exposed beams
What about using a marine coating or some sort of epoxy on the exposed beams and then painting over that? Especially at the ends. Lee Stone
From our experience we are quite impressed with two products for wood repair and restoration from a company named Abatron. These have been used in our neighborhood with excellent results. The first, LiquidWood penetrates rotted wood, and after drying and hardening, stabilizes problem areas in fascia, window sills, etc. The second, WoodEpox is their other wood restoration product which is used for filling cracks, holes, voids, etcetera, and to replace lost sections/pieces of wood. It is apparently very stable stuff - dimensionally stable and resistant to weathering. It can be sanded, nailed, planed and so on, just like wood, after it has hardened. Experience here has proven that it is indeed workable quite similar to wood. It is rather pricey, but is probably a money saver in the long run, considering the cost of replacement of exterior posts, beam extensions, fascia, etc. Their website for info is abatron.com.
Cheers, Dave
I would second the recommendation for LiquidWood and WoodEpox by Abatron. I used it to repair dryrot on the top of one of my atrium beams (after applying a borax-based treatment). I'm also using it on termite damage in a beam. So far, I'm very happy with the results.
TheAbatron website is very informative and the list of historic sites using their product impressive. You can order over the web or you can call their customer service for a distributor near you.
Good luck.
jake
i will third and fourth those motions...
We used Wood Epox to repair some really bad dry rot (2-3" inches deep in some places by almost a foot long) on an exposed beam and then painted over it. It worked perfectly!
Supposedly it's the only product recommended by the National Trust for repair of historic homes.
In Southern California - the product is available at Crown City Hardware in Pasadena.
We have filled cracks, painted, watched cracks bubble and refilled-repainted- this done several times with a couple of different products. We removed a lot of dryrot. Now we are ready for a new atttempt. I'm going to check-out the products others suggested to the previous house owner, but I'd also like to know about other solutions. How does encasing the beams in a metal sheath work? Other ideas?
Ready-to do something else on our week-ends in Sunnyvale! :oops:
We have just been told by a pest inspector that we have dry rot in several beams. The Abatron products seem like a possibility for this problem, but for someone who is not skilled in this kind of work - who do you call? What do you look under in the phone book to get someone to fix a beam using the Abatron products? Help!
on eichlernetwork.com home page navigate to
Get A Fix,
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t
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert, these are my opinions only. Please feel free to educate/correct me if you feel I've mistated something.
Just a quick note. It's probably worth your while to become a least passingly familiar with dryrot lifecycle if you aren't already. That is, do a quick search on the internet for an explanation of dryrot. One thing you'll find is that it is a fungus and, as such, has certain requirements to grow. If you can remove the conditions that were allowing it to grow, your repair will have a better chance. Example:
http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/publications/articles/wood_destroying_fungi_...
If I recall, dryrot requires light/heat, moisture, oxygen and substrate (food). The primary preventive focus is normally to remove the moisture. So, if it's atrium beams that are affected, for instance, you're going to need to seal up where the moisture in getting in. Sometimes that is keeping several good coats of paint on the top of the beams, sometimes it's correcting roof drainage so it's not running where it shouldn't.
Being a fungus, there are spores in the wood. That means it is very difficult (impossible?) to be sure you have removed all the dryrot. One of the things I've seen is a recommendation to apply a borax (boric acid?) based product to the wood prior to repair. The borax is dormant until activated by moisture--it then kills the spores. So, basically, it's a precaution in case moisture does penetrate again it can help contain the spread (temporarily).
I asked at several lumber and home hardware stores with no success but finally found something called TermitePruf (sp?) in the garden section of Orchard Supply in San Jose. (No, I don't actually think it helps with termites, but that's another discussion). Anyway, it's a borax based spray.
1. I fixed the roof facia which was allowing water to drain from the roof onto the atrium beam.
2. I dug out as much of the damaged wood as I could then soaked the area with this borax stuff.
3. When dry (depending on weather might be a few hours might be overnight), I painted on the Abatron LiquidWood then filled with Abatrons WoodFiller.
4. Once the filler had thoroughly, I primed then double-coated the area with paint.
Good luck.
Jake
