A Guide To Pressure Treated Timber

A Guide To Pressure Treated Timber, UC3 & UC4 what is the difference?

All outdoor timber should be pressure treated to help extend its life span, protect it from the elements and improve its durability and resistance. In is essential to understand the use class levels of treatments to ensure you get the correct grade of treatment for long lasting results on your project.

What is pressure treatment timber?

The Pressure treatment process involves placing the wood into a vacuum chamber, which removes the air from the timber and puts a chemical preservative deep into the wood. This treatment process is seen to add many benefits to your timber fencing:

Stronger

• It can resist a much greater weight than untreated timber can, meaning that it won’t break as easily.
• Being pressure treated also helps to protect the wood from damage caused by insects, moisture, mould and the weather.

Life Span

• It will have a much longer life span, this will vary on the grade of treatment used.
• The treatments resistance to fungi and insects help to maintain the timbers strength for longer periods of time.

Lower Maintenance

• Since it has already been treated, you will not need to treat it yourself with protectant, this saves you time and money. Making this more efficient.

UC3 V UC4 Timber treatment

There are several different levels of  use class treatments for both internal and external timber. Use class 2 (UC2) is only suitable for internally used timber while use class 3 (UC3) and Use class 4 (UC4) are designed for external use. Each grade is explained below:

Use class 3

Class 3 is suitable for external above ground use, with moisture contact. This level of pressure treatment is suggested to last 6-8 years

Use class 4

A higher treatment of preservative, which helps protect the timber against insects and decay damage. The preservatives are put into the wood’s fibres at a much higher pressure. This is so that the treatment has been put into the wood efficiently. This treatment helps to give a higher protection against wood damaging things such as rot. To identify UC4 the posts normally have a stamp or a nail at the end.

Class 4 is suitable external use which is in or near ground or fresh water.

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