Home Deck--Wood or Composite decking

[oliver28472]

We did a concrete deck at our house that comes off the main floor above the basement level, so it serves as a two car carport underneath. Engineered steel structure.

 

[Jagmandave]

I'm with Maxfli, I do everything now to be as strong and maint free as possible. There's no denying how pretty a tru wood deck looks when it's clean and freshly stained, but the amount of work needed to keep it that way is more than I care to invest.
My house in San Diego had a redwood deck that I built, 20' X 10' , plus a 10' square one around the hot tub (which also was redwood). Every year I sanded it lightly with my belt sander to bring up the grain and then put a good coat of oil based sealer with lot's of anti-uv in it, it looked just beautiful, but I had to do it every year.
My new house will have stamped, color impregnated concrete porches, patios and decks.
I've noticed you can't buy redwood here in the midwest like you could in Ca, but it makes a great deck material too, bugs don't like it much, easy to work, and stains up beautifully. If it's available in your area and you want a natural wood deck, redwood is a good choice.

 

[AndyM]

I'm getting ready to start a 12 x 24 deck, about three feet off the ground. I went through the pros and cons of each material, and I finally decided on treated wood instead of the composite materials. I'm going with vinyl railing though.

What I have yet to decide is whether to go with 5/4 x 6 decking or 2 x 6 decking (which I did at the last house).

 

[texbaylea]

RonR

The latest issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine, July 2005, has an article on the synthetic decking choices. Plus there is an article on deck framing done right. I have been through building and maintaining raised decks and it is not fun. I would certainly use the synthetic decking if I were building a new one but the present house is on grade and it is not necessary.

Vernon

 

[_RaT_]

I will admit I have not read all the posts so I may be repeating here. I agree with you about using a product like concrete etc when that is an option. In this months Fine Home Building, there is a good amount of information on decking and decking materials. It seems your going to be at $2+ a linear foot on almost any decking surface. Out here, some folks still use redwood, but I gave it up long ago. In 1995 I built a dock that receives sun from sun up to sun down and still looks almost exactly the same. No splinters, cupping, warping and no maintanence. It convinced me that the next deck I build for myself will not have a wood product on the surface.

 

[shade2u2]

Hey Andy,
How have you been? I haven't been visiting here much lately. Maybe I come up & help with your deck & you can come done to SE Ohio to help w/mine. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
I'm going with vinyl railing also that matches our front porch. I'm leaning toward composite decking right now, but the treated savings up front is hard to ignore. I've heard a litte bit about the new treated material not holding up as well as the CCA. I'm going to check a couple other lumber yards today since I'm off work today.
How about the ledger board, beam, joist, etc design? Any advice out there?

 

[texbaylea]

Shade

Check out the words in the July issue of Fine Homebuilding.

Vernon

 

[AndyM]

<font color="blue"> Hey Andy,
How have you been? I haven't been visiting here much lately. </font>

John, I'm still here, just not nearly as much as I used to be. Been overwelmed with life lately, but surviving. I had my job eliminated three weeks ago, but was quickly moved into an open position of someone who was leaving the company. He had two days to pass off four years of information, and no one else knew his job. I keep close watch of my dad and his health problems in my "spare" time.

Everyone else, sorry about that thread drift. Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

The deck materials get delivered tomorrow. I haven't ordered the railing yet, because the lumberyard was getting ready to close but I only knew how many posts and sections of railing I needed, but I didn't have a materials list ready for all of the "accessories", like the vinyl caps and trim pieces.

<font color="blue"> I'm leaning toward composite decking right now, but the treated savings up front is hard to ignore. I've heard a litte bit about the new treated material not holding up as well as the CCA. </font>

It's true that the ACQ lumber is still unproven, but so is the composite decking. I don't know if we will still be in the house in 20 years anyhow to see how well they last, and if we are, my wife will probably want something different by then!

I'll be working on the deck through the weekend, stop on in if you wish to!

 

[dooleysm]

I put composite decking down last fall and it's held up well so far for me. I used traditional deck screws for the part I put up last fall and noticed the burs as the screws dug down into the deck. I added a big section to the back of the house the past couple weeks and used the new (at least new to my hardware store) PrimeGuard composite deck screws. They worked much, much better, but were quite a bit more expenseive. I paid $24/5 pounds and ended up using right at 20 pounds for around 375 sq ft of deck.

I just ordered and put up vinyl railing last week. It looks sharp, but is pricey. The kind I have went up easy, except (and that's a big EXCEPT) for the parts of my deck that are angled at something other than 90 degrees. The mounting brackets for the rails were only designed to go straight out from the posts. I talked to my supplier and she told me that you have to use a knife and notch out the brackets to get other angles. For what they charge for that stuff, you'd think they could come up with some different angled brackets that don't look like @##%@ when you notch them out.

Anyway, after pressure washing and staining my parent's deck every other year while I was living at home, I'm looking forward to no yearly maintenance on MY deck.