Due to a rise in the awareness on environmental issues, special emphasis is taken to developing new procedures for wood protection. Harmful biocidal solutions and the use of tropical woods are in decline due to increased environmental awareness. One of the environmentally friendly solutions is the protection of wood with water repellent emulsions increasing hydrophobicity; therefore, wood remains dry and is not endangered by the degrading fungi. Sorption characteristics of wood impregnated with a water repellent emulsion were tested on Norway spruce and beech samples. Polyethylene wax emulsion WE1 and oxidized polyethylene wax emulsion WE6 were used for impregnation. The samples were dried in 2 different ways: in a vacuum at 60 °C, and with a laboratory oven dryer at 140 °C. Half of the specimens were used for monitoring of moisture content and the dimensions of the samples conditioned in chamber with high relative air humidity (87 %). The second half of the specimens was used for elucidation of capillary water uptake through 10 minute non-continuous dipping into distilled water. Due to anatomical properties of Norway spruce and poor impregnability we did not notice any considerable influence of the wax treatment of the dimensional stability and moisture of spruce wood blocks. Considerably more prominent differences were observed at beech wood specimens. The best result was achieved after vacuum drying of impregnated beech, where moisture content was up to 25 % lower compared to the control samples. Volume changes were improved when beech samples were wax treated.
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