Low-maintenance alternatives springing up everywhere
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Rosa Salter Rodriguez
Published June 18, 2005
Well, Dad, today’s your day. Are you spending it with your family, out on the deck, cooking out for a crowd?
Have you noticed that the deck, the one you put on maybe 10 years ago, is starting to look a little ratty?
Has the wood discolored? Is it getting splintery or curling or warping around the edges? Have you already had to pull up a few boards and replace them?
Or worse, did you spend so much effort before the party power-washing, sanding, painting or resealing the thing that you’ve barely got the energy today to lift the steak to the grill?
Dad, it just might be time to get a new deck.
And it also might be time to join a growing number of homeowners who’ve found that decks don’t have to be wood to be good.
Since you put on your last deck, Dad, new materials have come on the market with the promise that they can outperform wood when it comes to durability and maintenance.
Many are composites of wood and plastics, some are vinyl, and some are aluminum.
But all their makers hope to sway homeowners whose experiences with a wood deck have been – well, is “rotten” too strong a word?
“We had wood before, and it was yucky,” says Janet Eloph, who last summer got her husband, Rick, to agree to having Trex decks made from a composite of wood and plastic installed on the front and back of their ranch home outside Decatur.
“We’re old enough now that we’re never going to replace it, and we wanted low-maintenance,” she says. “It looks nice, and it’s not supposed to warp, and the color’s not supposed to fade.”
Adds Rick Eloph, “It seems to be holding up well.”
Bob Thorn of Arnold Lumber in Decatur, one of nearly three dozen Fort Wayne-area businesses that sell or install the nearly 10-year-old Trex system, says its main advantage is that “it’s maintenance-free, except in the sense that you need to clean it like anything else.”
Cleaning requires a special chemical solution, he says, and is a once-a-year job.
“But you don’t have to stain it, or paint or seal it, and it doesn’t split or crack,” he says, acknowledging that a Trex deck is pricier than a standard deck made from pressure-treated wood.
Standard-sized 16-foot-long Trex decking boards, about $28, go for about three times the cost of regular pressure-treated lumber and for about a third more than cedar. And Trex systems don’t eliminate all wood, which is still used for supporting structures, he says.
But the company’s composite deck material can look much like wood. It has a new line, Brasilia, designed to look like wood just out of the rain forest. And the Trex systems have the added attraction of being environmentally friendly by being made of recycled material.
Trex recycles 300 million pounds of hardwood sawdust and an equal amount of used plastic into decking material every year, company spokesman Maureen Murray says. Much of the plastic comes from used grocery bags that would otherwise end up in landfills.
Trex uses about 50 percent of the recycled grocery bags available, she says.
But the company, formerly a division of Mobil and founded by oil company executives, is hardly the only wood alternative on the block.
Other composites are sold at home stores, including Home Depot and Lowe’s. The latter has a composite product called ChoiceDek selling for about $27 for standard-size board.
And, when Consumer Reports magazine published a comparison of composites in its July 2004 issue, it could single out no fewer than six brands – Eon, Veranda, ChoiceDek, WeatherBest, Geodeck and ACQ – as best buys. The rating is given based on performance compared against price.
Trex was noted for having the largest range of colors and sizes. Another company, Evergrain, was also noted for the variety it provided.
And vinyl is gaining in popularity as a decking material, says Nola Pyle of VBD (Vinyl by Design) Inc., in New Paris.
VBD, which Pyle runs with and her husband, Doug, sells and installs two virgin vinyl decking systems – Brock Deck and Decklok – both made in Milford by Royal Crown Ltd.
“It’s becoming very popular. We’re extremely busy with vinyl,” Nola Pyle says.
She says vinyl’s advantages are that it’s not as warm to the touch as composities or wood and it tends not to shrink or shift as composites can.
Vinyl resists color changes from weathering and is available in many woodlike shades, she says.
Pyle says the two products VBD sells have slightly different construction procedures.
Decklok, she says, is a tongue-in-groove system that screws down through the tongue to hide the hardware.
Brock decking, originally developed for pier use, goes together with a clip system that Pyle calls “not quite as user friendly.” She recommends it for marine decking because it offers drainage between the boards.
“They are both top-of-the-line decking,” says Pyle, who compares the durability of vinyl decking to the durability of vinyl siding for a house.
