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plainpainter

Mr. MoldSpore united with Mr. Timberoil

Question

Before I start posting photos - a little background first. I use my own deck as a test bed - I am of the camp that a 'curing' style deck stain is superior than a non-drying - my preference, and the only one I believe I can sell to customers.

But that said I like to experiment on my own deck - I've had some real good failures with deck stain - and last year I decided to give the parafinnic style stain a try - so I decided to go with the king of stain manufacturers and go with the timberoil product - a titan of parafinnic stains right?

I mean think about all the advantages - no build up of curing resins - just a simple clean and re-soak the wood - and above all parafinnic oils are not food for those little itty bitty creepy crawlers we call mildew.

Well I stained my deck october of last year - with 2 good coats. And in '08 the stain was worn out - but I liked that I didn't have to 'restore' again - the deck was darkened, but nothing a little surfactant and bleach can't solve.

Well - along the way - one of my 2x6 railings rotted out - we always painted our railings and stained everything else - maybe that's why? Well turns out this one piece was longer than 16 feet - and the carpenter used KD framing lumber. So 2 months ago I got a piece of 2x6 16 feet long to replace it with - I hadn't measured - just assumed it was enough, that's when I came onto this whole discovery - I was a foot short - and PT doesn't come in lenghts greater than 16 feet for 2x6.

So I go to the lumber yard and ask them what I can do. We decided to buy a 2x10 that was 20 feet long and rip it down so I had a piece of 2x6 and another 2x4 each 20 feet long. I get back and cut it to length and install my new deck railing and let it sit for a couple of weeks. I then decide I am not going to continue painting the railings - the original railing will keep getting painted until they are replaced - but one by one - I will just stain the new replaced railings. Now this is important, at the time of installing this new railing - the remaining railings had been repainted with latex paint just 2 weeks prior.

So I let the new railing sit for 2 weeks - and give it a traditional bleach/TSP wash with a scrub brush and a solid rinse. The bleach wasn't strong - about 1.25% and I use a 1/4 cup of TSP per gallon - but the wood was nice and clean and the surface salts all extracted. I give it a dousing of Timberoil WHG - and lo and behold - it penetrated the new piece of PT - unlike a curing stain.

So I was happy with my results - now I have a solution for brand new spanking decks - that a parafinnic oil 180 degrees contrary to how I thought about stains - actually was the solution for brand new wood - and film/curing stain was not. So that was 6 weeks ago - 2 weeks ago something crepped up - and initially I thought perhaps it was som tannins from the nearby black walnut tree or something. And here are the photos that I took today....

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I re-built my deck and my father's deck this summer. The new PT is this stuff ECOLIFE. It comes VERY light unlike the old PT that was dark and really wet. I am assuming that this NEW method of pressure treating the wood has something to do with it.

long story short, I get some shade on my deck, and my old man gets NO shade on his deck. Both decks have black spore mold all over the horizontals. It was so bad on my deck, I brought it back to the lumber yard. Although I have yet to clean and stain the wood, (wanted it to dry out a little and was busy with other stuff) and this stuff looks like crap. I'm wondring if this new PT system is causing a lot of the problems??

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I'm wondring if this new PT system is causing a lot of the problems??

At this point - your guess is as good as mine. I installed aspen fence pickets last November - and they stayed all winter untreated - and this is the same mildew that attacked that wood to the point I had pickets that were coal black. Seems to me if you leave the wood long enough that it becomes grey - the mildew disappears?

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We went back to a deck....belongs to a VERY good customer of ours...washed it (read that as STRIPPED IT) for free and are putting on Armstrong Clark now. We did the back deck, side deck and front porch last year, the back deck was the worst it turned BLACK...BLACK...BLACK. It was Wood Tux. The customer said it had stayed tacky. (customers do not always tell us things they should) It went from tacky to black in a matter of a few months.

Have been out working on decks recently (as weather has allowed) and have been working with Armstrong Clark and right now I love that it dries. Amazing what matters...!!!

One thing I will say to those of you who have WT installed and are switching, you MUST get that barrier broken or the AC may stay wet on you. When we did our teak furniture we found that on pieces where we didn't strip the WT, but just lightly bathed it, the AC touch up stayed wet for a few days afterwards and needed wiping.

Just an FYI....

Beth

Edited by Beth n Rod
clarity

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I did this porch in October 2007 with WT. HO called last week to have their gutters cleaned out and I was very pleasantly surprised. The water beaded, and although the pictures of the closeups doesn't show the true color, there was really no color fade or discoloration. This is a covered porch with limited sun.

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you don't have the black spore of death that we have up here in the northeast.

Although some areas such as the South/Southeast like SC, GA, MS would be considerably more humid, Mildew is hardly regional. If I had to compare NC/VA to the NE I would probably consider us to be anything but dry.

I wasn't defending WT because I am planning on stripping my own fence today that was WHG turned Warm Honey black with the first year. I had considerable disapointment in the product. This job was an exception as the fence and porch looked pretty good - though I always hated that color.

EDIT: Picture of the fence in the middle of stripping.

post-3028-137772246552_thumb.jpg

Edited by Tonyg

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