What Decking Material is Best to Use?

November 20, 2011, By Andy Hinds 2 comments

Andy Hinds

The other day, I walked across the street to check out a house that had just gone on the market. It’s a very cute little craftsman bungalow from the twenties, as are most of the houses in my neighborhood, and it has a huge lot compared to most of the homes on our street. It also has a new-ish deck that the flyer mentioned among the house’s attributes. I had seen this deck under construction from another neighbor’s backyard a couple years ago, and I knew that it was unpermited and had been built by a bunch of non-carpenters. But I didn’t realize just how bad it was.

I walked onto the deck with a young couple who were looking at the house, and the whole thing swayed under our feet. I went underneath to check it out and was disgusted and angry. Everything about the deck was wrong, from the kind of wood, to the fasteners and hardware, to the haphazard way it was thrown together. Not only does this kind of shoddy work give tradespeople a bad name, but it’s also a huge waste of materials. Whoever buys that house will undoubtedly tear down the sorry excuse for a deck and dump the lumber in a landfill.

If you look on any list of home upgrades that add value, “wood deck” is always in the top five. Who doesn’t like to kick back on the deck, grill burgers and drink beer? It’s the perfect transition between indoors and outdoors.

But a poorly built deck is a liability, an eyesore, and a waste of money and natural resources. To get a good return on your investment, in terms of resale value as well as years of enjoyment, you need to invest carefully and know what you’re getting.

As with any project, if you plan on hiring someone else to do it, take your time, do your research and ask potential contractors all the right questions. You may or may not need a permit to build a deck where you live, but if you don’t get one you’ll have to put your faith in your builder’s skill and ethics. If you decide to build it yourself, invest in a comprehensive book on the subject, study it thoroughly before taking on the project and draw up some plans to make sure you’ve thought everything out before you get started.

Materials

One of the most important decisions about the deck is what kind of materials to use. As far as the structural elements of the deck, you should always go with lumber that’s chemically treated (“pressure treated”) against pests and decay. I’ve built a couple of decks for clients who didn’t want to risk exposure to the chemicals in treated wood, using redwood instead for the framing, but that option is pricey and not as bulletproof as pressure treated.

For the “decking,” the surface that you see and walk on, there are a variety of choices, but in the most general terms, they boil down to variations on four different themes: treated softwood, untreated softwood, hardwood, and composites.

NEXT: Treated Softwood