Insect infestation of stored wood

[Heywood]

  I've heated with wood in several areas of the country and used most kinds of firewood.  Where we live now, Maple (Red) and Cherry are the most of what I get, but of course Oak is welcome when available.  When we lived in New York's Northern tier, I found Sugar Maple to be absolutely great, but now the Red Maple I use, while still good doesn't compare to the Sugar Maple.  Actually, I now burn what is called “ditch wood” which is obtained to clear the drainage ditches around here.  Also, fallen trees to clear farm fields.
   One kind I've not used is Tulip Poplar and going back over postings here, I think I know what to expect now that I had two very large ones come down on my property.  Since I have all the roofed over storage space I will ever need, I intend to cut them and store them until they are really dry when I intend to use them in the fall and spring when we need a short but hot fire in the mornings and evenings.
   This brings me up to a question that I've not found an answer to, and that is, what if anything can I do to reduce insect deterioration of my stored wood?  I just cleaned out last winter's section of my storage shed and the powder from boring insects was half a foot high at the bottom of the pile.  I could live with that, but the powder makes handling the wood during the winter messy, and the lady of the house does not like the dust it causes in the house.  I hesitate to spray the stored wood because I wouldn't  know what to use that would be safe for burning the wood.
   Outside of getting rid of the wife, who might be hard to replace, I see no solution for this and thought maybe someone here might have an idea or two.

[Left Coast Chris]

If only we could invent an economical way to keep wood piles free of borers..... we would be rich men.   I say this because when you have valuable wood attacked there is more panic and need for prevention of infestation.

Heywood, you have a situation where the borrers have built up a population which is a tougher situation.   There are several methods:  Spray each piece with Timbore or Solubor (borate products),  fumigate with insecticides,  prevent access by the beetles.

Spraying each piece would be quite expensive and time consuming.  Usually only done with valuable sawn wood.  Fumigation is possible but generally would only kill what is there at the time of fumigation and probably for some short time after depending what material is used.   Other possibilities are somehow evacuating the oxygen or adding sufficient heat to do the job.  Generally not practical with firewood.    I have been somewhat successful enclosing sawn wood in a tight building but all the bark has to be off.  That is still risky.

One last possibility is mating disruption of the pest.  Out here the State Agg Department is experimenting with mating disruption using fermones with codling moth and husk flys.  They have gotten it to work in some locations.  This is the drive towards organic farming which has lots of $s behind it.   Not sure the firewood industry can attract such reseach $s.  Maybe someone here has heard of some research that is panning out to stop borrers. 

 

[SwampDonkey]

Try mixing 2 lbs of 20 Mule Team Borax laundry booster to 1 gallon of hot water to dissolve. Use a hand sprayer to apply. It's got the same stuff as TimBor only a little different formulation and half the borate concentration. Use the mixture up, as it doesn't store. Can't hurt, it'll clean the wood if nothing else. Borax is pretty cheap and it's naturally occurring.

Borax - Na₂B₄O₇.10H₂O when mixed with water forms hydrogen peroxide as a by-product.

TimBor - Na₂B₈O₁₃ · 4H2O

Note: Borates are used as ingredients in flame retardants. I think Borax mixed in water at 1.25 lbs/US gall makes a non-permanent home made fire retardant for kids clothing. So I don't know how that will effect the burning of your wood. :/ Test it on the flammability of some wood samples, possibly.

Some of this information is from Google, TimBor and the Borax Corporation web sites.

[Ironwood]

I bought some Borate/ Borax through my local Agway, special order. I recall about $40- 50 a bag (80 lbs maybe). I havent used it yet. I also found some rock hard "salvage" stuff through a local guy who bought an old municple water works building, the bags were in tact but absorbed moisture for the last 30 years laying around, they used it in their leachate pits for purifying. I figure it was about $1000 worth if I can get it to break down and into solution (rock crusher to start?).


          Ironwood