05/15/2026
We have been doing pole barn construction for something like 50 years. However, the landscape has really changed for pole barns in last five years. In 2003, the industry changed the type of preservative utilized on pressure treated material. Accordingly, the industry has been widely surprised that the new (since 2003) PT material has a much shorter lifespan than the PT material sourced in years prior.
Lead by the Canadian Farm Builders Association research was done in conjunction with Wood Preservative Canada to better understand the situation. Most pretreated materials that you find in all the lumberyards contain a small tag stapled to it stating not for ground contact! This little tag is often ignored by all, and so the industry is going to have a big wake up call over the next decade. Think of all the porch posts, deck posts, fencing posts that have been installed, simply with PT material and expecting a multi decade lifespan.
Now when building pole barns you need to be sure that you spec UC 4.1 or UC 4.2 posts. Ideally the lumber has incising on it, which allows for the PT application to better pe*****te the wood for preservation.
Now, in addition to the right material, when building pole barns, we wrap each post at ground level. This wrap has active preservative ingredients that are highly effective at the eradication of fungal colonization at the groundline. This unique bandage application system is applied and slit diagonal lines to expose the chemical and wrap on pole. This allows for deep localized preservative at the location of risk - ground level.
