How to Preserve Bamboo: Including DIY Boucheire Method

are you one of those people who believe that bamboo will not last if you use it for construction did you know that if you treat bamboo it could last for decades well today I'm going to show you two ways to treat bamboo simple low-tech ways so let's go Aloha this is Sean here with homestead in Hawaii bamboo has been utilized in tropical countries throughout the world and throughout history and they have found ways to treat bamboo with simple low-tech methods that'll allow the bamboo to last for up to 100 years in some places the fallacy of bamboo just crumbling and roading away after a few short years is only because people don't know that they need to treat bamboo in order to for it to last so today I'm going to show you two simple methods for treating bamboo one of them is called a bucket method and another is if I pronounced it correctly the bushi a method where we pressurize our treatment to be injected into the bamboo so let's dive into the bucket method first all we're gonna need is a bucket filled with some water a little bit of boric acid this here is a roach killer that's pure boric acid and we were also going to need freshly cut bamboo and so what we're gonna do we're gonna mix 10% boric acid with 90% water make sure that it all dissolves that we're gonna cut some bamboo fresh out of the grow you have up to four hours to do this if your Grove happens to be off-site from where you're gonna treat your bamboo so make it quick the best way to do it is to do it in the grove so you can cut the bamboo leave the stalk standing in the grove with the leaves still on and place the bottom end into the bucket when the leaves are all dead you know that your bamboo is treated and ready to take out of the grill it's simple as that that's one method for treating bamboo all you have to worry about is making sure that you top off the bucket and that not too much rainwater gets in there and dissolves the solution that you have prepared for your bamboo let's move on to the Bashir method and show you how to construct a pressurized treatment system of your own before we jump into the next method of preserving bamboo why don't you just go ahead and hit that like button down below and perhaps subscribe to this YouTube channel leave a comment engage with this channel in any way that you can and help us grow this channel alright let's get to it in order to make the pressure-treated system the bhushaiah method we are just going to need a few simple parts we have a two-inch pipe sawzall air pressure tank and various fittings for the 2-inch PVC pipe here we have our fitting that's going to go from the pipe to our air pressure tank and then you'll need a various size rubber couplings to match up with your bamboo and I got some socket wrenches in there to make everything all tight not too many parts to make this work for you so we're gonna pressurize our bamboo we are going to start by cutting our 2 inch pipe we're gonna make one section about three to four feet long a couple short sections just to add the different couplings and elbows and whatnot and a slightly longer one down at the bottom where the rubber coupling will match up with the bamboo all right once you have those pipe sections cut it's good to just rub on the ends and get those burrs off you could also use another piece and just use that other piece to get the burrs you know some people stay in these things you can but I've never really had a problem with outstanding them and I've glued tons of pipes in my day to glue everything together we are going to use some primer and some of this Christie's red hot blue glue this stuff is pretty much the best glue for PVC if your PVC happens to be a little bit of wet a little bit wet this stuff will still work so we're gonna glue our pipes and our elbows and fittings all together with this stuff here we're gonna start by assembling the bottom first a little primer inside your fitting and outside of your pipe and then a little bit of glue you know brush off the excess glue you don't need too much and just get both sides of your fittings fully covered and then fit them on to each other giving them a little twist okay so that fitting is ready we're gonna take our longer PVC section that we cut and we're gonna add this on to the elbow here and then from here we are going to be attaching our rubber gasket but we're gonna do that later let's move to the top of this device okay so next we're gonna add the elbow we're gonna put glue inside this part of the fitting and attach it to the top of our let's call this our stand pipe the tee is facing opposite to the pipe here on this side okay so from here we're gonna add on our little extenders we're gonna add on our 45-degree joint here facing upward so make sure it's facing up another piece in order to get another fitting on this is just one of our short pipe pieces that we cut earlier and then from here we're gonna add on this two-inch ball valve and this is gonna be our filler port where we fill in the boric acid solution into the pipe [Music] making sure to keep the ball valve on the top alright one last fitting to put on and we are done I need a two-inch coupling to finish this part and I don't have it time to go to the store and get that part before we attach the final piece we got a screw it all in and tighten it all down so this is a two inch to 3/4 inch female fitting and we're going to insert this three-quarter inch male 2 half inch female PVC fitting inside this guy like that and then we have this little contraption which is actually made up of three different parts this is a half-inch - I believe 3/8 inch size reducer and then then we have this guy which is 3/8 to our our air hose fitting this last piece here is gonna fit on your air hose and then it just goes right on right there so let me show you how we're gonna tighten this all together you can see on these pieces there's already some orange tape going around them so these are ready to be tightened ready to go but the PVC piece still needs it so we're gonna put a little bit of plumber's tape on this so you're just gonna go