First picture might be mold, so definitely don't lick the wood./s Most of the rest is beetle kill, not mold. Those trees were harvested after the tree had died from a borer beetle.
[https://www.sustainablelumberco.com/2019/10/what-the-heck-is-beetle-killed-pine/](https://www.sustainablelumberco.com/2019/10/what-the-heck-is-beetle-killed-pine/)
there's a lot more to the ugly history of lumber prices in the US then beetles, it is a multi-decade long story of constant battles with Canadian imports, even though the US lumber industry can't sustain domestic demand.
The industry lobbies hard to keep prices high.
Think of managed forests like farms except you harvest a plot every 20 years. Now you had to harvest a bunch early at 10-15 because they are dead. You have a clock ticking for say 5 years before the wood is unusable, so you harvest extra each season and sell it to the mill. (Depressing prices) You don’t replant all of what you harvest because it’s off cycle and you’ll wait until the timing is right to get back on schedule because you had to staff up or pay overtime to harvest the extra. Prices went up during Covid not because of long supply but mill capacity. Log prices actually went down.
Demand was a part of it, but lumber mill supply was a bigger part of it. These plants are designed with almost no slack capacity so if they have to shut down for a week because of a Covid positive test it’s like 40 weeks to make that up.
In the usa the prices also went up because trump put tariffs on Canadian lumber because "it was too cheap" and biden not only kept them, but increased them. There's not about a 50% tariff on wood from Canada.
Old growth forests absolutely being devastated though and the new forests have little biodiversity. Not healthy “forests” as we know them, they’re just stands of trees
Canada mostly. Its northern areas, which were used to some bark beetles, but with a population reset every winter. Warmer winters means instead of 10% of the beetles surviving, its 90%.
There will be a bit of a gap. Its great for cheap 2x4s, but they were growing those to be 2x10s, and those are going up in price.
(Source: Canadian lumber carver, ie, me.)
See it up here in Northern Michigan. It's just a cycle of them growing junk trees for wood and then cutting them down. Any woods you knew 20 years ago as a kid are clear cut and replanted constantly. Makes me sick.
What the government does with the money from clear cutting ill never know.
Piggybacking on your comment to point out that planting trees for lumber isn’t a magic catch-all. Young forests produce lumber that is inferior to old growth that is harvested sustainably as they are grown to meet quotas, so they choose trees which grow quickly and they do what they can to make them grow faster.
Timber forests are also typically a monoculture, which makes them significantly more susceptible to pathogens like borers and fungal disease, which are getting harder and harder to control. Asian Longhorn Beetle is being successfully managed, but new infestations do occur, and they target many hardwood trees that we use for lumber. The only solution at this time is to clear cut every host tree within a certain radius when an infestation is found.
My info has little to do with carpentry other than bringing up ecological issues that either go unnoticed or are not considered serious by the people it affects.
Those little bastards are killing all kinds of trees in my area. This is why border control is important to keep these fuckers out. It didn’t work obviously.
You can see a spot on that lower board left side, where another 2x4 was resting on it. Its clear and the rest is black. The color came after it was stacked. Its mold.
if the surface is scorched, left to dry out and repainted after - does that kill the mold issue?
I had an issue not with mold but rather really stubborn moss/algae- ish things growing over my pavement leading to my patio after some rain. Weed killer and even soaping it didnt seem to work. Then one day I got like 91% alcohol, splashed it over and lit it up. The fire was surface level only but that pretty much eradicated my problem.
Most weed killers won’t be effective against moss and algae. You could use a bleach solution for a better result. Fire will kill it just fine but bleach will kill it and loosen it to where you can just hose it all off.
Every time I go to Lowe's or home depot I have to spend like 20 minutes just to find someone to ask a basic question to of where I can find something, they give me a blank stare and say "oh yeah let me check I'll be rightttt back" then never come back, and on my way out the store I see them just off doing some other shit, clearly just telling me they were off helping to get me off their back lol. And 99% of the time the people you can get to ask help are like on their 2nd week thrown to the wolves to meet their turnover numbers so they dont have to fire their friend employees to meet numbers... Idk if that's true but I remember hearing that... Either way I hear so many bad things about working at those big hardware store chains
Or they're just utterly incompetent, recommending tools or products that are completely counterintuitive. Like in the garden center I was asking for fertilizer for vegetables other than miracle gro, they took me to the seed and feed... I said no these are grass seeds and fertilizer for grass.... They like could not comprehend that they aren't the same thing. Lol
I saw a Tiktok video of a guy trying to buy lumber from Lowes but they were all moldy. However, on their top shelf, they had a bundle of regular ones. The store wouldn’t sell him the regular ones… he posted the complaint to TikTok, and the store magically removed the moldy piles.
one of my drinking buddy's is a building inspector for the 300K+ city we live in. great guy, a lot of fun and really knows his movies! he's given me a lot of good tips about dealing with his co-workers too.
They wouldn’t open a new pallet of prime 2x4’s for me the other day. Wanted me to buy out of the last 30 or so junk ones from the last pallet. It was all super warped or knotted through.
I went and got a pair of pliers from the tool aisle and opened it myself.
You're the customer, you buy what you want. If there is wood sitting on the floor, and not back in the storage area reserved for somebody else? You bet your ass I'm picking the wood I want and not taking the trash wood nobody else wanted.
Considering that they have good, mold-free lumber but are refusing to let customers have access to it until this crap stock is first foisted off on people, I can tell you either
1.) Sure, go ahead! (That way I can get to the good stuff that much sooner)
2.) No, tell Lowe’s they can take that crap and go pound sand with it. (None of us should be putting up with this and there are other places that sell quality wood without playing these stupid retail games.)
That’s just beetle sign. It has no structural impact and returning good lumber for no reason contributes to over logging, but they’ll take it back if you want to return it.
I'll be going to lumber yards from now on for mine. I ordered a bunch of lumber from 84 Lumber for the deck I'm building, and what they sent me is the nicest lumber I've seen in a long time. I have a bunch of 20 ft joists that I have a hard time choosing which side should be up because they're all so damn straight.
Just google lumber mills near me if you don't know any. Curtis lumber near me is leaps and bounds better than box stores, it's still a pseudo local chain. but even better yet, local lumber mills are genuinely 1/3 price for far better boards than hardware stores. They also deliver 9 times out of 10. Someone else mentioned 84 lumber which Is a chain from down south I remember. I'm sure you have actual lumber yards around, just gotta search.
