On May 1, 4:13 am, CChouse wrote:
On Apr 30, 8:41 pm, dpb wrote:



On Apr 30, 2:00 pm, CChouse wrote:

I have an old house I will soon be dismantling and rebuilding. Prior
to reinstalling the floorboards and most of the other wood I will
reuse, I'd like to have the boards steam cleaned and fumigated to kill
any bugs that may be in the wood and remove old (probably lead based)
paint. Can anyone suggest a company that specializes in this. The
house is located in the Massachusetts Cape Cod area.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Unless there's active sign of infestation, you're wasting your time
and money and it won't do any good about paint removal anyway. What
is the wood (species and type of material/dimensions, etc.)? How much
of it is there? How old is "old"? Is it of architectural or other
significance or "just a house"? Knowing some more might make for
other ideas of proceeding.

I've not done an entire house at a time, but have done multiple houses
(as in 25+ altogether) restorations in pre- and shortly post- (Civil)
war era houses in VA. Good quality finish lumber and trim was hand
stripped and sanded. Structural timbers and framing lumber were
either just used as is w/ minimal effort or, on occasion, as someone
else noted, cleaned up and run through planer to true it to consistent
dimensions.

DPB... thanks for the reply. Some answers to your questions:
The part of the house being "rebuilt" is circa 1750. I don't know the
species
of wood but the dimensions are 23 inches wide by 26 feet long
(floorboards).
The wood has signs of powderpost beetles so I'd like to rid the wood
of any living bugs....

But are you seeing any signs of current activity? Unless so, it's
more than likely old damage and not active.

But, one other thought -- you might investigate the subject of "diy
kiln-drying". There's a significant amount of information available
that you could potentially build a small kiln of your own and do the
heat treatment although steaming gets to be a little complicated on
your own. AFAIK, it only takes something otoo 120F for 30-min or so
to kill virtually any of the types of beetle that could include the
powderpost or similar which leave such small exit holes as to be
misidentified as them. Steam itself isn't really mandatory, and as
noted, won't help w/ the paint removal problem, either.

I haven't done a search there, but I'd recommend looking at the US
Forestry Service web site and doing some searching there -- they're
the font of all wood-related knowledge.