Our companies' reputations are founded on superior product quality and unmatched customer service.  In almost 100 years of business, we have never had an early failure complaint.  We have been taught to always build on a solid foundation, and we view our product as the foundation that utilities build their businesses on. With that in mind, we are using the same proven processes to treat our Penta or DCOI utility poles.  The most important part of the treating process is preparing/conditioning the wood prior to treatment.  There are a few options for conditioning the wood including air seasoning, kiln drying, or steam conditioning; we specialize in the steam conditioning process because the properties of steam are “self-correcting” and ideal for conditioning wood.   The properties of steam make it a self-correcting heating method because the steam heats the wood by condensing on the cooler surfaces of the pole which lowers the pressure and draws more steam to those cooler areas.  As a result, the entire charge heats at a very consistent rate.  It is a self-correcting and forgiving process in that it is not dependent on an operator loading the charge perfectly.  The wood is treated properly and consistently from top to bottom, from small poles to large poles, from the outside edge of the charge to the middle, as well as from batch to batch.           

    Our goal in the steaming process is to heat the wood for an adequate amount of time to stop any incipient decay that may have started as well as to remove enough moisture from the wood during vacuum drying so that the preservative will penetrate all the way to the heartwood.  Our goal is to manufacture a pole that will have a service life of 50+ years, not a pole that meets the minimum specifications.  Additional benefits of our steam conditioning process include an easier to climb surface due to no case hardening effect from kiln drying, a consistently drier surface and “no bleed” attributes associated with steam conditioned wood, and less brittleness in the wood because of the slower reduction of moisture content in the wood.  We believe that the treating process that we employ is the best in the industry in terms of proven quality, which results in a much lower cost to our customer over the life of our product.