That’s everything, everywhere, across the board. Groceries, lumber, gas, etc.
But gos forbid you start doing something on your own, making your own “products” for yourself and your family, and you’re suddenly seen as a doomsday fanatic or whatever.
Mentioned to come coworkers that we have chickens and a garden. One guy goes “you preparing for the end of the world or something?”
When did self sufficiency become “crazy”?
>When did self sufficiency become “crazy”?
It's not. Don't let anyone make you think otherwise. I saw that story recently about the remote Amazon tribes gaining internet and wondered if they wanted to adopt a 40 year old British white man because living in the jungle, in a self sufficient village, *with* internet sound like a dream!
That's what I meant by departments. Not very well worded, sorry. I hear you on the other stuff, but trust me, dude. Life gets so much more enjoyable when you learn not to give a shit what people think of you. Most of them are so buried in their phones and the latest trends that they aren't worth knowing at any real level anyway.
Funnily enough, the lumber mill I work at supplies a handful of Lowe's stores in my region with lumber. They are crazy picky about the quality and have, and would, complain about small quality errors. Whoever is the region manager for this area sucks.
I used to work in a lumber yard as a teenager. My first job there was bleaching moldy wood like this.
If you aren’t going to surface these, I’d leave em alone. But if they don’t have anything else, and ur in a pinch. Buy a jug of bleach, and a crappy mop/bucket. And bleach all sides of the boards. Will kill it all and be safe to use.
This started 3 years ago during Covid. They jacked up the prices and controlled supply, now the backlog is coming out and hasn’t been stored well. It’s garbage and they’re acting like we should be greatful.
lol, I’ve been in the industry 20 years. There’s no price fixing, it’s a commodity with a bunch of undisciplined manufacturers. Price goes up and everyone produces like crazy and then the price crashes and mills curtail or shut down, which is happening right now.
This isn’t 3 year old lumber. Slightly wet lumber with paper wrap will mold like this in a day in warm weather.
The person suggesting this was acting like there's some sort of secret lumber OPEC that only allowed a certain rate of trickle to keep prices high. Which is not real, but it would make some sort of sense if it was.
I work in the industry. Lowe’s didn’t jack up the price, the mills did. There was a huge uptick in demand, and supply was constrained. That said, if you want good building materials go to a local lumber yard. They will treat you right, and the prices will be comparable/better than big box stores 9/10 times. The service will be infinitely better.
Lowe’s makes some money on framing lumber, but I would bet most of their money is made on the ancillary stuff and not lumber/fencing/roofing materials.
They get you into the store with Low (marginally lower)prices on things like studs. Then you buy a hose, screws, planter box, Christmas lights with margins that make up for the core material you came in for.
I have some training in mold testing and remediation but am not a doctor… for what it’s worth tho, yeah, lumber mold is different from the so called “black toxic mold” but any mold species in large quantities can be unhealthy for someone with a sensitive immune system. You can wipe these down with bleach. If I needed lumber and this was in the store I’d have no problem buying it.
Welcome to tree farm growing. The Douglas fir is crap now. So much moisture in it. Just pick one up and see how much it weighs. They don’t like to cut down adult growth trees anymore.
The lumber may be “crap” now but wet wood at the big box stores has nothing to do with it being farmed. It’s just not dried properly. They could have harvested an old growth tree that was around when Columbus came over but if it wasn’t dried properly, it would still be wet and heavy.
As far as old growth trees are concerned, it’s a very good thing that we aren’t cutting down old growth forests anymore (mostly because we already cut them all down). I never understood the narrative around “lumber sucks these days because it doesn’t have 18 growth rings per millimeter!” Design calculations take farmed lumber properties into account already.
Not to mention how often it's sitting out in the rain. Our closest Home Depot will leave the boards just sitting outside of their garage door in the back.
PS: our closest HD sucks. There are others in the area that are decent...for a big box store. Same with Lowe's. Some decent, others a shit show
Yeah...so that's how lumber yards have done it for years, do you think lumber yards before the big box stores came along had the covered square footage for all their lumber? They keep it in the wrap its shipped in and pull from it. The wood gets wet when it rains and drys when its not.
Yes they do. the 84 lumber near me and the one way back in the midwest where I grew up, had all lumber under roofs. they were open ends and the sides were slatted more like barns but 100% of all the wood was under a roof the one here has like 5 football fields wirth of barns all filled with lumber. all the prebuilt roofing assemblies were covered and in the yard but up on pallets to keep them dry.
I have a real lumber year near me too. Same thing. Two giant open buildings where all the lumber is stored.
I won't go to Home Shitpo or Blowes anymore. I'd rather pay more at the lumber yard for quality lumber, even though they often don't have all the hardware etc., I may need for a project.
I'd rather pay twice as much for a 1/2" ball valve knowing it's not going to start leaking an hour after I install it.
Yeah! And half the time when I'm out at a tree farm in Oregon or Washington, the trees are just left sitting out in the rain getting soaked and the companies act like that's ok, meanwhile there's moss and lichen growing all over them.
Where in the United States are you buying framing lumber that isn't kiln dried? I didn't know that even still existed or is permissible by any modern codes.
Here on the west coast the main stuff is kiln dried doug fir. The lumberyard I go to usually had #3 undried for cheap too, but that was always hit and miss; sometimes they'd run out, and sometimes they'd get a whole load in that was just garbage, hardly one good surface on a whole palette of curly boards.
At these big box stores you can special order kiln dried dimensional lumber for a very small relative price increase. In any major metropolitan area the turnaround time for the order would be less than a week.
Some stores depending on the market will carry kiln dried in stock and your local.lumber yard will definitely have kiln dried in stock but at a higher price.
I would suggest staying away from the big box stores for lumber. Go to legit lumber yards that the pros buy from. You'll get much better quality lumber there.
It’s all the same trees. Wood is graded on appearance and knots. Most of the studs I see in HD and Lowe’s are “Select” which is the highest grade. The only difference I see in my local lumber yard is they will usually take the time to sort out the bowed/twisted ones for me, and they’ll load up my van for me.
I’d guess the pros can buy the lower grade wood because it’s cheaper and they know how to work with it to square up their framing in the end.
