Fixings for Tanalised Timber

[Tricky Dicky]

Can anyone advise me on the suitability of fixings in particular screws for Tanalised timber?

I have looked on the Lonza site and downloaded their user guide to working with tanalised timber and it seems there are two recommendations either stainless steel screws or galvanised screws. Stainless steel is out on cost grounds it is only a shed I am putting together. The Zinc coating on galvanised screws is regarded as a sacrificial layer so the thicker the coating the better. I have had experience with galvanised screws having secured some palings on a fence with hex head BZP coach screws the idea to be able to remove palings for maintenance reasons. When I did remove them the screws were rusted on the threads but not rusted through.

So how do the likes of Turbogold, passivated Zinc and some of these other green and blue coated screws cope having been driven into tanalised timber?

Richard

[Chris Bacon]

Dunno, but BZP is not galvanised, or anything much like it. If it's a shed, it's not going to be permanently wet, I hope. What screws do you need for what purpose? If it's something like screwing the sides/ends to each other and the roof/floor, you could surely use stainless, or even brass, with some other cheap BZP or whatever for other purposes.

[Chris Green]

Why, they're not *that* expensive if you shop around a bit, what sorts of sizes and quantities do you want?

I've standardised on stainless screws for all outside work and almost everything else as well. It's only if I want something *very* strong that I consider anything else now.

[Chris Green]

My sheds have outlasted any non stainless screws I put in them when we first came here (22 years or so ago). I'm now replacing the rusty husks of non stainless screws I put in 15+ years ago. The stainless ones I have been using for the last 15 years or so are still perfect.

Apart from anything else it means you can dis-assemble things and re-use the screws! Admittedly there are some losses because stainless screws are rather less robust that non-stainless but I'd guess 90% or so are re-usable.

[Fredxx]

That was my thought and so I thought I would look up some prices. While they are ~3x the cost of equivalent cheap BZP screws some 5 x 50mm stainless on Toolsatan are £14 per 200. If you want your build to last it's a small price to pay.