In article , sooty1
wrote:

can anyone tell me where I can get garden posts (suitable for
pergola)made from recycled polystyrene ? they are very rustic looking,
andlook more like the real thing than the real thing if you know what
Imean ! they were featured in Geoff Hamiltons video 'Cottage
Gardens'several years ago. I like them because they are lightweight, easy
tocut and maintain, and very good if you don't have a burly laboureraround
to make things out of timber !

I've tried numerous searches but have come up with nothing, alsovisited
dozens of garden centres and am beginning to think they are notbeing made
anymore, which is a shame.-- sooty1

I suspect googling failed you because you should've used polyethylene, not
polystyrene, as a key word, or search for building materials +HDPE and you
should get lots. A very few companies add a small amount of recycled
polystyrene which does add greater strength, but I don't think any
manufacture uses more PS than they do HDPE and sawdust. Products with PS
have a higher chemical hazard rating than HDPE (which is a rating for the
whole process of manufacturing impact on environment; the finished
products are by and large safe, though not so safe the materials could
legally be used for food packaging).

I looked into it as garage material to see if a building sitting on a
periodically flooded tarmak wouldn't be better than wood as it wouldn't
rot, but turns out it also wouldn't bare much weight and a garage was too
big for construction purposes.

Plastic lumber may have looked "real" to you on fuzzy video but not so
much in real life. Long stretches of it without bracing warps easily, a
pergola with the weight baring down on upright plastic beams will probably
bend them in time. At best they look like discount plastic doors at Lowes,
the kind of plastic tricked out with wood rings printed on the surface. If
that stuff appeals then so will the plastic boards, but it won't really
pass for wood. They do have a wood content, they're made mainly out of
recycled milk bottles and sawdust, competing with pres-to-log for mill
waste.

There are many "brand name" providers of this stuff. The ones that got
highest environmental ratings are Rhino, Fiberon, Trex, Maxituf,
Perma-Deck, Enviro-Curb,Breezewood, Bear Board, Ameriwood, EcoTech,
Orcaboard, Bedford Select, Plasboard, and Plasteak. There are maybe fifty
additional companies which are rated poorly because of using unrecyclable
resins or only a very small percentage of recycled material.

But even the higher rated plastic lumber is rarely more than half recycled
material. The "carbon footprint" is much bigger getting this to market
than for wood products by far. But it does for a while keep the crap out
of landfills. For future recycling purposes a lot of it won't be easy to
recycle at all; the type with stronger multiple resins in the mix may
never be recyclable for any purpose, though who knows what future
technology might do. Realistically no construction is permanent so when it
comes down in the future it will be landfill after all. The
environmentalism angle is often just a sales pitch and an equally good one
can be trumped up for wood.

Plastic lumber is mostly recommended for decks and small construction
because not strong enough for housing, garages, or barns. A pergola may be
stretching it because most pergola designs will leave long lengths of the
stuff holding weight. Even for a deck, the floors need redundant bracing
or they'll sag. For starters on pricing and types, check out valleyuse.com
or plasticlumberyard.com or american-plasticlumber.com (or google for a
vendor closer to home) if you're convinced you'll like it. But I wouldn't
get it shipped from afar sight unseen, as you might not like it nearly as
much close-up as you did on fuzzy video.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
visit my temperate gardening website:
http://www.paghat.com
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