Just bought a new fence? Wood preservation treatment is essential for ensuring a long life. Here's how to tell if you need to treat your new panels.
Pressure treated fences
Whether you need to apply treatment will depend on whether the wood used for your fence panels has already been pressure treated or not. Pressure treating involves treating the wood with preservative in a vacuum. This process forces the preservative into the wood, ensuring a deeper level of protection against rot, decay and insects.
If you buy fence panels from Somerlap, they will have already been pressure treated with an oil-based preservative. Although this gives excellent long-term protection, we would recommend applying a further treatment every few years which will prevent weathering and the growth of mould and algae. If you don't like the weathered look, use Barrentine Timber Protector to repel water, protect against UV damage and mould. The Barrentine Timber Protector offers good surface protection due to its wax content, but it's really only suitable for use on pre-treated timber.
Untreated fences
Untreated fences will need to be treated with a wood preservative as soon as possible. Although untreated fences can be cheaper, this can be a false economy as they are unlikely to last as long. Although you can prolong their life with preservative, it will not penetrate as deep into the wood as the treatment applied under pressure, so it won't provide the same level of protection. However, a treatment of Protek Preserver followed by a coat of Protek’s ‘Shed and Fence’ Stain would greatly improve any untreated timber's lifetime. We also sell Protek Royal Exterior Superior Wood Finish.
Untreated fences will generally need to have a preservative applied every couple of years in order to provide essential protection against rot and insects, as well as weathering.
A new fence from Somerlap
Somerlap stock a wide range of fence panels, posts and trellis – all of them pressure treated. If you need help finding the right product or need something bespoke, contact the Somerlap Team today.