Timber treatment .... beware

[Kergohy]

A cautionary tale.....

My partner and I are in the middle of a large construction and conversion project in Brittany using timber frame within the existing buildings. He has worked in timber frame for 30+ years but we have still run into problems. Not anything technical on our part, but more to do with the timber supplied. We found a supplier of the right kind of timber - marketed by one of the largest merchants/ importers of timber in France. We asked all the right questions, got the right answers, ordered the right timber and got the wrong timber. After two full deliveries in February and March, suspicions grew, out of experience, that the timber was untreated. It took months of pressure on both the French head office and the UK head office of the holding company to get stamped treatment certificates of conformity for the timber. Unfortunately, 3 days later the company admitted that the timber hadn't been treated at all..... All the new timber frames in the historic 'big house' had been exposed to the interesting collection of timber munchers taking flight and breeding in spring and summer this year.

The company 'graciously' brought in a treatment company to try to treat the frames in situ and the roof timbers - when the building was safe to go in again, we found thousands of euros worth of damage to the painstakingly restored and finished oak work. We are now running a serious delay in our schedule which means opening a year late. Our arguments continue with the UK office on resolving this and can't really be gone into in detail here.

However, what we do want to do is alert users, professional and diy alike, to problems with the treatment methods used in France for Class 2 use. I'm sure everyone is used to seeing nice yellow treated wood, dip treated in tanks. We have been told by the DDCCRF (Concurrence, Consommation, Repression des Fraudes) that this treatment has a life of 3 months. Not quite what we expected to hear when we complained about untreated timber frame timber.....

Anyone know a good lawyer?

More info available if you mail me.