Thread: Non rotting alternative to treated pine

Hi Hw,
There is a product, that is being used as decking these days.
It is a kind of Plastic wood, comes in say, 70 x 20, not cheap but supposed to be very good.
Mitre10 have it, not sure who else.

Turpentine, if you can find somewhere to get it or simply use one of the propriety decking oils to preserve it on a regular basis

Genuine western red cedar (Thuja plicata). Unfinished totem poles stand out in the west coast weather here. You might see 50 years out a WRC stick.

Like you our family is concerned with unwanted chemicals in the food chain.

Cypress Pine is what I use in the vegetable garden.

Thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you!!

less than an hour and four really positive and helpful replies. I love this forum. I appreciate you all taking time to help me out.

I'll check out all those options as I think they'll all work. It'll come down to what's available in my local store.

Redgum is good, and you may be able to pick up an old redgum post (fence post) for nicks and cut it as reqd.
TM

Any class 1 hardwood will do.

Any naturally durable timber is likely to have just as nasty (but natural) a range of chemicals giving it that durability; resistance to termites, borers, fungus and mould is not granted by kisses from the eco-fairy; there's several hundred thousand years of developing ever more nasty chemical cocktails to discourage attack behind each naturally durable timber. The nature, and human safe exposure limits to these naturally occurring fungicides and pesticides is generally poorly researched; there's even less evidence conclusively proving that they are safe.

If you're worried about CCA treatment, read here - https://www.softwoods.com.au/blog/cc...ted-pine-safe/

See also:

"The Biological Farmers of Australia (BFA) organisation recommends avoiding the use of the following
potentially hazardous materials in vegetable gardens due to their ability to leach certain chemicals;
carpet and carpet underlay’s,
phospho-gypsum or by-product gypsum,
old car tyres,
un-composted manures and mulch cut from pastures sprayed with broadleaf weed killers,
plastics with recycling codes 3 and 7."

http://www.juniorlandcare.com.au/wp-...bleGardens.pdf

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Any naturally durable timber is likely to have just as nasty (but natural) a range of chemicals giving it that durability; resistance to termites, borers, fungus and mould is not granted by kisses from the eco-fairy; there's several hundred thousand years of developing ever more nasty chemical cocktails to discourage attack behind each naturally durable timber.

While I take your general point here, resistance to termites and borers can be an exception. The main reason turpentine is so resistant is that it is chock full of silica, which literally blunts their teeth (also saw teeth, for that matter). So in cases like this, resistance to borers is not related to toxicity.

I don't think it's necessary to be too worried about timber toxicity in most cases. To take one obvious example, oak has been used for barrels for wine and water for centuries. It's durable, but not noticeably toxic to humans when used in that manner. Western red cedar dust is known to be toxic when inhaled in significant quantities, but personally I wouldn't have any qualms about using the timber around a vegie bed.

One thing to consider is that, for the timber to be durable, the relevant compounds have to stay in the timber. If they leach out, durability will decline rapidly. If durability is not declining rapidly, it's a fairly safe bet the compounds are staying put.

I just enjoy pointing out that there's a bit of a double standard from people who have a knee-jerk reaction to using CCA - they don't realise that if you held naturally durable timbers to the same standard of 'evidence of safety' currently demanded of CCA timbers, you'd have to put naturally durable timbers in the 'insufficient evidence' category as well.

You could probably argue that there is more evidence showing the relative safety of CCA over say, old railway sleepers (another common garden vege bed edge) or random durable landscaping hardwoods.

Don't even get me started on the (presumed) safety of the alternative LOSP and ACQ treatments!

Fair enough.