These houses were built by the third little pig. No huffing or puffing is going to blow them down.However without constant attention, parts of them could just slowly rot away.

The water accesses the timber because there's no paint on the end grain and so you can see the decay has started here and run all the way down.

Wooden window and doorframes are more energy efficient than other materials and come from a renewable source. However in most modern houses they're made from young timber, which is not as durable as older wood. But using a younger resource of timber is much better than cutting down old growth forests

So Damian Scown of Australia's science agency CSIRO is finding new environmentally friendly, treatment processes for the young timber.

So we would treat timber with a preservative that we think may work. We will then grow a fungus that we know is an active wood degrader. We'll get it grown up to a certain level then we'll introduce our treated piece of timber and we'll leave it for 12 weeks. After that time we come back and assess how much damage has happened to the wood.

Damian has a nursery of over 140 miniature windows, made from different timbers, coated with different paints or preservatives, then left in a simulated humid atmosphere for varying lengths of time. Each window is then taken apart to see how it's fared. And this one is fine.

Once the damp gets into window frames and they buckle and bend, they have to be replaced. CSIRO's is working to provide builders and home owners with an environmentally safe timber treatment.

Damian Scown
CSIRO Forestry and Forestry Products
Private Bag 10
Clayton South MDC VIC 3169
Damian.Scown@csiro.au