State Park Kiosk Preservation
Channel: Sean Anderson
Date: 05/08/2018

California State Parks craft the vast majority of their picnic benches, signposts, and kiosks out of durable redwood.  Once hewn from our state's vast redwood timberlands, those days are now long gone. 
 Most of the redwood used today is now supplied by (of all places) Canada, with construction of the structures taking place in a northern California prison work camp.  By the time they make it down to us here in southern California there is much money, time, sweat equity, and carbon tied up in these essential parkland elements.

Recently we have received new directives to enact various techniques to extend the lifespan of our redwood structures.  These include coating all in-ground surfaces with copper-based preservatives such as copper napthenate (to minimize wood-boring insects) and impregnating wood with borate plugs (to minimize fungal and microbial attacks).

This example shows our preparation of posts supporting the current standard map kiosk.

You can see what this protected post looks like after being cemented for 24 hours here: https://youtu.be/kWkbXVxWsjA