Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Product sources Wood preserver for docks ,etc.....

Has any one tried this product to preserve wood? Sealite green
Nobody carries it in a store around here, thought that somebody may have seen it/tried it somewhere else across the U.S. Sounds like the dream come true product.....and we all know how that usually ends up.

It looks like a copper naphthenate product. If so, wood treated with it does quite well in water. I've used Behr's Dock and Fence Post Preservative which is also a green wood absorbing liquid which sold for less than $20 per gallon, but is no longer on the market. Black Flag also markets a similar product for a somewhat larger price.

Here's my .25 cents worth, after conducting research into wood treatment and successfully filing a claim against Georgia Pacific for insufficient treatment of about 1/2 mile of 4" fence posts.

There are published standards for wood treatment that you can find online; they go up to marine grade (the highest percentage of residual preservation chemicals of course) which is for constant immersion in water and protection against plants/algae /bacteria and also worms/borers/etc. You can't achieve that level of protection by just "painting" on; it requires pressure treatment to the core. I had many, many posts that rotted from the core out because of lack of sufficient penetration and this was in earth---not even water.

If I was to fabricate a dock, deck or anything that I didn't want to have to take apart and redo in the near future it would be with treated lumber suitable for the application from a reliable supplier. And on that note, the next time I purchase lumber by the load I am going to spend $50 to send some samples to a lab for analysis of the treatment (penetration and residual) before I invest a ton of labor only to have to redo in a year or two. They put whole bundles of lumber at a time into the pressure treatment vessel so if you don't break a bundle you can be pretty sure they were all treated identically. During the drought last year I watched a neighbor down the street build a new dock with treated lumber (fence grade) from Lowe's. Oh well.

If you have a dock/deck that is deteriorating and you are trying to stop the decay then IMHO you are probably forestalling the inevitable and this, or other, products may help for a while.

Good luck!

yes, it's a given that one would start with pressure treated wood. However, most treated wood carried by local suppliers in many areas is rated for above ground use only. Soaking post ends in a copper naphthenate solution adds another degree of protection. I have dock support posts that have been submerged in water for over 10 years.

Be carefull with using copper naphthnate, it is toxic to aquatic organisms including fish. Good stuff but toxic.

We all try to buy the best materials that we can afford. Even if you get the very best, it still means that preventative maintainance can never hurt.

I just never heard of this company. Seems like somebody out there must be using their stuff. I wonder what is the chemical makeup of there product.

Just looking over their site again for what's in it. They aren't saying but do claim that it is non-toxic and it "encapsulates toxic wood treatments on existing construction". I might have to call them sometime....

I'd be interested to know how long it's been in use out in the field, and what the feedback is from people/companies that have used it a few years (or more) ago.

I recently purchased Bestmade Lake Docks for my pond and was told to use avoid something like a Thompson water seal and try to use a good deck stain like Cabot. After doing some research, I found that the stain as opposed to the water sealant tends to last longer. To completely eliminate the problem you might consider going with the poly interlocking deck panels like thru-flow, sure-step, or titan deck.