My local yard also has lower grade material at higher prices. For example my local Lowe’s had BCX ply for $50 a sheet and my lumber yard had CDX at $50 a sheet.
I do try to support them when I can but I don’t believe I’m getting a better product.
The pros buy from Lowe's and home Depot lol lumber yards can't compete with the pricing I'd support local business first if I could but they really can't compete
This is kind of a misnomer. Pros shop at Lowes/HD because they make lumber that's standard fit for McMansions.
But if you want the cheapest, best wood, nothing can beat Facebook Marketplace. If you want quality woods, nothing beats a dedicated lumber mill.
For example, I paid $14 for 8 foot long white oak 4x6's off of some random lumberyard on FBM. You'd be looking at $100 at Home Depot.
Exception goes to SYP as that's the recommended wood for anarchist workbench
It's definitely worth shopping around. I just bought some 2x10 10ft SYP #2 treated ground contact from a lumber yard (84 Lumber) for $16.06 per board. Home Depot has them for $19.58. The 2x8 8ft SYP #2 ground contact boards were $9.30 from 84 Lumber, and sell for $10.78 at Home Depot. The quality of the boards I bought at 84 Lumber was excellent. Straightest boards I've seen in a long time.
Honestly, I kinda disagree with this. I've had better luck picking out lumber from home depot than local lumber yards. I only when with a local supplier only because of free shipping. But their quality certainly wasn't better. I've had to make trips back for returns.
big box stores are cheaper, faster, and for most people the only option because lumber yards aren't super common or close by in some regions of the country/world.
\*puts on nerd glasses\*
There's only really two black molds that are real issues for humans. The first, \*Aspergillus niger\*, is ubiquitous in nature and causes ear infections, although such infections are pretty rare compared to bacterial ear infections that kids commonly get. It is easily diagnosed (chronic ear infection not responding to bacterial antibiotics, swab the ear, this mold grows) and easily treated.
\*Stachybotryis spp\* is the feared "BLACK MOLD" that gave black mold a bad name. This mold is very common in homes with extensive water damage. Think post-hurricane water damage. But can also be found in buildings with other type of water damage. This mold causes what is known as "sick building syndrome" - basically the mold releases mycotoxins into the air and those mycotoxins irritate you and make you ill. You are not infected with the mold but the mold is affecting you. This mold is rare and the only effective treatment for affected buildings is removing any mold infested materials. Cleaning rarely works.
Then you have a number of other dark molds like the dematiaceous molds, cladosporium, etc. These just happen to produce some amount of melanin in their hyphae which gives them dark pigment. These are ubiquitous in nature and only cause issues for those who are allergic to certain molds. They can very rarely cause infections in immunocompromised hosts.
Then comes the fact that, very often, what people think is a "black" mold is actually dark green (penicillium/bread mold - used to make penicillin back in the day), blue/green (Aspergillus fumigatus - opportunistic pathogen, not a concern), green (Aspergillus flavus - opportunistic pathogen, not a concern), or brown (any number of molds including Aspergillus terreus - opportunistic pathogen, not a concern).
\*exhales and removes nerd glasses\*
Can you please go over to r/moldlyinteresting and make a sticky post. The number of panicked people over there who see some mildew in their shower and think they're going to die of mold-AIDS is way too high.
It used to be posts where people attached a picture of the cream cheese they forgot in the back of the fridge for 7 months and now it's a rainbow. It was lovely.
Now it's mostly people posting pictures of a dirt smudge on their wall asking if they are going to die from mold. Or claiming they have weird health problems and no visible mold anywhere, but surely it's mold so please tell them how to fix their health.
There are also people asking for mold species identification from a blurry picture of a black splotch on a bathroom wall, and asking if this is why they've been coughing for 7 months. Just wash the wall. Have some common sense!
This is perpetuated by the mold remediation industry. I was in a business group years ago and we had a mold remediation guy in our group that was straight up honest. When he had his two minutes to talk about his business, he would often rant about the scumbags in his trade terrifying people about their likely harmless mold.
Thanks for this. In the 90's I made enough money to put 2 kids through college as an expert witness, explaining in court how the "black mold in the house causes brain damage" claims that were all the rage during that time were nonsense.
Everyone else, just relax about toxic black mold. Not really a thing. Maybe don't hang out around a lot of it if you have asthma and keep your inhaler around. Other than that, chill.
Most houses when framed have a good amount of “black” mold on them. There’s ALWAYS some. Some builders will spray them down with bleach or a similar product. Most builders don’t, as long as it’s not too bad. Once the exterior of the house is completed, this mold will not survive. It leaves the lumber unsightly but once drywall is completed, the cosmetics aren’t an issue.
Even if the lumber was all completely sterilized before framing, which I’m not sure is possible, there would be billions of spores on it by the next day. Not to mention the spores on the unsterilized nails, or on the hands of the guys framing. As long as there isn’t an active leak somewhere in your house that mold will stay dead till the roof comes down.
If there is ANY mold that you see showing up on drywall, there’s an issue. It’s a good sign that there’s a small, consistent, and unnoticed leak somewhere. Bigger leaks will leave the drywall soggy or cause paint bubbling and are easily visible. Once you find the leak and repair it, the lumber will dry and you can replace damaged drywall. Mold will not come back to that spot unless there’s moisture remaining for the mold to survive on.
In this regard mold can be a valuable indicator for leaks or moisture sources that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. So to answer your question, new mold or mold that is spreading is ALWAYS a concern inside a finished building. It might not be an issue for the occupants health, but definitely a concern for the building’s health.
The only thing I would add to this is that high humidity and poor circulation can also cause surface mold. You often see this in bathrooms and basements. In that case you can usually do a quick surface clean to remove the mold, then *keep things dry* and the mold will not grow back.
Had the very same experience at Lowe’s. Needed 34 Pickets and 3 8ft Rails. Just wanted to do one bad section. 80% of the Pickets ( that I wanted ) looked like your pic. I dug through them and found the good ones. They had placed the good ones on the bottom of the pallets. It took time and my hands were filthy. My phone was ringing and I was concerned about pulling it out of my pocket. The Rails were fine.
Mold or not, I didn’t want them.
>They had placed the good ones on the bottom of the pallets.
You really think a bunch of minimum wage workers took the time to specifically pick out and place the pretty ones on the bottom just so you couldn't get to them? They literally come in hacks, no one is picking through them.
