Oehler house wooden posts: bugs, moisture?

Hi, Mike, glad to see you on a forum. I have been a fan for quite a while. Do you need to watch the DVD's to build? I have 20 acres of Pinon pine and Juniper in southern UT that I am thinking about using to build a PSP home.  I have both the Underground House book and the Greenhouse book.
I also would like an updated opinion on what options are available to me to keep moisture from getting into the posts and bugs from eating the posts. Should I dip them in tar? Char them? Soak them in some preservative? What works?

I answered this on the "welcome back" thread.

Another option is using a hopper sprayer to coat the logs with a Magnesium Oxide  or Magnesium Phosphate slurry.  I've been told that the Finnish people have been using this type of treatment (though not necessarily with the sprayer) for a very long time on their traditional pole structures, and that this method protects the poles for as long or longer than conventionally treated logs without the use of CCA or ACQ.  This is an earth buried application.  The hopper sprayers can be obtained for about $25 from harbor freight.  The Magnesium Oxide and Magnesium Phosphate cements can be obtained from George Swanson for the same cost that is charged by the producers of these.  Check out www.geoswan.com   There are links at that site for the cements.

Mike - mostly, I'd just like to comment on your $50 and Up Underground House book.  I bought my copy back in the late 1970s. Ordered it out of the original Mother Earth News mag for like $6.95 or so.  I've always loved your concepts and wanted to design/build a home of this type for myself someday.  It's overwhelming that almost every site on the web that has to do with (non-commercial) underground housing mentions your book.

Now, thirty some years after I bought your book I find myself pulling it off the bookshelf again and again. I own some hilly acreage in Michigan and am thinking seriously about going with your PSP style construction.  Anyway, thanks again for sharing your ideas in the book as well as answers you've provided to people in various articles and forums I've read through the years.