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Log Home Borate Treatment - Environmentally Friendly
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Using boron-based preservative
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Mixing the borate compound before application.
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Applying borate preservative
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The borate mixture is then spreayed on the building.
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Prevent this from happening!
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Mushrooms on logs = Decay
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Carpenter ants are a sign of rot.
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Notice the honey combing that the ants do as they "excavate the rot". Until you get rid of the rot, you can't control the population of boring insects.
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Borates have many advantages in the preservation of log homes. In the past, and even today, many preservatives on the market offer protection to the logs but are dangerous to apply and pollute the environment both in their production and in their use.
Borates raise the Ph levels in the logs to the point where the rot organisms and insects cannot survive, thus preventing future rot.
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The use of boron-based preservatives is becoming more common today as concern grows about protecting the environment. Boron preservatives have been used in Europe for more than thirty years, ever since officials there began finding arsenic and copper salts in the ground around treated utility poles.
Boron is not a poison, therefore, it does not cause harm to either the person applying it or to the environment. We believe it has very good preservative qualities. Again, borates work by raising the Ph level of the wood to the point where the rot organism is unable to attack it.
 We use two different methods and two different products to get the borates where we want them. The first is a brand called PeneTreat. We use PeneTreat when the pores of the wood are open over a wide space of a given log wall. We use it as a general treatment for all exterior log surfaces. Most times, we include this treatment after cob or sandblasting a building even if we are not going to be doing the application of the stain.
The other type of borate application that we use is a highly concentrated borate solution called Bora-Care. We use this technique only in vulnerable places - logs that get wet after a rain storm, in checks/cracks that allow water to flow into the log, and in places where we have seen rot in the past.
It is important to remember that borates are best used as a preventative measure against rot. Borates are less useful as an insecticide. They are often marketed as a way to get rid of wood boring insects. This is a bit of a smoke screen. They do prevent insects, but they do it by preventing rot not by keeping the bugs out or by killing them. Click here to find out more about wood boring insects problems in log homes in the Northern United States.
To learn more about the borate treatment we use, click here for information from PeneTreat.
Contact us and let us solve your log home problems. 1-877-378-4403 |
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