Swing Set: Treated or Untreated?

[StratoFortFritz]

Greetings,

 

I am building my little ones a new swing set and I am stoked. I designed it on SketchUp and already put in some sonotube/post bases. 

 

Now to buy the wood. 

 

1.) Should I go with Treated or Untreated and why? I thought it was a no-brainer, but I have heard pluses and minuses for both. I will be using high quality stain, however my sprinklers will hit this thing about 3 times a week (along with any rain).

 

2.) Should I use a wholesaler (Lowes/Home Depot) or a lumber yard?

 

Any other comments would be appreciated as well. Thanks for your help!

 

-Fritz

[Eric.]

Treated lumber or a rot-resistant wood like white oak, cypress, cedar.  Just make sure to break all the edges well so the little one doesn't get any nasty formaldehyde splinters.  Regular SPF lumber from the box stores won't last very long out in the elements.

[duckkisser]

go with the treated its cheaper and it will last long time.  in fact the swing will probably last longer then your kids swinging days.  they  will outgrow it and stop swinging at some point and want to hang out with other teenage boys and girls.  if you build it out of white oak, cypress, or cedar it will end up costing alot more and then you will have this swing to get rid off at some point and no one will buy a swing out of white oak for what you payed to build it.

[wdwerker]

+1 for treated southern yellow pine. The treatment they use today is not as toxic as it used to be, however I would still wear a mask when sanding it. Use stainless or exterior coated fasteners. The frame parts that touch the ground should be rated "ground contact" just look at the litte tag.

Here in Georgia we grow yellow pine as a crop. If you pick good straight boards with few big or loose knots the stuff from Depot and Lowes is fine. It should last for many years.

After the kids out grow it either build a porch swing to use with your wife or turn it into an arbor and grow a vine on it.

[Mike Frank]

yes to what duck kisser said. hell those kids growup faster than any wood rot, treated is the way to go

[Rapid Roger]

I made a basic swing set (with three swings on it) out of Lowe's basic tubfurs @ $1.65 each (heck, the baby seat was the most expensive part of it). I let the grandkids paint it with various colors of indoor latex and expected that it might last two years and I would build a better one then.

 

That was seven years ago and it is still standing and is in regular use to this day!

I sometimes think we all over design things and then hate to trash them when they have outlasted their usefulness. As the man said, "This ain't rocket science!" 

 

Rog   

[ChetlovesMer]

+1 for treated.

If I may add another point. During my deck building days I had this boss whom I liked but drove us grunts like dogs. The guy's company did all the really high quality work in the area I lived. He demanded perfection and he developed a great reputation back in the days before Al Gore invented world wide web. (We are talking the 1980's here)

 

Anyway, he always demanded that we seal the end of every cut we made into green treated lumber. Don't know if that is still required with the modern green treat stuff. But this guy insisted that if you didn't do it, water would work its way into the end of the board that was cut and diminish it's life-span from the inside out.

[Tpt life]

Every green deck I have demolished had two failure points primarily and this end failure secondarily. The primary failures were screw failures and screw hole rot followed by wicking joint rot. By wicking joints I mean joist tops and deck surface bottoms or decorative rim backs to structural rim outers. These all have a common trait of trapping water. End grain will draw water but it also releases it more quickly than the face. Allowing end cut boards to have an air gap between them almost always keeps end grain rot to a minimum, even in untreated lumber.

[tombuhl]

Gotta ask

What is meant by treated? If it is the wet greenish stuff with the little nick patterns they punch in to help treatment get into the wood that I see at HD, I'd stay totally away from it for play sets. Not good for skin contact and not fun to work with either. They are not as toxic (or effective probably) as decade or so ago, but still...

 

A play set doesn't have to hold up as long as a deck or home so I'd consider it like I do raised garden beds. Used to use the treated but soon decided that I don't like working with it. So we go with regular and know that it has limited but still reasonable life. It will still function even when pretty far gone, but at some point I can just build another. We have used trex remnants for ground contact layer when we've had extra laying about.

 

With swing sets you do want that to be structurally sound enough for some child use and abuse. Those little critters can get pretty creative. Perhaps over engineer by using untreated but larger forms (4x4s or even 4x6 where a 2x4 might be sufficient). Long before my woodworking days, I ordered a kit (well done) from CedarWorks (ME). Held up nicely for 12 years of swinging and climbing and launching. When we got ready to move a friend wanted to take it. Sure. As we took it apart, it was not worth reassembling, but it served us well.

[tombuhl]

ok, gotta do show and tell

this only shows small part

but makes me smile

 

this is the CedarWorks play set under construction

ah, the good old days