TIM-BOR® PROFESSIONAL
Introduction
Tim-bor Professional can be sprayed onto lumber by Pest Management Professionals (PMPs) for the control of carpenter ants, drywood termites, wood decay fungi and wood boring beetles. It is a water soluble borate powder that can be applied as a dust, spray, foam or mist onto wood and cellulosic materials or inside wall voids, cracks and crevices. Depending on the moisture content of the materials, the liquid solution will penetrate to create a protective envelope, acting as a preservative, insecticide and fungicide. The dust provides an additional layer of protection by killing carpenter ants, drywood alates and adult wood boring beetles that enter the structure and pass through it.
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At a Glance
A Closer Look
Tim-bor Professional has a long history of effectiveness and is an efficient, fast and economical way to treat a structure for target pests. It can be used as a wood preservative, fungicide and insecticide on its own or in conjunction with other treatments as a supplement. Because of its application flexibility as a dust or liquid, PMPs can address many treatment niches with this single product – Tim-bor Professional can be applied as a dust, spray, foam or mist onto wood and cellulose materials or inside wall voids, cracks and crevices.
Builders also appreciate Tim-bor Professional because it can be applied quickly and easily with little or no interference with the building process or crews.
How It Works
The active ingredient in Tim-bor Professional is Disodium Octaborate Tetrahydrate (DOT), a natural mineral salt and micronutrient with a low mammalian toxicity and no known resistance. It is manufactured for use in the form of a water-soluble borate powder. Once it’s applied in a liquid form by foaming, misting or spraying onto wood or other cellulosic materials, the borate active ingredient creates a protective envelope and remains for years of protection. Often Tim-bor Professional is dusted into places like wall voids where pests like to hide as an additional protection. When the dust gets on the insects, they clean themselves and consume the boron during the cleaning process.
The Science Behind Tim-bor Professional
DOT is a natural form of elemental boron, which is essential for the healthy growth of plants and believed important in human calcium metabolism. Because animals and humans simply take what they need from their diet and rapidly excrete any excess via the kidneys, DOT has a low acute toxicity. As a result, Tim-bor Professional is about half as toxic as sodium chloride or table salt (in a laboratory setting), but very effective against insects and fungi that do not have the same excretion mechanisms.
DOT maximizes the solubility, the rate of dissolution and the boric oxide content to give a borate active ingredient far superior to traditional boric acid or borax. At the levels used in Tim-bor Professional applications, it prevents pest infestation by inhibiting pest metabolism on a cellular basis. The tetrahydroxyborate anion forms a chelate complex with the cis-adjacent hydroxyl groups in the ribose sugar of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), with the cationic nitrogen of the nicotinamide moiety providing electrostatic stabilization of the chelate. In this configuration, NAD and NADP cannot be used by the dehydrogenase enzymes of glycolysis, the pentose phosphate pathway or the tricarboxylic acid pathway, and so the cellular energy generating mechanisms, including adenosine triphosphate production, are shut down.