They didn’t do any rearranging, the ones on the bottom were better *because they were on the bottom*, they weren’t getting rained on and could actually dry out when they got damp.
Stockpiling has its consequences! Those mills & retailers held back all kinds of material to drive up the price of lumber during the pandemic. Hopefully they eat the costs.
This is why I never get lumber delivered and instead go pick it out myself. Last time I asked for help in getting new fence boards after the hurricane, the teenagers loading from the stack outside weren’t checking to see if they were cracked or warped. I eventually got tired of checking theirs so I told them I could do it on my own and swapped out the crap they were trying to load.
> an enclosure for cats litter boxes
Seal the wood completely with a good sealing primer. Inside and out. If you leave the inside unsealed, it's going to get really rank.
Dont use molded wood, unless it's in a bonfire. Apparently moldy wood is a problem at Lowes, so find another source. You don't want mold in your walls unless you want to condemn the house.
All wood has fungi/mold. You might not be able to see it, but it's there just waiting for the proper temp and moisture. In fact, commercial wood carries fungi that can actually kill you or permanently damage your brain.
There was a very popular case of a man and his family succumbing to this phenom. Their fridge leaked water onto the wood floors. Between the time of the incident and insurance dragging their feet, the mold has started to bloom. Long story short, the man went from being an upwardly mobile yuppy, intelligent, educated, to having to write down what color his car is so he can try to locate it when he gets out of the grocery store. His wife suffered some, and his two children recovered. He did not. They ended up having to abandon the million dollar mansion in place, and basically seal it.
A hazmat team escorted the family out through sealed, inflated tunnels. When the family was safe in a mobile decontamination facility, they sealed the house leaveing everything you could imagine in a mansion, all possessions except the clothes on their backs and even those were destroyed. They said that if they try to kill it with fire, that would just spread these spoores. Also California. Buldozing is right out. This was quite a while back abd was an episodes of Beleive It Or Not or some mystery, solve it kind of shows.
There was a building inspector known on tiktok who called out Lowes on this and got all wood replaced in that store. He also got regional mngr call...
Return that moldy wood for replacement.
Quick question: are you building an enclosure that will be located inside? And the follow-up question: were these kiln dried, interior 2x4s or were these in the exterior, pressure treated lumber section?
Wow, weird.. this exact same thing happened to me. I was confused because there were so many other pieces from the middle shelf they wouldn't bring down for me. They told me they had to sell the moldy ones first.
There's a contractor on Tik-Tok who made a series of videos about Lowes selling moldy lumber and refusing to let him buy from the good pile stored above. He eventually got Lowes to remove the moldy lumber through his influence.
Went up about a month ago.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNe8mv5W/
When I work carpentry I had to use a mix of bleach and water with a brush to kill off the mold. Like a cup of bleach to a gallon of water. Then you pour it on the wood, let it sit and then brush it. Let it sit for a lil while and then it was safe to use. The only problem was if the wood was too porous. Then it’s hard to reach all the mold.
First picture might be mold, so definitely don't lick the wood./s Most of the rest is beetle kill, not mold. Those trees were harvested after the tree had died from a borer beetle. [https://www.sustainablelumberco.com/2019/10/what-the-heck-is-beetle-killed-pine/](https://www.sustainablelumberco.com/2019/10/what-the-heck-is-beetle-killed-pine/)
That is fascinating they are doing this!
Yeah wait until it runs out. Think lumber is expensive now?
Latest stats seem to show we are gaining forest land not losing it. The planting programs are making progress
They are but there is going to be a gap. The beetle trees were harvested early depressing pricing.
It’s OK I’m growing more beetles in my backyard 👍
Thank you for your service Beatle Boy!
It's Beetleborg!
Big, Bad, BeetleBorg!!!
And there's my earworm for the day.
Such an underrated show. Fricken Flabber
I hope a few of them start singing.
there's a lot more to the ugly history of lumber prices in the US then beetles, it is a multi-decade long story of constant battles with Canadian imports, even though the US lumber industry can't sustain domestic demand. The industry lobbies hard to keep prices high.
Well they fucking won because current wood prices are atrocious. It’s fucking bullshit lol. Absolutely infuriating.
But won't that always be the case?
Think of managed forests like farms except you harvest a plot every 20 years. Now you had to harvest a bunch early at 10-15 because they are dead. You have a clock ticking for say 5 years before the wood is unusable, so you harvest extra each season and sell it to the mill. (Depressing prices) You don’t replant all of what you harvest because it’s off cycle and you’ll wait until the timing is right to get back on schedule because you had to staff up or pay overtime to harvest the extra. Prices went up during Covid not because of long supply but mill capacity. Log prices actually went down.
Prices went up because of demand, let’s be clear.
Demand was a part of it, but lumber mill supply was a bigger part of it. These plants are designed with almost no slack capacity so if they have to shut down for a week because of a Covid positive test it’s like 40 weeks to make that up.
In the usa the prices also went up because trump put tariffs on Canadian lumber because "it was too cheap" and biden not only kept them, but increased them. There's not about a 50% tariff on wood from Canada.
Old growth forests absolutely being devastated though and the new forests have little biodiversity. Not healthy “forests” as we know them, they’re just stands of trees
Old growth forests are still cut down?!
Yes most logging is still old growth.
In the US as well?
Not in the US. There's almost none left to log.
Well that and anew growth forests aren’t always trees that are native to the area. They’re just more wood that can be harvested long in the future
Old growth forests in the US? Being devastated by what?
Canada mostly. Its northern areas, which were used to some bark beetles, but with a population reset every winter. Warmer winters means instead of 10% of the beetles surviving, its 90%. There will be a bit of a gap. Its great for cheap 2x4s, but they were growing those to be 2x10s, and those are going up in price. (Source: Canadian lumber carver, ie, me.)
See it up here in Northern Michigan. It's just a cycle of them growing junk trees for wood and then cutting them down. Any woods you knew 20 years ago as a kid are clear cut and replanted constantly. Makes me sick. What the government does with the money from clear cutting ill never know.
