Treated poles, safety, and sources questions

[urbanfarmer]

I am designing a small pole house, and I need 9 poles. 6 18' poles, and 3 25' poles. Since they will be 6' in the ground, they should be pressure-treated with some type of preservative. What do you experts recommend? I've heard some types are much safer and less hostile to the environment and ground water supplies. Which are best?

And where is a good source to find these poles at a reasonable price? I am in Texas, 30 miles NE of Waco, but I could drive a ways with a 25 foot trailer.

[Bearfootfarm]

Try checking with your local utilities to see if they sell used telephone poles.

Around here they go for 35 cents a foot and are usually at least 35 feet long. Its far cheaper than any other treated lumber Ive found

[palani]

Two choices -

Nowadays they use treated 2x8s in the ground with untreated above ground. They are fabricated to form 8x8. I believe they use some form of adhesive to bond the 2x8s together. At least that is what the Morton building people currently use.

Second choice is a square cement pier with a metal bracket to attach the post. These are available commercially. There is no need for treated poles.

[Windy in Kansas]

I'm no expert even in the broadest sense of the word.

I do know that where I live utility companies will often sell used poles that have broken off, many portions still the length you require. The company here sells them at a per foot price.

I would ask the utility company for their recommendations of which treatment would work best for your use, but I expect you will find creosote the widest used and easiest to come by. Pentachlorophenol (penta) treatment may be next. I don't have knowledge of any other treatments that may be used.

Some poles in our area are being replaced with metal ones.

If I were building the building you want to construct I would place gravel in the bottom of each hole to allow for any large amount of moisture to drain away.

According to some information I just found on line creosote isn't the #1 treatment, however it still is in my area.

http://www.ncamp.org/poisonpoles/wood.html
Nevertheless, the treatment of utility poles are almost evenly split between penta and CCA, with 45 percent treated with penta, 42 percent with CCA and 13 percent with creosote.

[texican]

Are these poles for a home or a barn... If it's a barn, there'd be few problems using 'telephone' poles, unless you enclosed it tightly, and were going to spend a lot of time inside, or use it for milking purposes.

If it's for a home, using any recycled or probably even new poles, would be a disastrous mistake. Go outside, rub against a telephone pole, and smell the aroma... and then rush back in the house and scrub yourself clean... quickly. They use to treat poles with toxic substances, that leach out forever. I've got telephone poles for part of my deck uprights, and twenty years later (the poles were 40 years old when installed) they still smell awful.

You'd be much better off digging circular footers, twice the width of your pole, 6' deep, and to the height of your floor, and fill with cement and steel.... and install bolt hardware in the wet cement. Once cured, install the brackets on the hardware, attach Kiln Dried Pressure Treated 4x6 or 6x6 lumber. Buy it new from a lumber store. If it's kiln dried, it's not going to go all wavy on you. You can buy those cardboard tubes at lumber stores (lowes/HD)... sure make work easier.

If you use poles, you don't know if there are hidden defects... and you won't know if the poles are treated with creosote, or combo's of creosote and 2-4d, or ddt, or whatnot...

[urbanfarmer]

Originally Posted by texican

You'd be much better off digging circular footers, twice the width of your pole, 6' deep, and to the height of your floor, and fill with cement and steel.... and install bolt hardware in the wet cement. Once cured, install the brackets on the hardware, attach Kiln Dried Pressure Treated 4x6 or 6x6 lumber. Buy it new from a lumber store. If it's kiln dried, it's not going to go all wavy on you. You can buy those cardboard tubes at lumber stores (lowes/HD)... sure make work easier.

This is for a home.

Ok, so if we follow your approach, would the poles need to be closer together?

You can see what I had in mind by looking at this photo. I was planning for the posts to be about 10' to 12' apart. The whole weight of the building was to be on them...walls were to be non-load bearing. What kind of adjustments do you think I should look at with the concrete footers and brackets with kiln dried lumber?

[The Paw]

I'm no expert either, but based on the diagram, my concern would be that under wind or snow load, the bracket where the pole meets the cement might act as a hinge, and would be the weak point in the structure. I don't think the spacing of the poles would necessarily address that. You either need to ensure that the brackets are specifically engineered for how you plan to use them, or perhaps add cross bracing between the poles on the side walls (or both).

[wy_white_wolf]

This is for a home.

Ok, so if we follow your approach, would the poles need to be closer together?

You can see what I had in mind by looking at this photo. I was planning for the posts to be about 10' to 12' apart. The whole weight of the building was to be on them...walls were to be non-load bearing. What kind of adjustments do you think I should look at with the concrete footers and brackets with kiln dried lumber?....

It becomes a timber frame instead of a pole building. 10 to 12' on the columns should still be ok but you will have to add some kind of bracing. Might want to look at some modern day timberframe books.

[Jim S.]

6x6 CCA treated building posts. You drill 3 feet into the ground with an 8" post hole digger on a tractor or skid-steer, pour in some croncrete mix out of the bag, set and level and brace the post, fill around the sides with dry concrte, then use the upper 6" to pour water in the hole. You'll use one 80-pound bag of concrete (roughly) per hole.

You'll never regret it. Think long and hard before you substitute from the above, especially in moist soils. It is far easier to make the right choice now than to replace them when they rot.

[FolioMark]

Your scheme will work just fine. Its basically how I built my house in Missouri. Follow JimS instructions and you wont go wrong. 6 feet of post in the ground is over kill to my mind. The only difference between Jims method and mine is that instead of a concrete floor, I ran rim joists around the outside about 18 inches off the ground and framed a wooden floor at that height which I insulated. Then I conventionally framed the outside walls between the posts which gives you all the bracing you could want. The nice thing about this method is that the roof goes up first so you can work in the shade and out of the rain. Good luck with it.