What Kind Of Paint To Use On Pressure Treated Wood

If you take a deck, stairs, or other structure made with pressure treated lumber, you may non like the look of the brown or dark-green woods surface created past pressure level treatment. Yous may be asking, can you paint pressure level treated wood?The short answer is, yes, but it's a fiddling more complicated than painting wood that isn't pressure level treated. There are a couple of things you need to know about how to prepare the woods earlier y'all get out the paint and pigment brush. You also need to employ the right kind of paint to brand this project successful.

Once you have this cognition and a few simple tools, your pressure treated painting chore will come out looking great and lasting equally long as possible.

What Exactly is Pressure Treated Wood?

Force per unit area treating woods is a procedure washed at the lumber mill to make the woods more resistant to rot and fungus attack. When lumber is processed, it is submerged in a vat of chemicals and put under loftier pressure to get the chemicals to penetrate securely into the wood grain. After that, the wood is assault racks until it is dry out to the touch on and prepare for sale.

Pressure Treating

There are several different chemicals used for treating lumber. The nearly common are chromated copper arsenate, or CCA and alkali metal copper quaternary, or ACQ. Nonetheless, edifice departments are phasing out CCA wood for residential use, so you lot are more likely to detect it on existing structures.

pressure-treated-lumber — Photo: 123rf.com

The copper is what often gives pressure treated forest a slightly greenish tint, although the ACQ treatment makes the concluding product come out a brown colour.

If you look closely at the surface of force per unit area treated lumber, you lot will notice small indentations spaced over the lath. These help the chemicals penetrate better into the surface of the woods, and their presence is a sure style of determining a piece of woods has been pressure treated, no matter what the color is.

Chemicals

The chemicals used for pressure treating lumber are toxic if you ingest or inhale them. Always use gloves when treatment this blazon of woods, wash your hands after handling information technology, fifty-fifty when you apply gloves, and employ a dust mask when y'all saw or drill holes in force per unit area treated lumber.

Here are the steps to paint your lumber

1. Dry the Lumber

Unless you utilize kiln-stale pressure treated wood, one trouble with putting a glaze of pigment on this type of woods is that pressure level treated lumber is not thoroughly dry for quite a long fourth dimension after the chemical pressure treatment. Expect to expect three to four months for new pressure treated woods to completely cure before painting it.

While you can handle new pressure level treated boards without noticing the chemicals on your gloves, there is however moisture, pitch, and resin inside the wood which needs time to dry out out before you pigment it.

Assuasive the wood to completely dry before painting is one secret to a good paint job on this blazon of lumber.

Because it is not thoroughly dry, new pressure level treated lumber can quickly warp and curve if you lot don't handle it correctly. Later you buy new pressure level treated lumber, build with information technology right abroad, or keep it stacked flat in a dry out place and wait at least 60 days to 4 months before painting it. Patience is a crucial ingredient in this project.

Use stickers

If yous're not building right away, forbid the boards from warping past stacking them using stickers – thin pieces of forest slightly wider than the wood you are stacking.

Paint stirring sticks work just fine for this, only you can use any type of stick as long as they are all the aforementioned thickness.

Place the stickers under the bottom piece of wood on the footing at each end of the board and spaced about every four feet under the length of the plank. Then set down your start piece of wood on the bottom stickers.

Then put stickers on superlative of the bottom board, using similar spacing as before, and stack the adjacent piece of lumber on tiptop. The stickers provide air space between the planks and assist with drying and keeping the wood flat and straight until you're prepare to use it.

Conditions Weather condition

Besides making sure your pressure treated lumber is dried out from the treatment process, it's also essential not to paint any wood if information technology'southward wet from rain or snow.

Practice your painting during warm, dry weather and low humidity weather. If your lumber is exterior, wait at least a calendar month afterwards the concluding rain earlier painting.

How can yous tell if the chemicals are fully dried out before painting pressure treated wood? There's a simple test y'all can use.

Merely pour a pocket-sized amount of water onto the forest and picket what happens. If the water beads upward on the surface, the wood is not stale out enough. If the h2o sinks into the wood grain, it's dry out plenty to get out your paint brushes.

Kiln Drying

Kiln-drying involves stacking lumber in a container and applying heat to assist it dry faster. Kiln-stale lumber does not warp as easily as wet lumber because all of the moisture evaporates during the drying process.

You lot tin purchase kiln-dried pressure treated lumber, besides chosen Kiln-Stale Afterwards Treatment, or KDAT, if you don't desire to wait every bit long for the wood to dry before you lot paint it.

2. Clean the Wood

If you are painting a force per unit area treated construction outdoors, the wood may accept dirt and grime on it which you need to remove earlier painting. Also, you need to wash off the chemicals on the surface of the forest before you pigment.

It's unproblematic to do. Y'all volition need a hose with a jet nozzle, a stiff brush, and a saucepan of water with a balmy detergent. Moisture the area, scrub with the brush and soapy water, and use the spray of h2o to clean it off. Don't use a pressure washer because this tin gouge the wood, reducing the effectiveness of the force per unit area treatment for preventing rot and insect impairment.

After cleaning, you'll need to wait for the wood to dry completely before moving on to the next pace.

3. Prime number It Thoroughly

priming pressure treated wood — Photo: 123rf.com

For your terminal paint job to completely cover the colour of the pressure treatment, it is essential to employ a loftier-quality primer before you pigment on the finish coats. Exist sure the characterization on the primer says you lot can apply it outside. Using a primer will also ensure the finish coats of paint adhere to the woods surface without peeling.

Apply a glaze of primer to all surfaces of the wood y'all programme to paint, and let it dry for at to the lowest degree 1 day earlier moving on to the adjacent pace.

You lot can use a paint sprayer or a paintbrush to utilise both the primer and cease coats, but paint rollers probably won't become pigment into all of the crevices on the surface of most pressure treated wood.

4. Top Pigment Coats

The best pigment to use for pressure treated wood is a high-quality, exterior latex paint. If you are installing lumbers in an indoor location, yous tin use interior paint.

You can cull any colour you like, simply lighter colors may take more coats to hide the green or brown color underneath completely unless you use a primer. Whatsoever color y'all utilise, plan on doing at least two finish coats over the primer, and wait a day between coats so the paint can dry out thoroughly.

It does take a bit more work and patience to paint pressure level treated forest than painting untreated lumber. However, if you follow these steps advisedly, your finished job volition likely come out looking good and lasting a long time.

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