# "treated to refusal"



## Canarywood1 (May 5, 2012)

DexterII said:


> I have seen "landscape timbers" that are "treated to refusal", but have not had occasion to use them, and have never thought to ask one of the guys at the lumber yard about it. Now I have a small area in which I want to establish a relatively obscure border, and decided that a treated 6x6 will do the job, so I looked up "treated to refusal", and, as I understand it, believe that the ones marked "treated to refusal" went through the process, but, for whatever reason, did not accept enough of the solution to meet specifications. Is this somewhat correct? And then, the real question is, how do they compare to a standard treated piece of lumber, as far as longevity, etc.? And yes, I understand that any piece of lumber in direct contact with the soil, regardless of its' grade, is going to fail at some point, but, again, I want something that will not stand out, and its' structural or anything like that, so will work in this application. Thank you for any comments.


 

Your understanding of the term is wrong,here's a link to clarify the term.


http://www.wwpinstitute.org/documents/TreatedtoRefusalAlert.pdf


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## Maintenance 6 (Feb 26, 2008)

I think you got it right Dexter. Most likely the timbers you looked at were dense heartwood that didn't treat well, and if they didn't treat well, they won't hold up well either. I'd pass on them. It would be hard to guess just how long they might hold up. I've had some treated lumber that was supposed to last 40 years that failed far sooner. These won't even give you any sort of guide.


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## DexterII (Jul 14, 2010)

Thank you, M6. My vocabulary probably isn't as large as it could or should be, but I thought that I had it pretty close. As I said, I've seen it, but have always walked past it, not paying much attention, because I frankly don't care much for the use of the typical landscape timbers. Not that I haven't seen some nice installations, but I remember them becoming popular, in the 60's I guess that it was, before other options came around, alomost to the point that a lot of residential landscaping started to look like state and national parking areas. Anyway, not a big fan of them, but with a brick house and some Keystone garden wall blocks already in play, I want something less "busy", and figured this would work. Anyway, again, thank you. We'll continue to walk past the landscape timbers, and pick up a few treated 6x6's instead.


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## Maintenance 6 (Feb 26, 2008)

I've seen some of the oval shaped landscape timbers stamped .40. I wouldn't hesitate to use the ones that are marked properly.


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