Building with old deck materials

[JoeyGee]

My neighbors just ripped out a rather large deck. I assume this is pressure treated material, but there is a good deal of wood in decent shape--2x4, 2x6, 2x10 and a whole bunch of posts all in decent shape. Assuming there aren't too many nail holes, etc, is this wood good for anything? I have no problem sanding and painting the stuff, but I am not sure I want to bother with the PT stuff. I just hate to see this huge pile just get dumped into a landfill.

[BadeMillsap]

I build outdoor furniture with repurposed PT stuff all the time

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[capncarl]

I like to use old deck boards for raised bed boxes in my garden. There has been a lot of tree huggers commenting about using pt wood in the garden, but old deck wood has the chemicals washed off.
capncarl

[LCHIEN]

I like to use old deck boards for raised bed boxes in my garden. There has been a lot of tree huggers commenting about using pt wood in the garden, but old deck wood has the chemicals washed off.
capncarl

I'd hesitate and stop if the bed boxes were for vegetables for eating. Flowers, OK.
The old PT stuff had arsenic and I imagine its not all washed out, it will leach out for a long time in ground contact and arsenic accumulates in the body!


as for using for furnitire and stuff, I'd advise a metal detector to check for buried nails. One good saw blade or set of planer blades would pay for that scanner. I've got a stack of old fence 4x4s in the back yard I pull up and use as the base for various patio furniture items. Only the bottom rotted off and ended their life as a fence but the top were in good shape once I cut off the ends and pulled the nails (and scanned for hidden nails which I put a big marks alot circle around).

[capncarl]

Pressure treaters stopped treating wood with arsenic in 2003. After that date it is considered safe for vegetable gardening, if it was treated before 03 you can use plastic inside the raised bed. Raised beds sure make a nice looking garden and solve a lot of weed and insect problems.

[mineengineer]

Pressure treaters stopped treating wood with arsenic in 2003. After that date it is considered safe for vegetable gardening, if it was treated before 03 you can use plastic inside the raised bed. Raised beds sure make a nice looking garden and solve a lot of weed and insect problems.

You are right about them stopping producing it with arsenic for residential use in 2003, but they were allowed to sell it until stockpiles ran out which depending on where you lived was about anywhere from 2004 to 2006. They still make it for commercial and agricultural use.

[capncarl]

Not to change the scope of this thread, but arsenic picked up by vegetables in your garden from old pressure treated wood should be the least of our worries! The practices of using human waste for fertilizer (called biomass) exposes everyone to some really bad stuff. Not just China and Vietnam, it's happening here in the USA. Are you suprised?
capncarl,