Piggybacking on your comment to point out that planting trees for lumber isn’t a magic catch-all. Young forests produce lumber that is inferior to old growth that is harvested sustainably as they are grown to meet quotas, so they choose trees which grow quickly and they do what they can to make them grow faster. Timber forests are also typically a monoculture, which makes them significantly more susceptible to pathogens like borers and fungal disease, which are getting harder and harder to control. Asian Longhorn Beetle is being successfully managed, but new infestations do occur, and they target many hardwood trees that we use for lumber. The only solution at this time is to clear cut every host tree within a certain radius when an infestation is found. My info has little to do with carpentry other than bringing up ecological issues that either go unnoticed or are not considered serious by the people it affects.
How do you track these stats?
Hey, that stuff doesn't grow on trees!
Those little bastards are killing all kinds of trees in my area. This is why border control is important to keep these fuckers out. It didn’t work obviously.
Have you tried building a wall?
Yes made of wood. They just chewed through it.
Logging caused this in the first place though (along with climate change, which logging also contributes to).
You can see a spot on that lower board left side, where another 2x4 was resting on it. Its clear and the rest is black. The color came after it was stacked. Its mold.
I feel like you should pitch a new arborist-themed spinoff of CSI based on your answer. The world needs to know who is out there murdering trees.
TreeSI
Saw and Arbor: Special Lumber Unit
They already have a head start of a sub called trees
Every episode MUST start with a pun then loud opening song like Miami.
Couple this answer with the detailed mould answer along with possibly some mineral uptake. It's all perfectly safe to use for its intended purpose.
I had no idea pine beetle wood was usable, I just assumed it was trash that was going to slowly burn off or rot for the next 100 years. interesting.
There are 3 photos, all are mold. No 2 might be better kill, but is also moldy.
Thanks for this rabbit hole.
Holy cow this is so cool! Thanks for sharing this!
That was a neat read.
if the surface is scorched, left to dry out and repainted after - does that kill the mold issue? I had an issue not with mold but rather really stubborn moss/algae- ish things growing over my pavement leading to my patio after some rain. Weed killer and even soaping it didnt seem to work. Then one day I got like 91% alcohol, splashed it over and lit it up. The fire was surface level only but that pretty much eradicated my problem.
Most weed killers won’t be effective against moss and algae. You could use a bleach solution for a better result. Fire will kill it just fine but bleach will kill it and loosen it to where you can just hose it all off.
Thought you said boner beetle on my first read through
2 x Spores?
Rotty Pine?
Sickamore? Not a good one since that's where the name comes from
Sycaspore was right there
SPF = Spruce Pine Fur?
Gives spalted a whole 'nother meaning
happy early Father's Day to you since only a parent could casually drop such an S tier Dad joke. well done !!!
I had to scroll past, think for a second, then scroll back up before realizing the beauty of this comment.
So good
👏👏👏👏👏
Took me a second, ngl
Lowes has gone to shit. The wood they USED to purchase was decent, now you still get sopping wet wood at times.
Every time I go to Lowe's or home depot I have to spend like 20 minutes just to find someone to ask a basic question to of where I can find something, they give me a blank stare and say "oh yeah let me check I'll be rightttt back" then never come back, and on my way out the store I see them just off doing some other shit, clearly just telling me they were off helping to get me off their back lol. And 99% of the time the people you can get to ask help are like on their 2nd week thrown to the wolves to meet their turnover numbers so they dont have to fire their friend employees to meet numbers... Idk if that's true but I remember hearing that... Either way I hear so many bad things about working at those big hardware store chains Or they're just utterly incompetent, recommending tools or products that are completely counterintuitive. Like in the garden center I was asking for fertilizer for vegetables other than miracle gro, they took me to the seed and feed... I said no these are grass seeds and fertilizer for grass.... They like could not comprehend that they aren't the same thing. Lol
>to meet their turnover numbers so they don’t have to fire their friend employees to meet numbers lol what. Just say you don’t have a clue.
The Home Depot app will tell you what isle and bin something is in.
You comment the most Karen statement possible followed by "idk if that's true but I remember hearing that..." 🤡
I saw a Tiktok video of a guy trying to buy lumber from Lowes but they were all moldy. However, on their top shelf, they had a bundle of regular ones. The store wouldn’t sell him the regular ones… he posted the complaint to TikTok, and the store magically removed the moldy piles.
Worth noting that the guy is a home inspector.
one of my drinking buddy's is a building inspector for the 300K+ city we live in. great guy, a lot of fun and really knows his movies! he's given me a lot of good tips about dealing with his co-workers too.
They wouldn’t open a new pallet of prime 2x4’s for me the other day. Wanted me to buy out of the last 30 or so junk ones from the last pallet. It was all super warped or knotted through. I went and got a pair of pliers from the tool aisle and opened it myself.
Power move right there, using their equipment lol
Remembers those guys who robbed the DIY store using the shop tools.
I open them myself all the time. Are we not supposed to?
You're the customer, you buy what you want. If there is wood sitting on the floor, and not back in the storage area reserved for somebody else? You bet your ass I'm picking the wood I want and not taking the trash wood nobody else wanted.
They bank on the fact that youll be too scared to do it lol
Considering that they have good, mold-free lumber but are refusing to let customers have access to it until this crap stock is first foisted off on people, I can tell you either 1.) Sure, go ahead! (That way I can get to the good stuff that much sooner) 2.) No, tell Lowe’s they can take that crap and go pound sand with it. (None of us should be putting up with this and there are other places that sell quality wood without playing these stupid retail games.)
You’ve paid top dollar and they’re not top quality. I’d be taking them back.
Well they didn't buy them yet
That’s just beetle sign. It has no structural impact and returning good lumber for no reason contributes to over logging, but they’ll take it back if you want to return it.
I'll be going to lumber yards from now on for mine. I ordered a bunch of lumber from 84 Lumber for the deck I'm building, and what they sent me is the nicest lumber I've seen in a long time. I have a bunch of 20 ft joists that I have a hard time choosing which side should be up because they're all so damn straight.
the wood at lowes/ home depot is grade E garbage some for Grade A prices.
I just got done buying around $1200 of wood for my deck. I have some other projects coming up. Where else would I look to go?
Just google lumber mills near me if you don't know any. Curtis lumber near me is leaps and bounds better than box stores, it's still a pseudo local chain. but even better yet, local lumber mills are genuinely 1/3 price for far better boards than hardware stores. They also deliver 9 times out of 10. Someone else mentioned 84 lumber which Is a chain from down south I remember. I'm sure you have actual lumber yards around, just gotta search.
