My foreman swore by using pressure treated posts for every fence, but after 8 months I found them rotting at ground level on a damp clay site near Portland

He kept saying 'cedar's a waste of money' but I dug up two posts last week and the bottoms were soft and full of mold, so has anyone else seen pressure treated fail in wet soil or was it just a bad batch?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavina731mo ago

I dug up a post on my own property after two years and it snapped off in my hand like a wet cracker. The bottom six inches looked like a sponge that had been sitting in a sink for a month. I put it in the same damp clay soil near the creek bed and the foreman who sold them to me swore up and down it was the good stuff. Now I just figure anything that says "treated" on the tag means "treated to rot anyway.

rowan_roberts491mo ago

And that "treated to rot anyway" thing is pretty much spot on now. The old stuff with CCA was nasty but it actually worked in the ground. The new ACQ and whatever other letters they slap on it just doesn't hold up in real wet clay. Lots of guys I know have switched to using galvanized post anchors or even those plastic sleeves that go around the base before setting it in concrete. Saves you from digging up a rotten stump five years later.

victorb171mo ago

Man that story about it snapping off in your hand is rough. I've seen the same thing happen to a buddy of mine who built a nice fence along his property line. Two winters in and half the posts were leaning like they were trying to get a better view of the neighbor's yard. The stuff they call treated now is a joke compared to what we had twenty years ago. It's like they took out the real preservatives and just sprayed it with colored water and called it a day.