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This deck has many features of today's best, including expansive size and more than one level. Courtesy of R&D Deck Builders
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By Mark Clement
June 14, 2006—What has happened to the great American deck? Not too long ago, it was a rectangular platform of pressure-treated pine appended to the back of a house. These days, though, the deck can be any shape, have a number of levels, feature fireplaces and fountains and even contain a kitchen. In fact, it doesn't have to be wood anymore.
Yet there is something about decks that just seems synonymous with wood. For no other reason than wood speaks to us, we like it. Customers like the way it feels, looks, and even weathers, while deck builders like the way it works. You can screw down decking or pop it on with gun nails. We all like the way wood smells; it reminds us of vacations on a dock or the pleasure of building at its most basic level. Wood is versatile and tough. And it works well with every component of the deck. Let's take a look.
Framing
As with any structure, building a deck starts with the framing, and framing must be rated for ground contact ... and moisture and bugs and micro-organisms and anything else that might crawl along. While there are a number of pressure-treated formulas available in the wake of CCA's phase-out, only ACQ and wood treated with copper azole are suitable for ground-contact applications. They have performed as promised, repelling insects, rot and other forms of decay.
The chemical treatment, however, is corrosive to steel, which limits the choice of nails, lags, hangers, and carriage bolts to double-hot-dipped galvanized or stainless steel. Electro-galvanized nails and some coated screws, for example, can rot away. For the same reason, any flashings that touch ACQ must be plastic or copper-based. The good news is that while this corrosion effect was a surprise early on, many builders and suppliers have caught on and adjusted their practices.
For use in below-grade footings, ACQ and copper-azole-treated wood continue to perform well. And the materials are reported to be inert to the environment.
Finally, there's cost. While you can come out of the ground with concrete or masonry posts, the expense pushes some deck customers out of the market. ACQ and copper-azole-treated wood—problematic fasteners or not—are currently the most widely available and affordable resource for deck builders.
Deck builder Ray Bendijo of R&D Deck Builders in Ramsey, Minn., points out the financial aspects of framing and decking with wood. Synthetic decking is already expensive, but because some of these products are oil-based, they are 30% more expensive than they were last year. Nicolson says it's similar in his market: Building a deck with synthetics is 50 percent to 75 percent more expensive than building with most widely available softwoods.
Decking and Handrails
Here is where wood gets to do more than work; it gets to shine. As deck builder Pat Nicolson from Pittsburgh, Pa., asks, "Why do you think all these new composite decking materials have wood grains stamped into them? People like wood."
When you get a call for a diagonal decking pattern, you don't have to beef up your joists from 16 to 12 inch centers, as you do with many synthetics.
It adds versatility, too. For example, you can build it up to add accents and shadow lines. A cedar or redwood handrail on a pressure-treated frame breaks up the color uniformity in many decks and adds some flare, as does using a cedar or redwood wrap against the band joist.
Exotic hardwoods are on the other end of the price and performance scale. Species such as ipe (Brazilian walnut) and cumaru (Brazilian teak) are rock hard, super straight, and have the tightest grains you can imagine. These materials are so tough that bugs run the other way.
The hardness poses a challenge with fastening, but there are many systems on the market to deal with it, including straight pre-drilling and screwing and hidden deck-fastener systems. These materials are so clear and knot-free, however, speckling the faces of them with fastener holes just doesn't seem right.
Many hardwoods come with 25-year performance guarantees, and they require no chemicals to stay looking good. They typically will weather to a silvery gray, but they also accept sealers to keep them looking freshly installed. If you want to build a furniture grade deck, this is the stuff.
Care and Maintenance
Once the deck is finished, it's time to consider how you'll finish it. The hardwoods may not need any preservatives, but the much more common softwoods certainly do.
At the high end, many customers elect to have their decks painted. Synthetics don't take paint, Bendijo says, but wood does. He suggests waiting 60 days before painting any wooden deck stock.
If your customers decide on a stained or clear finish instead of paint, they are making a commitment to performing deck maintenance every year or two: Surfaces must be cleaned and stained or sealed. While many people see this as a nuisance, it's an opportunity to make the deck look new again—or change the color by adding a different stain to it.
More important to you as a builder, it is a business opportunity; you can add cleaning and sealing into your services. Instead of being done with the project when you drive the last nail, you've created a potential client who will come back to you once a year or more, giving them more opportunity to use—and refer—your services. Even better, the market for these services is growing as the population gets older and shifts from a do-it-yourself to do-it-for-me attitude.
Big Changes on Deck
If you look out past the jobsite and onto the horizon, you may start to notice a product called TimberSIL. Geared for deck builders, TimberSIL could be the next generation of pressure-treated Southern yellow pine. Instead of impregnating the material with copper-based chemicals, however, it's impregnated at a very high heat with sodium silicate—that's glass to you and me.
"Every wood fiber is wrapped in amorphous glass at the molecular level," says Bill Schwam of TimberSIL That means you could "cut it up into little pieces, drop it in a termite pile for a century and come back to find the bugs crawling all over it and the wood will still be there."
What's even better is that there are no hazardous chemicals—to people or the environment—in TimberSIL. It's totally suitable for ground contact, and it looks great. The treatment process leaves the material looking like newly milled Southern yellow pine. TimberSIL makes more than 70 different dimensional sizes for deck packages—2-by, 6-by, 5/4, balusters, etc—with standard and premium decking grades available. The material is even fire retardant.
It is just now going into distribution, so check with your local supplier. You can use it for framing or decking, and it's priced comparably to cedar. Keep an eye on this one.
Mark Clement is a remodeler and author of The Carpenter's Notebook and Kid's Carpenter's Workbook, Fun Family Projects. Find out more at www.TheCarpentersNotebook.com
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