Before you start your fence, deck, or pergola project, remember to check the wood's moisture content

before doing any type of fence deck pergola anything that's raw wood make sure you test the moisture content if you don't test the moisture content you're going to have problems with the application down the road the wood's not going to soak up the oil like it should there's going to be adhesion and penetration problems down the road also so I use a device Ryobi moisture meter right here it's Bluetooth if I can select a species of wood I'm going to be testing it's got two prongs simple and easy to use I'm just going to press it right into the wood I'm going to wait 5 or 10 seconds and it's going to give me a reading ideally what you're looking for is 16% or below I think it's really ideal if it's going to be 133% or below I'm looking for 11% or below so right here at zero this fence was installed over a year ago went through the whole summer it's completely dried out brand new fences they always come out extremely wet let them dry out make