POLSON — Wood treatment has involved various chemical processes, with those chemicals sometimes leaking into the environment for decades in the United States.
A wood treatment company in Polson uses heat and pressure to treat their wood, allowing the wood to be used for both exterior and interior purposes.
“There's no chemicals, it's not bad for you. So eco-friendly, no chemicals going back in the ground,” said Therma Wood Technologies general manager Dustin Clary.
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Therma Wood Technologies, located just outside Polson, has been treating all different kinds of wood with pressure and heat since 2018.
“We treat a lot of ponderosa pine to which it comes from many different states, a little bit locally, a lot of out of the Pacific Northwest, some hardwoods, red oak, aspen, maple, which is coming from the Midwest, some hemlock that is coming Pacific Northwest and up into Canada,” said Clary.
The treatment process works by breaking down cellular structures in the wood that hold moisture. Once those structures are broken down, the pressure part of the treatment helps harden the wood while still leaving some moisture within the wood, typically around 6%.
The treated wood is not only strengthened, but it also provides some other unique properties.
“People are using it for guitars. It has a very good sound to it after it's been thermally modified. There's some other applications that are looking to use it just because cedar is getting so hard to get. The playground manufacturers — they don't wanna use green tree," Clary told MTN. "This is an environmentally friendly species. Our product after it is done. So they're looking into it for longevity reasons."
While Therma Wood Technologies treats the wood, they do not sell it directly. Various businesses commission their wood supplies to be treated by them. And as of last year, they treated five million board feet of wood.
Contemporary chemically treated wood has an outside lifespan of seven to eight years but the wood treated at Therma Wood Technologies has a lifespan of roughly 20 years.