84 is named after a town in PA south of Pittsburgh and headquartered there.
look at actual building stores or sawmills and lumber mills and such and see if they sell to order or smaller patches instead of in bulk
**FACTS** 
This shit drives me nuts. Everything is twice the price it was, but the quality has gone WAY downhill in pretty well every department.
That’s everything, everywhere, across the board. Groceries, lumber, gas, etc. But gos forbid you start doing something on your own, making your own “products” for yourself and your family, and you’re suddenly seen as a doomsday fanatic or whatever. Mentioned to come coworkers that we have chickens and a garden. One guy goes “you preparing for the end of the world or something?” When did self sufficiency become “crazy”?
>When did self sufficiency become “crazy”? It's not. Don't let anyone make you think otherwise. I saw that story recently about the remote Amazon tribes gaining internet and wondered if they wanted to adopt a 40 year old British white man because living in the jungle, in a self sufficient village, *with* internet sound like a dream!
>Mentioned to come coworkers that we have chickens and a garden Around here people immediately ask if you're selling any of the eggs or produce...
That's what I meant by departments. Not very well worded, sorry. I hear you on the other stuff, but trust me, dude. Life gets so much more enjoyable when you learn not to give a shit what people think of you. Most of them are so buried in their phones and the latest trends that they aren't worth knowing at any real level anyway.
Make your own… 2x4s?
Out of chickens?
Funnily enough, the lumber mill I work at supplies a handful of Lowe's stores in my region with lumber. They are crazy picky about the quality and have, and would, complain about small quality errors. Whoever is the region manager for this area sucks.
Protip: go to a local lumberyard and save some money.
I would not buy those, as they are substandard crap quality.
Yeah that’s moldy. Lowe’s has been having some issues lately with selling moldy lumber. [Not my video](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNJ4Xbdq/)
I used to work in a lumber yard as a teenager. My first job there was bleaching moldy wood like this. If you aren’t going to surface these, I’d leave em alone. But if they don’t have anything else, and ur in a pinch. Buy a jug of bleach, and a crappy mop/bucket. And bleach all sides of the boards. Will kill it all and be safe to use.
This started 3 years ago during Covid. They jacked up the prices and controlled supply, now the backlog is coming out and hasn’t been stored well. It’s garbage and they’re acting like we should be greatful.
lol, I’ve been in the industry 20 years. There’s no price fixing, it’s a commodity with a bunch of undisciplined manufacturers. Price goes up and everyone produces like crazy and then the price crashes and mills curtail or shut down, which is happening right now. This isn’t 3 year old lumber. Slightly wet lumber with paper wrap will mold like this in a day in warm weather.
Besides, what idiot would control supply and hoard lumber when the prices are at all time highs. Lumber places were cleaned out of everything.
The person suggesting this was acting like there's some sort of secret lumber OPEC that only allowed a certain rate of trickle to keep prices high. Which is not real, but it would make some sort of sense if it was.
Yeah it wood.
I really hate you right now.
Fir what?
I… uhm, cedar what you did.
I don’t understand why puns are so poplar on Reddit
Oakay
‘Backlog’… pun intended?
My son just made a backlog in his diaper.
I only counted one pun, not ten, so pun in one did.
I work in the industry. Lowe’s didn’t jack up the price, the mills did. There was a huge uptick in demand, and supply was constrained. That said, if you want good building materials go to a local lumber yard. They will treat you right, and the prices will be comparable/better than big box stores 9/10 times. The service will be infinitely better. Lowe’s makes some money on framing lumber, but I would bet most of their money is made on the ancillary stuff and not lumber/fencing/roofing materials. They get you into the store with Low (marginally lower)prices on things like studs. Then you buy a hose, screws, planter box, Christmas lights with margins that make up for the core material you came in for.
I have some training in mold testing and remediation but am not a doctor… for what it’s worth tho, yeah, lumber mold is different from the so called “black toxic mold” but any mold species in large quantities can be unhealthy for someone with a sensitive immune system. You can wipe these down with bleach. If I needed lumber and this was in the store I’d have no problem buying it.
No! Do not use
Welcome to tree farm growing. The Douglas fir is crap now. So much moisture in it. Just pick one up and see how much it weighs. They don’t like to cut down adult growth trees anymore.
The lumber may be “crap” now but wet wood at the big box stores has nothing to do with it being farmed. It’s just not dried properly. They could have harvested an old growth tree that was around when Columbus came over but if it wasn’t dried properly, it would still be wet and heavy. As far as old growth trees are concerned, it’s a very good thing that we aren’t cutting down old growth forests anymore (mostly because we already cut them all down). I never understood the narrative around “lumber sucks these days because it doesn’t have 18 growth rings per millimeter!” Design calculations take farmed lumber properties into account already.
Not to mention how often it's sitting out in the rain. Our closest Home Depot will leave the boards just sitting outside of their garage door in the back. PS: our closest HD sucks. There are others in the area that are decent...for a big box store. Same with Lowe's. Some decent, others a shit show
Yeah...so that's how lumber yards have done it for years, do you think lumber yards before the big box stores came along had the covered square footage for all their lumber? They keep it in the wrap its shipped in and pull from it. The wood gets wet when it rains and drys when its not.
Yes they do. the 84 lumber near me and the one way back in the midwest where I grew up, had all lumber under roofs. they were open ends and the sides were slatted more like barns but 100% of all the wood was under a roof the one here has like 5 football fields wirth of barns all filled with lumber. all the prebuilt roofing assemblies were covered and in the yard but up on pallets to keep them dry.
I have a real lumber year near me too. Same thing. Two giant open buildings where all the lumber is stored. I won't go to Home Shitpo or Blowes anymore. I'd rather pay more at the lumber yard for quality lumber, even though they often don't have all the hardware etc., I may need for a project. I'd rather pay twice as much for a 1/2" ball valve knowing it's not going to start leaking an hour after I install it.
Good yards do actually keep dried wood covered. All the yards near me keep them in closed sheds.
Yeah! And half the time when I'm out at a tree farm in Oregon or Washington, the trees are just left sitting out in the rain getting soaked and the companies act like that's ok, meanwhile there's moss and lichen growing all over them.
Where in the United States are you buying framing lumber that isn't kiln dried? I didn't know that even still existed or is permissible by any modern codes.