Jim Bushey, president of Bushey’s Windows Doors and Sunrooms in Fort Wayne, adds that wood alternatives might be gaining in popularity in part because of concerns raised in recent years about arsenic in pressure-treated wood.
Wood decking has since been reformulated, but prices tend to be slightly higher than they were.
“When I talk to folks, that’s usually not their main concern,” Bushey says of wood products’ potential toxicity. It’s convenience, price and the circumstances of buyers that usually determine what deck material they select.
“If they’re going to be in the house three to five years, or they’re going to move soon, they’ll go for (pressure-treated) wood,” he says.
“If they’re 50-plus and this is the house they’re staying in, they’ll look at the composites and vinyl.”
Vinyl is “close to composite in price.” Bushey adds. “What people selling vinyl will say is that there’s no maintenance or buying chemicals to clean it, so over 20 years it’s cheaper (than composites or wood).”
Vinyl generally can be washed with regular soap and water, Bushey notes.
“Right now, we’re doing maybe 40 percent wood, 40 percent composite and 20 percent vinyl,” he says.
Those numbers are in line with national figures from Remodeling Online that suggest that composites make up about 15 percent of the market as does vinyl.
But aluminum is also gaining ground for some specialized applications.
Al Raynes, sales manager for AridDek in Gainesville, Ga., a division of Wahoo Docks, says aluminum’s selling point is that it’s a lightweight, impermeable and cost-effective material for second-story decks or balconies.
The decking is made by an extrusion process to tight tolerances and can be recycled, according to the company.
Such decks might be placed over a boat dock or on top of a ground-level patio or carport or storage space, according to Raynes, who says aluminum decks also are being chosen for their fireproof qualities by California homeowers living in wildfire-prone areas.
The product is sold for about $50 for a 16-foot length and is easy enough to install for a homeowner with simple tools, Raynes says.
There are no Fort Wayne-area installers or distributors as yet, but the product is sold online at www. ariddek.com.
A competing aluminum product, the LockDry system, is sold online by a Cullman, Ala., company. Aldrich Builders in Angola is a local installer.
Bushey believes wood alternatives will make up the vast majority of decks in the future.
“Anybody who has a wood deck, which I do, would never put another one on because of the maintenance,” he says.
“It’s an every two- or three-year process to spray and seal it. And we’re an aging population, and the boomers don’t want to spend their time power-washing decks.”
Indeed, the Elophs have already enjoyed hosting a family reunion on their deck.
Because the deck is so different, “there were quite a few conversations about it” during the party, says Janet, 52.
She’s now busy persuading her son Todd to get a composite deck for his home in Fort Wayne. “I told him I’d save my money and do it right,” she says.
Like father, like son?
Recommendations
Until recently, wood was treated with arsenic to deter insect damage. That is no longer the case, but some environmental groups, including the Environmental Working Group at .php still advise homeowners to replace old pressure-treated wood decks. If that’s not feasible, here’s what the organization suggests:
- Test your deck for arsenic. The same is true of any pressure-treated wood structure, including play sets and fences.
- Seal the wood. Do this at least every six months with a standard deck sealant.
- Replace high-traffic sections with non-arsenic alternatives. Those areas include handrails, steps and deck board.
- Wash hands. Make sure people, including children, wash their hands after exposure to wood, especially before eating. Don’t allow children to play on rough wood surfaces because arsenic-treated splinters can be dangerous.
- Keep your distance. Keep children and pets away from the soil beneath and immediately surrounding arsenic-treated wood structures.
- Do not pressure wash to clean the surface of arsenic-treated wood. Instead use a soap and water solution, with disposable cleaning supplies. Pressurized water will blast off the upper surface of the wood and spray arsenic-contaminated particles over your yard.
- Never sand arsenic-treated lumber. If wood is smooth enough that splinters are not a risk, avoid sanding a deck to prepare the surface for sealing – use a simple soap and water wash instead. Wood dust formed by sanding contains arsenic that is easily ingested by a child, or can wash off the surface to contaminate the soil below.
- Do not store toys or tools under the deck. Arsenic leaches from the wood when it rains and might coat things left there.
•Do not use commercial “deck washing” solutions. These solutions can convert chemicals on the wood to a more toxic form.
