I read with interest the two articles regarding timber treatment in the April and June issues.

We too have had problems with poorly treated timber and the inevitable results. All of this was home grown pine and in this case, it was the old CCA treatment and the trouble was down to the slap dash manner in which it had been treated.

We have been using CCA treated timber for some thirty years (we only used pine, larch or douglas for ground contact use) and during that time we had three reported failures and these had been in the ground nearly seven years.

Then some six years ago we started using a sawmill on the East of the country and to our amazement had a whole contract when 60 % of the posts went rotten in less than three years. We tried to contact the mill but met with a stone wall. I wrote to them on two occasions without even the courtesy of an acknowledgement. This made me suspect that the fault lay with them. We could trace the materials to one of two deliveries in the late winter and suspect that the timber was too wet when treated.

We knew the suppliers of the treatment and contacted their rep. He called down and inspected the timber, I believe that he carried out a re-agent spray test but I was not there at the time. I contacted him again and he was very non-committal about his findings but said that he could have a lab test but only if his customer requested this, again the stone wall.

We have, of course changed our suppliers and returned to one of our previous sources. We are now on the new treatment, but the problem has now ceased and I feel it most likely that the problems suffered by others is poor quality control on the part of those carrying out the treatment and not the composition of the treatment chemicals.

John Steere (Director), Brads Fencing Co Ltd