Has anyone put pressure treated plywood in their coach?
Thanks.
I was told not to use pressure treated anything inside due to the chemicals in it. as the wood outgases it can cause all kinds of health issues. I am sure someone here has the specifiecs on it.
steve
Thank you, that makes sense to me. Thanks for the quick reply. I believe I'll use something else.
Thanks.
I've read of people doing it, but good marine plywood is really expensive. The cheap stuff at your local home improvement center will almost always come prewarped. I'm not sure why you would need it unless you have exposed floor over the wheel wells. Even then good paint or poly will protect the wood.
I choose not to replace my floor as my bus is a 1995 and does not have any air ducting under the floor or a center tunnel like an MCI and other buses. I can see the bottom of my plywood floor from my bays and it looks good. The plywood was painted black and in the front of the bus where the floor is exposed it is spray foamed and covered with undercoating. I did have to replace a section in the rear that rotted due to a window leak and a section under the bathroom that was full of holes.
another option if you are worried about water would be to resin coat it where you think it could get wet (like the wheel well areas) any fiberglass resin with out the cloth will soak in to the wood and seal it pretty well. after that you can paint over the resin with most anything.
steve
Chaz,
I wouldn't use any ply that wasn't water proof. Call your local fire dept and ask about pressure treated wood and health issues. I would think that comment about outgassing was reasonable but i DON'T KNOW. :-\
This wasn't funny but you haven't dashed my hopes ;D
I'm watchin ya
John
Just to clarify one of the previous posts, pressure-treated plywood and marine plywood are two different things. I personally wouldn't use pressure-treated, although it would probably be ok after it has 'aged' a bit and the top surface is sealed by whatever flooring you will be using.
As has been said, genuine marine plywood would be prohibitively expensive, and 'overkill' anyway for an application which is in no way similiar to a marine environment. Normal exterior ply with the bottom surface sealed with resin or mastic paint would be fine. The original floor beneath the seats in my bus is really good quality multi-lam birch ply, but sadly only 1/2" think and so too flexible to be constantly walked on - so I will need to replace it at some stage with something thicker (probably 3/4" exterior). This is a great shame, however, as the original floor has a sound-proofing material bonded to the underside, which also does the job of completely sealing the botton face of the plywood. The sound-proofing is a foam material with a rubberised skin on it - being foam it simply squashes down where the floor goes it's support beams, but everywhere else is probably around 3/4 - 1" thick. I suspect it also acts as a very effective gasket between the floor and the support beams to prevent movement and squeeking. I have seen this type of material for sale, but it is fairly expensive - I don't know yet whether I will be installing some under my new floor, but it is an idea you might like to consider as a way of solving several problems at once, and ending up with a warmer and quieter bus as well.
BTW, if anyone can suggest a practical way of stiffening up my existing 1/2" thick floor rather than replacing it all I would be very interested. I don't think it would be practical to try to make it stiffer by to gluing more wood onto the top of it, and for various reasons I cannot increase the height of the top of the floor surface by very much, so I cannot just lay a whole new 3/4" thick floor on top of the old one
Jeremy
From what I remember pressure treated lumber has ARSENIC in it, which is ok for outdoor use but very bad for you when used in an enclosed area. Could the stuff they use to coat the grips of hand tools work, it seems that it a rubber base and would be water proof.
WVaNative
Pressure treated lumber no longer uses arsenic.
Jeremy,
I might suggest Fiberglassing your floor, from the top side should be fairly easy...and cheap and will provide some added stiffness
There are several different chemicals and methods used to make treated plywood. Wooden basement walls made with threated plywood (no concrete) are approved all over North America.
http://www.biewerlumber.com/ewp/ewp-pwf-warranty.html (http://www.biewerlumber.com/ewp/ewp-pwf-warranty.html)
If the treated plywood is green and the tag/label on it says it contains CCA, don't use it inside the bus. CCA is Chromated Copper Arsenic. It is still available in our area. Jack
Here is the AWPA grading for treatment level required for any specified use -
http://www.southernpine.com/awpatable1_03.pdf
If you need more info on CCA -
http://www.woodpreservativescience.org/
Jeremy,
My floor installer insisted on putting HardiBacker under my Italian Tile flooring to reduce any flexing. 35,000 miles and lots of rough, dirts roads without any issues so far.
HardiBacker is a waterproof, concrete board/sheeting. My tile guy also lined the shower stall with it before putting up the shower walls.
Here is a US site with info... http://www.jameshardie.com/homeowner/backerboard.shtml (http://www.jameshardie.com/homeowner/backerboard.shtml)
Jay
87 SaftLiner
The floor in my Crown Super Coach is either Redwood or Cedar plywood and it is well over one inch thick. We now have the answer and cause of all our school kids (at least on the West Coast) becoming brain dead. It's obvious that the plywood school bus floors was outgassing and affecting their minds. He he he. Just Kidding!! Only mine.
Thin floor treatments require a deal level perfect subfloor with no visible defects, or such will just show thru the finished flooring. Thick tile is usually (but not always) quite heavy, which also is not good in a motorcoach. Guess that leaves throw rugs or wall to wall carpet, which is also hard to keep clean. Beats me if there is a perfect solution. :) :) :)
Plywood underlayment is a good material to put under finish floor in a bus. It is available in 5/16" and 3/8" and is a plywood with all solid (no knot holes) interior plys. It does not develop soft spots or worse still holes punched through the top layer. Some info is available here http://www.canply.org/english/products/underlayment.htm (http://www.canply.org/english/products/underlayment.htm)