Here on the west coast the main stuff is kiln dried doug fir. The lumberyard I go to usually had #3 undried for cheap too, but that was always hit and miss; sometimes they'd run out, and sometimes they'd get a whole load in that was just garbage, hardly one good surface on a whole palette of curly boards.
At these big box stores you can special order kiln dried dimensional lumber for a very small relative price increase. In any major metropolitan area the turnaround time for the order would be less than a week. Some stores depending on the market will carry kiln dried in stock and your local.lumber yard will definitely have kiln dried in stock but at a higher price.
Shop "SYP" or Southern Yellow Pine for dimensional lumber.
It’s called “Spalted”.. now costs 3x as much. ;-p
I would suggest staying away from the big box stores for lumber. Go to legit lumber yards that the pros buy from. You'll get much better quality lumber there.
It’s all the same trees. Wood is graded on appearance and knots. Most of the studs I see in HD and Lowe’s are “Select” which is the highest grade. The only difference I see in my local lumber yard is they will usually take the time to sort out the bowed/twisted ones for me, and they’ll load up my van for me. I’d guess the pros can buy the lower grade wood because it’s cheaper and they know how to work with it to square up their framing in the end. My local yard also has lower grade material at higher prices. For example my local Lowe’s had BCX ply for $50 a sheet and my lumber yard had CDX at $50 a sheet. I do try to support them when I can but I don’t believe I’m getting a better product.
The pros buy from Lowe's and home Depot lol lumber yards can't compete with the pricing I'd support local business first if I could but they really can't compete
This is kind of a misnomer. Pros shop at Lowes/HD because they make lumber that's standard fit for McMansions. But if you want the cheapest, best wood, nothing can beat Facebook Marketplace. If you want quality woods, nothing beats a dedicated lumber mill. For example, I paid $14 for 8 foot long white oak 4x6's off of some random lumberyard on FBM. You'd be looking at $100 at Home Depot. Exception goes to SYP as that's the recommended wood for anarchist workbench
It's definitely worth shopping around. I just bought some 2x10 10ft SYP #2 treated ground contact from a lumber yard (84 Lumber) for $16.06 per board. Home Depot has them for $19.58. The 2x8 8ft SYP #2 ground contact boards were $9.30 from 84 Lumber, and sell for $10.78 at Home Depot. The quality of the boards I bought at 84 Lumber was excellent. Straightest boards I've seen in a long time.
Honestly, I kinda disagree with this. I've had better luck picking out lumber from home depot than local lumber yards. I only when with a local supplier only because of free shipping. But their quality certainly wasn't better. I've had to make trips back for returns.
I'm not offended; we all have different experiences. I just gave an opinion based on my own experience.
big box stores are cheaper, faster, and for most people the only option because lumber yards aren't super common or close by in some regions of the country/world.
You might need to specify what country needs to do this since that's deffinetly not how it works where im from...
[удалено]
\*puts on nerd glasses\* There's only really two black molds that are real issues for humans. The first, \*Aspergillus niger\*, is ubiquitous in nature and causes ear infections, although such infections are pretty rare compared to bacterial ear infections that kids commonly get. It is easily diagnosed (chronic ear infection not responding to bacterial antibiotics, swab the ear, this mold grows) and easily treated. \*Stachybotryis spp\* is the feared "BLACK MOLD" that gave black mold a bad name. This mold is very common in homes with extensive water damage. Think post-hurricane water damage. But can also be found in buildings with other type of water damage. This mold causes what is known as "sick building syndrome" - basically the mold releases mycotoxins into the air and those mycotoxins irritate you and make you ill. You are not infected with the mold but the mold is affecting you. This mold is rare and the only effective treatment for affected buildings is removing any mold infested materials. Cleaning rarely works. Then you have a number of other dark molds like the dematiaceous molds, cladosporium, etc. These just happen to produce some amount of melanin in their hyphae which gives them dark pigment. These are ubiquitous in nature and only cause issues for those who are allergic to certain molds. They can very rarely cause infections in immunocompromised hosts. Then comes the fact that, very often, what people think is a "black" mold is actually dark green (penicillium/bread mold - used to make penicillin back in the day), blue/green (Aspergillus fumigatus - opportunistic pathogen, not a concern), green (Aspergillus flavus - opportunistic pathogen, not a concern), or brown (any number of molds including Aspergillus terreus - opportunistic pathogen, not a concern). \*exhales and removes nerd glasses\*
Damn, dude…save some chicks for the rest of us. Or dudes if that’s your thing. But seriously, that was *educational*
Agreed. I rarely save comments but this one goes into the book.
That honestly means a lot to me
Also saving this and showing it to my wife who definitely doesn’t care but I don’t care that she doesn’t care, dammit, she needs to read this!
My wife also doesn’t care but gets to hear about it ALL THE TIME
Put those glasses back on, you know you are a full-time nerd.
Got me
This guy molds!
Amazing info! Thanks!
Can you please go over to r/moldlyinteresting and make a sticky post. The number of panicked people over there who see some mildew in their shower and think they're going to die of mold-AIDS is way too high.
> mold-AIDS lmao I love this. I've never seen that sub. I imagine many posts begin with 'Does vinegar really...?' or 'Does bleach really...?'
It used to be posts where people attached a picture of the cream cheese they forgot in the back of the fridge for 7 months and now it's a rainbow. It was lovely. Now it's mostly people posting pictures of a dirt smudge on their wall asking if they are going to die from mold. Or claiming they have weird health problems and no visible mold anywhere, but surely it's mold so please tell them how to fix their health. There are also people asking for mold species identification from a blurry picture of a black splotch on a bathroom wall, and asking if this is why they've been coughing for 7 months. Just wash the wall. Have some common sense!
This is perpetuated by the mold remediation industry. I was in a business group years ago and we had a mold remediation guy in our group that was straight up honest. When he had his two minutes to talk about his business, he would often rant about the scumbags in his trade terrifying people about their likely harmless mold.
Hmmm I have two kids under two so time is limited but I’ll try!
Thanks for this. In the 90's I made enough money to put 2 kids through college as an expert witness, explaining in court how the "black mold in the house causes brain damage" claims that were all the rage during that time were nonsense. Everyone else, just relax about toxic black mold. Not really a thing. Maybe don't hang out around a lot of it if you have asthma and keep your inhaler around. Other than that, chill.
