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having just acquired a new shed, I spent most of today putting it up - I had intended to slosh "forest green" wood treatment over it, but 'er indoors has demurred..................she rather likes the way it looks now!
Any bright ideas for a good, clear treatment for the wood, so it won't rot, and will retain it's colour? (preferably without spending an arm and leg)

How dear is linseed oil these days?

If you want to do the real ssish thing, martin, you could grow the flax, harvest the seeds, extract the oil and then use that

I used to use a mixture of linseed oil, gum turpentine (not min turps) and terebine, I can find out the formulation if you are interested.....

Nev

I'd be interested to hear the formula - I've had a good Google and keep coming back to things like "Cuprinol clear" at around £25 for 5 litres! (as opposed to £7.99 for the coloured ones)

I'm a bit dubious about some of the stuff sold for fences and sheds - I don't think much of it actually does anything other than colour it. I suspect that a 'coating' is not the same as a 'treatment' is not the same as a 'preservative' (a bit like the way that hedgehog flavour crisps and not the same as hedgehog flavoured crisps).

I think the most important thing is to position the shed so that it can dry out, with no part of it permanently kept damp. Raise it off the ground on bricks or flagstones. I put my shed up twenty years ago, and for the first couple of years coated it in chemicals, but haven't bothered with anything since - the only problem I'm having is where the floor is in permanent contact with the ground.

Oils and waxes aren't preservatives as such, but they will help repel the water that rot depends upon. They may also help to preserve the natural colour of the wood for a while longer (without something to colour it, it's going to go grey in the end - better forewarn 'er indoors). You can get wax based coatings from your local DIY emporium, but I can't comment about what else might be in them. I recently used a water based thing from Wickes on a customer's shed, which they reckoned was OK for the environment, but I don't really know what was in it. Was a bit weird to apply - like painting with mousse.

If you want something with more preservative properties, try and find a boron based thing, which is reckoned to be more environmentally benign than chemicals. I've never seen such a thing on the shelves of the DIY store yet, but you can get it online from places like The Green Building Store.

thanks Stew - I've made sure it's "feet are dry" - good air circulation underneath too! I've got a tin of the forest green stuff, and applied a coat to the roof prior to it's felting - it's water-based, fairly niff-free stuff - Focus own-brand deluxe, which claims to contain "nourishing oils"........
In a way, I'm hoping she'll relent!

You can get a creosote substitute, in both dark and light varieties. I've used the light one - it still looks fairly dark when it first goes on but weathers to an attractive woody hue. However, it was difficult to get hold of - available in garden centres and DIY stores but in small stocks - so several areas are now protected with that new-fangled "wood paint" instead.

Wulf

Hi

It looks like some time since this debate was on but anyway...

My 1 year old shed is greying nicely. It's off the ground, well ventilated, reasonably shaded and I'm not keen on a green or brown chemical based stain. I could leave it but the guys who sell the sheds tell me it should be painted or stained. How about cloth applied boiled linseed oil? Ok it'll smell for a few days, but would this be a good and low-chemical-impact option?

S

At the end of the day I stumbled on a solution that appears to have worked extremely well........had a good rootle round the net, and found a piece on waterproofing an earth floor - using boiled linseed oil and beeswax.........
Seemed logical, and if it rendered a floor useably waterproof........so I obtained a chunk of beeswax from a local beekeeeper, and then experimented.......
I found the easiest way was to use boiled linseed oil, with a lump of beeswax about the size of a pigeon's egg to half a litre of oil -I actually used an old small electric slow cooker which always stuck when used for food..........stir until the beeswax melts, and then whack it on hot with a brush!
It's now a year on, and it really has done it's job well - the wood is exactly the colour it was a year ago, and it has let in no water whatsoever - it was also cheap in comparison to the proprietary ones, and smells lovely!
(I dread to think about the negative effects on fireproofing though!)
I'll be giving it another coat to "top it up" before the end of the summer!

We have a 50-year-old commercial chicken shed that's still going strong because it was treated every year without fail. The only problem being that while the treatment worked well, it was nasty. The previous owners used a mix of old-style creosote, diesel and mineral wax.

The other downside of that treatment is the fire risk. When I cut a new pophole, I threw the pieces of wood onto a fire. Whoomf! Quarter-inch planks gone in a minute...

I just hope none of our chickens are smokers...