This is the bridge my son and I built this summer. It’s got twin pressure-treated 6x6 beams as the undercarriage, set in stone and concrete pylons of ~200 pounds each. We ripped and sawed the planks ourselves, also out of pressure treated lumber. Everything is attached with decking screws rather than nails for strength. It’s all sealed in Australian timber oil which was applied to each individual piece and cured before assembly; after we put it together I reapplied oil to all the screw holes to make sure no untreated wood was exposed to the weather.
Very nice, Grim. I passed this along to my brother - a projects kind of guy.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Elise.
DeleteNice work indeed, and always best when shared with your son. French drains tend to get clogged up with silt over time, did you line it in any way? Some are lined with industrial fabrics to help reduce silting up. I'll also note, just as an aside, that the pressure treated lumber of today is not nearly as good as of years past, though it's safer to work with, and I guess it's safer for the soil or something. But it doesn't hold up all that well, though a little better than untreated. Sawing it makes it worse though- the bullk of the applied chemicals are near the surface and interiors are less protected. FYI.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the warning. Hopefully the timber oil will supply adequate additional protection.
DeleteThis drain is the first one I’ve ever put more in than crushed stone. You’re right they often silt up. This one I lined at the bottom with a perforated pipe, which will hopefully increase the drainage speed to cut down on that issue.
Professionally I wouldn't spec one without a perf pipe and a pipe sock, but the perf pipe alone will indeed help a great deal in preventing/slowing silt up. I'm sure the oil, as you've applied it so thoroughly, should probably do even better than the PT to protect the wood, and to be honest, as the planks are above grade, it's much more the beams that need the PT protection.
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