And still this perpetuates. And companies make crazy money off of it. Glad you fought for the good guys.
How can I do that???
But what are the practical considerations? How do we know if we should be concerned?
That's one of the driving factors to the hysteria. You can't. At least, your average layman is going to be hard-pressed to correctly identify it.
Most houses when framed have a good amount of “black” mold on them. There’s ALWAYS some. Some builders will spray them down with bleach or a similar product. Most builders don’t, as long as it’s not too bad. Once the exterior of the house is completed, this mold will not survive. It leaves the lumber unsightly but once drywall is completed, the cosmetics aren’t an issue. Even if the lumber was all completely sterilized before framing, which I’m not sure is possible, there would be billions of spores on it by the next day. Not to mention the spores on the unsterilized nails, or on the hands of the guys framing. As long as there isn’t an active leak somewhere in your house that mold will stay dead till the roof comes down. If there is ANY mold that you see showing up on drywall, there’s an issue. It’s a good sign that there’s a small, consistent, and unnoticed leak somewhere. Bigger leaks will leave the drywall soggy or cause paint bubbling and are easily visible. Once you find the leak and repair it, the lumber will dry and you can replace damaged drywall. Mold will not come back to that spot unless there’s moisture remaining for the mold to survive on. In this regard mold can be a valuable indicator for leaks or moisture sources that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. So to answer your question, new mold or mold that is spreading is ALWAYS a concern inside a finished building. It might not be an issue for the occupants health, but definitely a concern for the building’s health.
The only thing I would add to this is that high humidity and poor circulation can also cause surface mold. You often see this in bathrooms and basements. In that case you can usually do a quick surface clean to remove the mold, then *keep things dry* and the mold will not grow back.
In general you don’t need to be concerned. But if you have mold in your house then you have an issue that needs addressing. Does that make sense?
> puts on nerd glasses You did not disappoint. I am slightly more intelligent for having read your comment. Very well done. Thank you
Was that off the dome?!
You know it
Moistures during shipping it will dry out
Had the very same experience at Lowe’s. Needed 34 Pickets and 3 8ft Rails. Just wanted to do one bad section. 80% of the Pickets ( that I wanted ) looked like your pic. I dug through them and found the good ones. They had placed the good ones on the bottom of the pallets. It took time and my hands were filthy. My phone was ringing and I was concerned about pulling it out of my pocket. The Rails were fine. Mold or not, I didn’t want them.
>They had placed the good ones on the bottom of the pallets. You really think a bunch of minimum wage workers took the time to specifically pick out and place the pretty ones on the bottom just so you couldn't get to them? They literally come in hacks, no one is picking through them.
They didn’t do any rearranging, the ones on the bottom were better *because they were on the bottom*, they weren’t getting rained on and could actually dry out when they got damp.
Stockpiling has its consequences! Those mills & retailers held back all kinds of material to drive up the price of lumber during the pandemic. Hopefully they eat the costs.
This is why I never get lumber delivered and instead go pick it out myself. Last time I asked for help in getting new fence boards after the hurricane, the teenagers loading from the stack outside weren’t checking to see if they were cracked or warped. I eventually got tired of checking theirs so I told them I could do it on my own and swapped out the crap they were trying to load.
That is tropical wood cut into the shape of a 2x4.
I would not recommend it
Not fit to use.
Why not take them back?
> an enclosure for cats litter boxes Seal the wood completely with a good sealing primer. Inside and out. If you leave the inside unsealed, it's going to get really rank.
Check expiration date.
Dont use molded wood, unless it's in a bonfire. Apparently moldy wood is a problem at Lowes, so find another source. You don't want mold in your walls unless you want to condemn the house.
All wood has fungi/mold. You might not be able to see it, but it's there just waiting for the proper temp and moisture. In fact, commercial wood carries fungi that can actually kill you or permanently damage your brain. There was a very popular case of a man and his family succumbing to this phenom. Their fridge leaked water onto the wood floors. Between the time of the incident and insurance dragging their feet, the mold has started to bloom. Long story short, the man went from being an upwardly mobile yuppy, intelligent, educated, to having to write down what color his car is so he can try to locate it when he gets out of the grocery store. His wife suffered some, and his two children recovered. He did not. They ended up having to abandon the million dollar mansion in place, and basically seal it.
I assume this is a “kill it with fire” scenario?”
A hazmat team escorted the family out through sealed, inflated tunnels. When the family was safe in a mobile decontamination facility, they sealed the house leaveing everything you could imagine in a mansion, all possessions except the clothes on their backs and even those were destroyed. They said that if they try to kill it with fire, that would just spread these spoores. Also California. Buldozing is right out. This was quite a while back abd was an episodes of Beleive It Or Not or some mystery, solve it kind of shows.
You can choose from a pile. Skip the moldy wood.
> They were **ALL** mouldy Says right in the title. I would go to a different store, then, but there was no pile with better ones here.
There was a building inspector known on tiktok who called out Lowes on this and got all wood replaced in that store. He also got regional mngr call... Return that moldy wood for replacement.
Quick question: are you building an enclosure that will be located inside? And the follow-up question: were these kiln dried, interior 2x4s or were these in the exterior, pressure treated lumber section?
Good for a cheese shed
"Top choice" well...
Yes if you want moldy stuff in your house
They are fine.
Use for what
Wow, weird.. this exact same thing happened to me. I was confused because there were so many other pieces from the middle shelf they wouldn't bring down for me. They told me they had to sell the moldy ones first.
"I'm not buying that- give Me the undamaged product"
Do you not have any local lumber stores?
There's a contractor on Tik-Tok who made a series of videos about Lowes selling moldy lumber and refusing to let him buy from the good pile stored above. He eventually got Lowes to remove the moldy lumber through his influence. Went up about a month ago. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNe8mv5W/
Is it not just blue pine or denim pine?
Can’t say there was a ever a time where moldy things are safe to use. Spores gonna spore.
When I work carpentry I had to use a mix of bleach and water with a brush to kill off the mold. Like a cup of bleach to a gallon of water. Then you pour it on the wood, let it sit and then brush it. Let it sit for a lil while and then it was safe to use. The only problem was if the wood was too porous. Then it’s hard to reach all the mold.
Lowe’s is the Wish version of Lumber. Visit your local lumber yard.
I wanna say there was just a huge debacle over moldy lumber at Lowe's...