What are Borates Read Article to learn more about Borates and there uses.
Borates render wood unpalatable to termites and inhospitable to rot. After drilling into this infested windowsill, a builder injects liquid borates into the hole before filling it with epoxy and painting. Borates are reliable way to protect your wood from rot and insects.
To stop decay or insect infestation, builders and homeowners can apply borates to existing wood or they can buy materials with borate protection already built in.
BORATES IN THE RAW
Borates consist of boron, the fifth element on the periodic table, and oxygen, along with sodium, zinc, calcium, or a host of other minerals. Those used mainly as wood preservatives and pesticide – zinc and sodium borates – are found either in crystallized form
(1) or are extracted from mineral deposits in dry desert lake beds around the world. Sodium borates can be mixed with boric acid and exposed to high heat and pressure to form cylindrical rods
(2) that can be inserted into decaying or infested wood. Raw borates are also refined into a powder
(3) which can be mixed with ethylene glycol to create a penetrating liquid gel
(4) one gallon of concentrated glycol borate will treat roughly 150 eight-foot 2x4s.
To stop decay or insect infestation, builders and homeowners can apply borates to existing wood or they can buy materials with borate protection already built in.
In 1973, when quarter-inch-long powder-post beetles began tunneling out of window and door trim in more than 1,000 homes near Mobile, Alabama, the molding manufacturer sued the wood importer for $1 million. In a deposition for the trial, U.S. Forest Service researcher Lonnie Williams, a leading expert on the subject of wood-infesting beetles and wood preservation, te4stified that the Brazilian wood had been infested before it left the Amazon. In his research, Williams had heard that builders in New Zealand and Australia had been successfully treating termite-ridden wood with borates, the cheap, environmentally safe mineral compounds that had been used in the United States as deodorizers and cleaning agents in borax laundry powders. Because of the trial, Williams began work to introduce the pesticide alternative into the country’s wood manufacturing industry.
Twenty-eight years later, additional research by Williams and other scientists shows that borates can effectively deter many of wood’s natural enemies, including powder-post beetles, house borers, carpenter ants, termites, fungi, mildew, even fire. Yet to mammals, including house pets and humans, it is about as toxic as table salt.
To stop decay or insects that have already begun to do damage, builders and home-owners can apply borates to existing wood. To prevent infection or decay, they can buy materials – everything from studs, sheathing, and siding to insulation – with borate protection already built in. the U.S. Department of housing and urban Development accepts these materials as an alternative to drenching sub-foundation soil with chemical based termiticides and pesticides. And unlike pressure treated lumber, which has a greenish hue from the infusion of chromate copper arsenate (CCA), wood infused with borates doesn’t change color, is safe to burn, and hasn’t raised any environmental or health concerns. “Nothing is one hundred percent safe,” says Williams, now an independent consulting contractor. “But borate treatment is essentially safe. I think it can really help people.”
The way borates kill termites and other wood eating insects is by poisoning the microorganisms in the insects’ digestive tracts that are needed to break down the wood’s cellulose. In other words, a termite that eats borate treated materials eventually starves to death. For carpenter ants and other insects that burrow through wood instead of ingesting it, scientists believe that borates enter and poison the digestive tract when the insects attempt to groom themselves. So far, insects have shown no ability to develop resistance to this type of attack. Borates also inhibit the wood dissolving enzymes excreted by the many different kinds of decay fungi, and they are a potent mildewcide. As an added benefit, borates act as a fire retardant by forming a glaze that prevents wood from igniting.
The pesticide qualities of borates have been known for at least 300 years. Joseph Nagyvary, a biochemistry professor at Texas A & M University who spent 25 years studying 17th century Stradivarius violins, says the instruments may have been treated in a borate solution to protect them from beetle larvae. Back then, the mineral arrived in Europe mostly by caravan from hot geothermal lakes in Tibet.
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LEFT IMAGE: Pretreated borate products like insulation add an extra layer of protection.
ABOVE IMAGE: Builders can now buy untreated wood and spray it with borates before framing.
BELOW IMAGE: Rods made from compressed sodium borates and boric acid work best outdoors where wood is in the ground or often wet.
Not until 1872 were borates found in North American, when several large deposits were discovered in the United States – including a huge supply in California’s Death Valley. Twenty – mule teams hauled it out, a fact celebrated on old boxes of U.S. Borax laundry powder. By the turn of the century, the substance was also being used for glazing ceramics and for smelting ore. In addition, borates had become an effective poison for cockroaches and other inspection pests.
As early as 1904, the U.S. Forest Service began looking at borates as potential wood preservatives. But when they discovered that termites merrily munched right through borate-infused stakes stuck in the ground, they dropped the compounds from further testing. “Borates aren’t effective in ground contact because they’re water-soluble and leach out of wet wood,” Williams says. Only later did researchers realize one of the advantages of the material is that it doesn’t just stay where it’s applied, but actually migrates to and concentrates in damp, soft spots, precisely where insects and rot fungi are most likely to attack. As long as there is nothing to draw borates out of the wood – such as standing water, heavy rain, or moist dirt – the wood will be protected indefinitely. As because it disperses easily in damp soil, the compound cannot concentrate at levels that would be toxic to plant life.
Despite the fact that water can eventually wash borates away, it is possible to use wood treated with the substance to build outdoor decks or fences, even in wet climates. A strategy for slowing down or preventing leaching is to use paint or plastic as a barrier. Once gel product is designed to be squirted to be squirted by syringe into small holes that have been drilled into the affected wood, getting the borates underneath paint. Another product can be brushed onto the below ground surface of a new fence post, which is wrapped with plastic and taped tight before being set in the ground.
A second strategy for using borates outdoors is to simply replenish the preservative as it leaches out. The easiest way to do this, a practice commonly used by utility companies to extend the useful life span of their telephone poles, is to insert borate rods into holes drilled in the wood. These rods slowly dissolve where ever the wood gets wet, bathing the vulnerable cellulose fibers in boron compounds. They need replacing after they melt away – generally once every three years.
Indoors, where leaching is not an issue, borates can be sprayed or brushed onto any type of wood in two forms: as a raw salt treatment that is mixed with water and covers the wood, or an a glycol concentrate that is applied straight from the bottle and penetrates into wood. According to Bryan Blundell, a historic preservation expert who has worked with borates since 1988 and now sells them, both borate products work well enough that one thorough coast – applied with a garden sprayer or paint brush – is usually sufficient to deter any insect. Applying more, he says, is a waste of money. “If you kill a bug with a ten-pound hammer, a twenty-pound hammer won’t kill it any faster.” He is quick to point out that users should follow the detailed application instructions that come on every package.
Perhaps the hardest part of using borates is finding them. Louisiana Pacific distributes borate treated siding products predominantly to lumberyards and home centers in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, though not to as many as they would like. “We are always looking to expand,” says Steve Weinstein, director of marketing for Louisiana Pacific’s specialty products. “But many lumber retailers simply aren’t aware of the benefits of borate based products.”
A few companies – such as Wood Care Systems in Washington (iwoodcare.com) and the Preservation Resource Group in Maryland (prgic.com) – will ship online orders to homeowners. But except for simple pest control products such as powdered cockroach baits, borates tend to be marketed primarily to pest control operators, log home builders, historic preservation experts, and other specialty trades people. According to Williams borate treated building materials are kept in stock at only three retail lumber yards in the country, and at many others they are special order items. “Borate products are slowly becoming more available in this country,” says Williams. “But until there is a bigger awareness of what’s out there, the demand will be limited.”