clockwise around this piece here just gonna go around once and then you know and then push it into the threads get that tape deep down in there alright so this is ready to go so next we're gonna take this and hand tighten it into our other PVC fitting I got a pair of vise grips here you could use channel locks or a ranch or whatever you have available we're just going to tighten this fitting down into the female part of this - well pretty much you could just do this by hand you know get it down to where it feels nice and tight you don't want to you know turn it too hard because you might crack something this is PVC sort of a plastic okay so that that piece is ready to go and now we're gonna screw in the other fitting for the air hose before we do that let's get these two pieces tightened up pretty well and here you might actually need to separate wrenches and all this is important to tighten before you actually glue the piece on to our main stand pipe because it's gonna be a little harder to screw all this together okay so I got two vise grips here and they're helping me okay be sure not to over tighten this piece is good and now we're gonna tighten it into the other piece into this piece this is gonna go in once again being sure not to over tighten too far especially now that you have a metal piece going into a PVC piece so now after we go to the store to get our two-inch coupling we're gonna attach this to our stand pipe and we're gonna be ready to treat our bamboo I'm back and I brought with me this 45 degree they didn't have any couplings at the store but this will work just fine we're gonna take our contraption here and we're gonna put it right up top here [Music] okay for me I'm having the 45 go back towards this valve here preferably we had a straight coupling but it is what it is that's what we work with in Hawaii we don't often have all the supplies that we need whenever we need them so next we're going to glue on this piece here into that 45 degree elbow or coupling that you have and this is gonna be all done and ready to use here is our bamboo treatment device what they call a bushi air pressure treatment system simple as that now let's see if it works okay when it comes to treating bamboo we want to have a nice clean piece of bamboo that's been washed and and we want to make sure that it is pretty freshly cut no more than 48 hours since the bamboo was cut is appropriate for this treatment process here so you can see this stock is really clean and it's ready to go for us to to do our pressure treating now take your bamboo and slide it into the coupling if it's not big enough or too big you just need a different size coupling and then go ahead and tighten it down [Music] next we're gonna take this hose and put it into this male fitting right here this hose the other end of this hose is going to lead to your air compressor all right here's our setup and we're using a chair to prop this device up and you can see that down there it's connected to the bamboo and there's our air compressor that's gonna pressurize the system now you want the bamboo to be slightly elevated towards the outlet side of the bamboo and then on the other side we're gonna also put a bucket to catch any of the fluid that may come out the other end okay we're gonna start by making our solution once again we're going to use boric acid as the main agent mixed with water 10% boric acid it's a 90 percent water give it a little stir get it all mixed up you may have to let it dissolve for a little while in order to get all the clumps out of there and we're also going to mix in a little red food coloring so we can see if there's any progress on our end [Music] all right so we're gonna turn the valve into the open position I'm gonna pour our solution inside if you have a funnel even better okay we are full going to shut the valve now and we're going to turn on the system okay so once you have the tank pressurized here you can see over here that I haven't added the pressure going out the hose yet so we want to keep it real low like about five to eight psi no more than ten to start injecting the pressure into our bamboo you check here to see if you have any leaks and this should run for about a couple hours actually before we actually start to see the fluid come out the end of the bamboo we're gonna add a bucket to this end or any fluid that drops off we can catch and be able to reuse later you can see that water is seeping out of this node right here this is the first node of the bamboo from the pressure treatment and it is already getting saturated within ten minutes of time it's been about five hours and it may be hard to see but it's fully saturated now and you could even see the red food coloring and the capillaries of the bamboo so we'll leave about an hour longer and it'll be done alright this bamboo is done it is fully pressure treated and from here you would take this bamboo and put it into an area where it could be stored and allowed to stay dry for about two to three months and then it'll be properly cured and ready to use for constructions this Bouchet method can be multiplied if you have a strong enough air compressor you can add maybe ten maybe even up to 20 depending how big your air compressor is you can add a series of these systems on the same air compressor tank you can have 20 bamboos curing and being treated all at the same time I love it if you hit a like down below perhaps leave a comment let me know if this was helpful or if there's anything more that you need and subscribe to the YouTube channel I am constantly adding more all the time and I hope that whatever I bring helps you so thanks for watching everybody till next time oh holy hole [Music]

Channel: Homesteadin' Hawai'i

Views: 116,087

Rating: 4.9428191 out of 5

Keywords: off grid, permaculture, off grid hawaii, permaculture hawaii, tropical permaculture', homesteading, homesteading hawaii, food forest, bamboo, water harvesting, solar power, how to preserve bamboo after cutting, how to preserve bamboo for building, boucherie, Diy bamboo preserving

Id: Aghf4j9ly8A

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020