Decking around a pool

[bpence]

Here's my dilema. We have an above ground 27' round pool that has a 24' x 16' deck built against it. It was built in 1993 or 1994 using all pressure treated lumber. The decking is 5/4 x 6 round edged deck board. Over the years I've cleaned the deck every spring, re-sealed, re-stained, re-everythinged this deck. It spends a lot of it's time covered with water and pool chemicals, bakes in the sun, and there are now two distinct problems. First, there is a lot of cracking and splintering in the deck boards that seems to be getting a little worse every year. Splinters in the toes from pressure treated wood can be a bad thing. Second, I'm tired of cleaning, patching with wood filler, sanding, and redoing this deck everysingle year - only to have the family complain about splinters, etc. I've looked at two possible solutions. Replace the decking with the newer composite deck materials, or cover the decking with outdoor carpeting. The real question I have - has anyone used outdoor carpeting to cover a deck, specifically a pool deck, and if so what has the experience with it been? It'll be about $250 to cover the 16x24 deck with carpeting, and about $1,200 to redo the decking in composite. I'm seriously tilting toward the outdoor carpeting approach, but figured there would be somebody around this site somewhere that's had the same dilema and found a workable solution.

 

[Inspector507]

Bob,
That's exactly the plan I have for my deck this year.......carpeting

 

[rocky2]

It's May 21, and here in western Pennsylvania there was snow flurries the moring as I pulled out of the garage. I might not have to worry about my pool decking this year because the ice skates will crack and splinter it anyway this July !!

 

[Jeffintheburg]

When I moved into my previous house it had indoor/outdoor carpeting covering the deck. Although the deck was already in bad shape when I bought the house, the combination of wood and carpet would hold the moisture after a rain or snow and seemed to accelerate the deterioration of the wood. Might want to think about putting a vapor barrier or good sealer on the wood before laying down the indoor/outdoor carpeting. Just some food for thought.

 

[MossRoad]

I think the carpet would end up having lines in it over all of the joints and would hold moisture against the wood.

 

[Wood_Butcher_Dav]

I put marine spar varnish on rather than any of them sealers. The varnish was around $30.00 a gallon. I used about 4 gallons on apx 250 sq ft of deck.

 

[MrP]

BP,

I used Trex on my deck. It is great stuff. My deck is about three years old and looks like new. The stuff never needs to be stained or sealed. It holds up to the weather and any water drains off immedately.

Extra money, but worth the cost in the long run.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

The trex is great. You can use your regular tools like saws and nail guns etc. The only glitch with it is you need more support. So that means your joists have to be closer together etc. If I recall correctly they recommend twelve inch centers where with regular wood you can go eighteen to twenty four.

I go for redwood and Penofin sealer. Neither's real cheap but man, the effect!

My deck is redwood. I was visiting with a contractor one day and noticed some bundles of lumber in the back. I moseyed over and checked it out. I then asked him about it. He explained they had pulled a redwood deck to replace a retaining wall. They'd pulled the deck very carefully cause they were going to reinstall it. But they got lucky and sold the homeowner a new one. The old one had been sitting there for a couple of years in their storage yard.

I asked if he'd thought about selling it. He wanted to know if I would make an offer. I had two one hundred dollar bills hidden away in the wallet for just moments. I ended up with enough two by six construction heart redwood to cover five hundred square feet.

When it came to installing it at the house I was torn between running it through the thickness planer to freshen up the appearance and fluting it. I fluted it. Hell, I'd never seen one fluted before. And to be honest I haven't seen another since. But we love it.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

I have a walk out basement and huge deck on the backside of my house. The deck is for walking out of the dining room upstairs. I spend most of my time at the basement level under the deck. I decided I wanted to put a ceiling up under the deck to shed water since I used 5/4 wood decking and everything ran through. However, since I spend about 100. or so each year maintaining the deck surface I decided to carpet the deck and at the same time have it dry below. So we got some plastic from the lumber yard. (it's the thick stuff that comes on railroad cars wrapped around lumber. The lumber yard gave it to me. White on one side and black on the other) We cut and then put down the carpet. It worked great but the wind beat the crap out of it this spring. So, now i have to re-lay the carpet.... But, as I mentioned, the experiment worked......Tom