged.

Antifreeze will very quickly penetrate frozen wood. The best windshield deicer I know is about a 10% solution of ethylene glycol antifreeze in water. Applied to frozen wood, it will melt the ice, promptly penetrate the wood, and kill any rot organisms or boring insects.

There is a product called Boracar® for treating wood to prevent rot and insect attack. It is borates dissolved in ethylene glycol. It is getting a lot of its effectiveness from the ethylene glycol, though this cannot be claimed, as no one has EPA-registered EG as a fungicide and insecticide. On the other hand, research by Gougeon has shown that borate-treated wood gives weak joints with epoxy.

Ethylene glycol penetrates dry or wet wood as no other wood treatment does.

Ethylene glycol is particularly

[Alan D. Hyde]

Dave, it's good to see you here.

I'm sure you're right about ethylene glycol.

Were their any liver- or kidney- related side effects observed in any of the cases you know about?

Alan

[Dave Carnell]

Alan,

Some of the people I have heard from had been using Lamosil®, which taken internally to cure toenail fungus and may have harmful side effects from such indirect administration.

Even when ethylene glycol is ingested, it is not the effect on the organs that makes it toxic. The glycol rapidly metabolizes to oxalic acid, which is the killer.

NIOSH concluded that skin contact with EG was not harmful based on no problems with the millions of gallons handled annually in the conditions of service stations. They found problems only with breathing vapors from EG being processed at high temperatures, as in making polyester resins.

Once when treating turpentine tres for an exhibit at the Cape Fear Museum, I found a rat who had died of imbibing of a pool of glycol in a hollow on the trunk. I left him there and a few days later when I came by his cannibalistic relatives had carried him off. There weren't any other dead rats because the EG had metabolized so rapidly.

[Alan D. Hyde]

Thanks, Dave.

Alan

[carioca1232001]

Dave Carnell,
As reported on another thread, I have recently employed your ethylene glycol, borax and boric acid - 50:28:22 (by weight) - recipe for killing rot on some water-logged structural wood on my rear deck.
So far so good !

[Glider]

Hello Dave!

I have read your articles/posts before, as well as posts of your opponents. I think I have never read about any negative results, but positive responses are also infrequent. I am not a chemist nor I have time to conduct experiments (now), so I still do not have a personal opinion on using pure EG for wood treatment.

I would like to use Timbor (borax/EG) products. However, I cannot buy borate-based wood preservatives locally (Timbor or similar). They are not sold here - or at least I was not able to find them. Ordering them overseas is not an option. And I canot get information on effectiveness of the locally-available products.

So, I think I will try to prepare borax/EG solution by myself, according to receipt I have found in your article. Buying components is not a problem. I'm just concerned about boiling EG (I think I should not do it in a kitchen). I also wonder if one can use pure EG instead of antifreeze (if this will reduce boiling time).

If I do it and see some interesting results, I will post them here.

Thank you for information!

BR,
Andrey

[ 01-20-2006, 06:52 AM: Message edited by: Glider ]

[Dave Carnell]

If you follow my recipe in "Chemotherapy for Rot", you will only be boiling off water. I did it on a kitchen range with a vent hood.

I would try just the antifreeze, which usually does the trick.

[High C]

I've had good results with Dave's anti-freeze ideas.

My house is a raised timber frame built on 8x8 posts. One of these posts started to rot about a foot above the ground. A fungal growth was pulling moisture out of the air and causing the rot. Even though there was no apparent moisture source, this post was always wet, and rotting, of course.

I soaked it with various wood preservatives (over a period of months) to no avail. But two treatments with anti-freeze killed the fungus and dried up the wood.

Today, a year later, that post is hard and dry.

[George.]

OK, two questions:

- Carioca, or anyone: How/under what name can one get antifreeze (ethylene glycol) in an area where cars don't need antifreeze? ;)

- Will it damage stuff like epoxy or Sikaflex?

[carioca1232001]

George,
I preferred not to use the ethylene glycol ( aditivo para radiadores ?) that is marketed by the auto industry (VW, Delco, Agip etc), simply because it must contain other constituents (anti-corrosion chemicals etc).

So I called up "Herzog", the chemical products retailer on Rua Miguel Couto, and purchased a litre of pure ethylene glycol for R$25,00. I also bought a kilo of borax and a kilo of boric acid, for a grand total ofR$50,00.

I then conferred the specific mass of ethylene glycol and weighed out the borax and boric acid components accordingly, as per Dave Carnell´s recipe, viz., 50:28:22 by mass.

The next step saw me tossing the litre of ethylene glycol plus borax and boric acid into a SS (stainless stel) pan. Gently stirred the resulting milky brew while bringing it to a gentle boil.

I had the kitchen cooker´s exhaust fan on right from the outset and as the milky brew started boiling, there came a time when it became translucent (clear) again ! So turned off the heat, let it cool and the result made for about 2 litres of anti-wood rot brew.

[George Jung]

I'm curious about the application; spray it, brush it, how much saturation? I imagine the more penetration, better protection....

About nail fungus: I couldn't find anything about it's use or toxicity in the med literature - they always discuss ingestion cases. Sounds like it would be safer than the lamisil! Recommending it, however... I'm not so sure..

[George.]

Thanks, carioca. Do you think such a mixture could be used on a deck without damaging the Sikaflex?

[WoodenBNut]

Heh George Jung:
From experience, forget the Ethelyene Glycol for nail fungus. You can pick up a product(cream like substance) "over the counter" at most drug stores called "Tinacide". It should cost around $15.00 or so. I have found that it works even where Lamasil doesn't and Lamasil will cost you a fortune(read $200 to $300) and when it doesn't work the doctor is not going to refund your money. Maybe you can smear some of that "Tinacide" on your wood boat fungus too ':>)

[carioca1232001]

Do you think such a mixture could be used on a deck without damaging the Sikaflex? No problem with epoxying over brew-treated wood, as long as you let the brew dry out completely.

Seemed no different to epoxying normal wood and the (partially) rot-ridden wood is rock-solid thereafter.

That said, I do not think there should be any problem over putting Sikaflex down over brew-treated wood..

Dave Carnell says on his page that the brew will penetrate paints and get to the rot beneath(ethylene glycol will lift the paint off in your car !).

In the same report, it is said that the brew will not penetrate an epoxied surface .

Will it penetrate a surface that has been Sikaflexed ? Don´t know.

Suggest you send Dave Carnell a PM.

[carioca1232001]

Addendum:

Will the brew damage exisiting Sikaflex ?

Again, Dave Carnell is your best bet.