Thread: Looking for child-safe wood for cubby

Hi Tania,

Is your 3 year old likely to chew the cubby? If not the treated pine is unlikely to harm her. I understand if you want piece of mind by avoiding the possibility all together.

HH.

Welcome Tania.

Go to your local hardware or timber yard and ask them what they have in stock, or what they can get. I know locally I can get WRC, pink primed pine and hardwood weatherboards.

Another option to timber is fibre cement weather boards ... just a thought (I used them).

Cheap, not treated, durable outside, just don't come together

You might be able to locate acq treated pine which has no arsenic in it. That's as cheap as you can get.

I went through this a year ago and gave up and bought a 2nd hand one off Ebay.

But I did come up with these guys, who have non CCA treated pine, and that'sall they have, including sleepers Price is comparable to regular treated.

Bayswater http://www.outdoortimber.com.au/pricesheet.html

Also these
Campbellfield http://www.atpine.com.au/prices.pdf

You could use Cypress

You only need weather resistnat outside and could use regular pine for the inside frame. most cubby places use 90 x 35 ripped in half.

All decking boards are not supposed to be CCA either.

there's LOSP treated - no arsenic
I clad mine in cement sheeting and painted - the kids liked it
If you also lined the inside there would be no chance of kids eating the timberwork
I merely used the treated for that likely to see weather, for the studs etc used normal radiata

Also, don't forget you only need to protect the base - so I'm planning to put my cubby on steel stirrups, and then use untreated pine, hardwood, whatever, painted to match the house. Realistically its lifespan is less than 10 years anyway, so you're only worried about termites and treating the wood isn't the only way - you could also put it on a slab for example.

Beware the law of cubbies "The more effort you put into a cubby the less likely the kids are to use it". I stuck a large beat up looking 5 ply softwood mainframe computer box on some 3 ft stumps and whacked a corrugated iron roof on the top and all the local neighborhood kids played in it for years before it fell apart. The next door neighbor spent ages making his look just so with built in safety features by the score and kids just wouldn't play in it. Of course having a flying fox to the ground in our cubby was a major attractor. yes kids fell off and cried - isn't that what being a kid is all about?

BTW if the kids eat a whole handful of CCA wood that's about the same amount of arsenic as a 1 kg of south east asian prawns. If you live in an inner city suburb you are surrounded by buildings coated inside and out with tons of lead paint, asbestos fences and pesticide contaminated back gardens. If you live in the outer burbs you might have a cleaner environment but you then might die of boredom. It's all pretty much the same really ;-)

If you want it to be child safe, wrap it and the child in cotton wool. Then both the cubby and the child may be safe - for a while anyway.

Hi Tanya, I have a largish quantity of Alaskan cedar boards, left over from exterior house finish. This is a durable timber and would be suitable for your cubby. This is listed in these forums under buy swap and sell and timber. Would be ideal if you could manage freight. Regards Ric

Originally Posted by ANDY76

Hi Everyone!
I'm looking at building my 3 year old a cubby house but I have been having trouble finding child-safe building materials. Most are treated (arsenic) pine. I need some cheap material, but at the same time it has to be safe for my little one. I have been trying to locate suppliers of red cedar or baltic pine as I have been advised these woods are not chemically treated, but have only found 1 place where they sell cedar weatherboards. Is this the only material that can be used for cubbies?
We are in the Western suburbs of Melbourne (Deer Park), does anyone knows a supplier of red cedar in this area or some other cheaper, safe alternative?
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Tania

great if you have a time machine as well you could sell a cubby / materials to the OP