Termites

[Jan Mundy/DIY]

How to stop termite infestation in hollow, wooden spruce masts? Masts and boat termite tented this summer but needs a productthat can coat the mast inside and out to prevent reinfestation.
Applied Cetol (inside) and Brightside (outside) but the termites seem to like both.
Any advice?

[Donn]

"Anti-termite Protection for Wooden Surfaces
It is absolutely essential to pretreat all wooden surfaces with BP Wood Protector Clear to guard against termites, wood borers, etc. This is a transparent coating that has to be brushed onto bare wood. Its greatest advantage is that it allows subsequent overpainting with paints, synthetic finishes and polishes. Applied properly Wood Keeper Wood Protector Clear continues to provide long term anti-termite protection and is strongly recommended for costly wooden furniture, almirahs, cabinets, pelmets, beams, stairs, storage systems, etc."

http://www.bergerpaints.com/m_special.htm

[Dave Carnell]

Paint it thoroughly with ethylene glycol auto antifreeze. The antifreeze penetrates like water because of its chemical similarity and kills insects and rot organisms.

[On Vacation]

Dave, our thoughts are with you.

[paladin]

Just a note........Ethylene Glycol comes in two variations...inhibited and non-inhibited. The difference is additives to prvent corrosion in auto cooling systems....the disadvantages are that the additives are conductive.......uninhibited Ethylene Glycol is used in very high powered klystron microwave amplifiers....( 1 kw-75 kw) as a coolant where the accellerator voltages could arc through the coolant due to the additives. If you could obtain your ethylene Glycol from a distributor who sells the uninhibited stuff you might be better off....I mention this because of possible lightning strikes........just a thought.....

[Billy Bones]

Well, Jan, I'm a furnituremaker in the termite capital of the world where we have three species of termites (tree termites/formosans, dry-woods and subteranean) and a profusion of insidious boring beetles, so here's what I've found. Bad news: Once a structure has termites, it is cheaper and better to start fresh. Even if you do kill them all, which isn't likely, being opportunistic, they like nothing better than to rediscover old tunnels. Further, if you dont get every single solitary one, you run the risk of bringing them aboard your boat, assuming they're not there already. Assuming they're old box section sticks, it is no trick to rebuild.

Good-ish news: Despite the above, I have had reasonable success treating infested wood with 'Bora-care' which as the name suggests is a boron-based product suspended in, I believe, glycerin. A little dab'll do ya. Technically you need only treat one side of the wood to achieve full saturation, if the wood is bare. It doesn't affect any finish I've used, once dried.

There was an article in WB a few years ago about boron based preservatives, including boracare and the others on the market. Worth getting the back issue. See the WB index at our hosts site.

Also, Dave Carnell has a lot of experience with this sort of thing and his advice of antifreeze may work well too, and be cheaper. I've just never tried it.

Good luck

[thechemist]

Terhmites rely on a microorganism in their intestines to digest the cellulose for them, or so I learned. The idea then was, put a fungicide in the wood, that kills the symbiote, and the termite starves.

That may not actually be true. See http://agnews.tamu.edu/dailynews/stories/BICH/Apr1602a.htm

I have found from patent literature search on capsaicins and denatonium benzoate [Bitrex, the most bitter substance known, detectable at six parts per billion and aversively bitter at fifty parts per million] that many insects and encrusting marine life do not like that stuff. A combination, denatonium capsaicinate, is also mentioned in the patent literature.

I think a simple but effective remedy [assuming you have no fifty-year-old bottle of 75% Chlordane rat-holed , just for emergencies such as this] is to make a solvent-borne solution of some really hot dried peppers or cayenne pepper run through a blender with lacquer thinner, and then painted on the mast to saturation, and poured on the inside [if it be hollow].

Likely the little critters have spread elsewhere than the mast....modern fumigation works wonders. Tent the whole boat and in a week it is done. You've got that option, too.

[Dave Carnell]

Boracare® is sodium octaborate dissolved in ethylene glycol. Sodium octaborate is U. S. Borax's Timbor® which is Epa-registered. If Nisus, Boracare's manufacturer knows of the efficacy of ethylene glycol, they cannot claim it because it is not EPA-registered for the purpose.

No company is going to get EPA registration of glycol because it would cost at least several hundred thousand dollars and after they had it, anyone else coukld piggyback on it. U. S. Borax doesn't mind this for their product because they are the sole manufacturers.

[thechemist]

My company was advised by State EPA-persons that when they wished to market a pesticide for which someone else had alreadly done the work and gotten registration, that they would have to do the laboratory studies all over again.

It did not used to be this way, until maybe 20 years ago there was a Supreme Court decision which came to be known as the Monsanto Decision. Monsanto asked for and got a court decision that the EPA could not use Monsanto's studies for the benefit of anyone else submitting registration data, meaning that Monsanto essentially owned its studies, not the EPA nor the public, and the EPA had to pretend the data did not exist when looking at registration data for the same pesticide from anyone else.

With that decision, Monsanto protected its own turf and anyone else's by making it impossible for anyone to piggyback their registration on anyone else's, as used to be the custom before that court decision.

Some products ARE available from multiple sources. Some manufacturers are willing to let their competitors make certain products with the payment of a healthy license fee, but it is at the discretion of the company that has the registration. It's the Free Enterprise economic system......

Perhaps there was some more recent court decision that overturned the Monsanto decision, but I am not aware of it.