ConstructionDeal.com Update

Many of you may be planning to have a deck built, either this year or to get ready for next summer, and I wanted to talk about your choices in deck material.

Your options include using a natural wood, metal, fiberglass, or using a composite decking material. If you've been reading your home and remodeling magazines, you may have seen a lot of ads for composite materials that will make your new deck "virtually maintenance free!" My advice to you - don't believe the hype.

Composite deck materials have been around for about 15 to 20 years now. They were to be an environmentally friendly product, being made up of recycled materials (plastic, wood and cellulose fibers), and they would not require sealing or refinishing. The marketing was heavy from the manufacturers to let you know a composite material deck would last a long time and would not require maintenance. Warranties were thrown about left and right.

Turns out that your best bet for a new deck is to use good old wood. A nice cedar, pine, mahogany, or redwood should do the trick. Using composite materials on a new deck still requires that you use wood for the supporting structure, they still require a lot of maintenance, and many of the composite decks are requiring a sealant to protect them. Turns out some of the decks are made with up to 50% wood fibers and are rotting away. In fact, there was a recall of one manufacturer. It's not as strong as wood and needs more support to avoid sagging. And the price of these composite materials is still higher than your basic choices of wood materials.

Nothing beats the look and feel of a good wood deck. Yes, you do have to seal them on a regular basis - usually every 2 years. But the nice thing about wood is that you can replace sections if there is a problem or severe damage and you can also have the surface of the deck refinished. Try to refinish the surface of a plastic composite material. Wood can be damaged by the sun, by water, and by constant heavy use. In my opinion, the wood decks do require TLC but the advantages of the wood outweight the disadvantages of all the other materials.

Composite materials have come a long way in the past few years, and there are many who strongly support using them on new decks. I'd love to hear from people who have composite decks that are 3 or more years old to see what their experience has been with them.

If you'd like to talk to one of our Deck professionals about a new deck, post your deck project with us here.