Bamboo Treatment
By Nic, Core Team member
What is Bamboo
Bamboo is a wonderful fast growing grass, it comes in all shapes and sizes and has an incredibly diverse list of uses from many cultures around the world. Bamboo is incredibly fast growing and can grow up-to a meter a day and achieves 80% of its height in the first 2months of its life! This ability to grow quickly and produce a huge variety of usable products has got many a permaculturists and green living enthusiasts excited by its potential. Generally speaking bamboo falls into two categories, running or clumping (although there are some that are in between). Running bamboo has the capacity to become very weedy and hard to manage if allowed to get out of control, we spent many years pulling out random culms that appeared throughout the Ranch’s front garden from the “living fence” that had been inherited upon the purchase of the property. This battle against the running bamboo Phyllostachys sp. was not an uncommon story as many people around the world can probably attest to, but was a great reminder of the will to live that bamboo species have!
In the early years of purchasing the Ranch property, Tim and Robin sought advice from well-known bamboo builder and furniture maker Brian Erikson. They purchased several varieties of giant clumping bamboos, which we are now learning about how to manage. 20 years later these bamboo have grown to full maturity and tower above some of our orchard spaces and buildings! As the clump matures the culms get successively larger in diameter until they reach their maturation diameter. This varies from species to species, but one bamboo known as Dendrocalymus asper is massive! Each culm measuring 8” in diameter with a wall about 2” thick and approximately 30m tall, this is quite the impressive bamboo. Not only is it incredibly impressive it is incredibly intimidating to harvest!
Problems With Bamboo
Since the very beginning we have used bamboo as a building material. We had always purchased this bamboo and over time have become quite disillusioned by the varying quality of the purchased product, despite paying premium prices for the bamboo (each 6m culm at 4” diameter costs around $30 plus transportation). Not long after buildings were completed we were finding that a significant proportion of the culms were suffering from insect damage (a sign of improper curing and drying) and replacing these pieces, which were now inside of a building, was incredibly challenging and a lot of work.
The other major problem that we were facing was that typically when bamboo is treated correctly it is using an acid or a salt of Boron. Boron is a natural mineral that at approximately 10% solution is toxic to fungus and insects. Boron is an essential element for plant development and by diluting the solution down it is actually used as an organic fertilizer. Boron therefore gained a reputation of being an excellent, organic and safe treatment solution for bamboo and is the most widely used treatment for bamboo around the world. Unfortunately one of the problems of using an acid or a salt (boric acid or borax, disodium octoborate etc….) is that it is corrosive to steel and in order to attach roofing and even to combine pieces of bamboo, steel is often one of the fastening materials used (yes there are others but steel is the most practical and commonly used). We were finding that over time even galvanized steel was corroding and becoming dangerously damaged.
These two major problems had us move to using timber more and more and limiting our use of bamboo to non structural/permanent uses such as harvesting poles, temporary structures, propping posts, trellis etc… We got deep into Timber Framing and structural bamboo became a thing of the past.
Bamboo at Rancho Mastatal
Henry setting up a scaffolding system in our bamboo
We continued to treat our own bamboo for wattle and daub walls through this period and the potential of bamboo continued to intrigue us but just seemed beyond our reach. As our stands of bamboo grew older and more daunting to manage we decided to hire in an expert to help us manage our bamboo. We found Henry Glen, a bamboo expert living in Costa Rica at Finca Bamboo in the south of the country and he was willing to come and help train us in the proper management and treatment of bamboo. With Henry’s help we have been able to (mostly!) get our bamboo under control after years of neglect and we have begun to treat our own bamboo using his very simple modified boucherie technique that I will outline below. He also sells a bamboo treatment solution called “Bam Blue” that is based on boron and copper sulphate (another organic chemical used to treat mold and insects) and also has a penetrant and anticorrosive properties. In one go Henry has solved our bamboo problems and we are now well on our way to building with bamboo again.
Please contact Henry directly through Finca Bamboo to purchase his treatment solution or enquire about his consultation services. He comes highly recommended by Rancho Mastatal.
Modified Boucherie System
Things you will need:
2” high pressure water PVC tube (schedule 40)
2” ball valve
2” Elbow
Fernco couplings
¼” NPT Tap and drill bit
¼” NPT Threaded Male compressor part
Roll of Teflon
Process:
Cut one piece of 60cm 2” PVC and one piece of 15cm.
Glue your elbow to one end of the 60cm piece and the 2” ball valve on the other end. The valve handle should face opposite the direction of the elbow.
Glue the 15cm piece on the other side of the elbow.
Drill your 2” ball valve through the section that is glued to the 60cm piece of PVC and use the tap to create the threads in the hole.
Wrap your threaded male compressor piece with Teflon and screw into the PVC until tight.
One the end of the short section after the elbow attach the Fernco coupling.
Replace the Fernco pipe clamp with the stainless steel pipe clamp by constant Breeze. You can tighten these to 92 in/lb.
This is your basic modified boucherie set up, from here you will attach the bamboo to the Fernco coupling, fill the solution into the PVC pipe by opening the valve, close the valve and connect the compressor. Its important to keep the pressure low, around 12 PSI otherwise you will blowout the coupling. As you force the solution through the bamboo you will see the water from the bamboo coming out the other end. Soon you will begin to the see the Bam Blue begin to come out and when the full concentration is coming out the other end you can stop it running. Now you have a treated piece of Bamboo, this needs to dry vertically and can then be stored horizontally.
A piece of bamboo hooked up to the boucherie
A treated piece of bamboo
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BAMBOO?
Read our other blog about Bamboo Shoots
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