Choosing The Right Materials For Your Decking Project

One really good method for making your home more attractive and comfortable is adding a deck. Choosing the right materials from the woods available today for your decking can be a little daunting. Having a good understanding of what the different woods will do and their cost will help in your decision. The following is some information about the woods that are used most frequently and how they might be a fit for your budget.

The first wood that usually comes to mind is the pressure treated yellow pine or PT Yellow Pine. This will need maintenance and if it gets a treatment of water repellent every other year it should last for a good fifteen years. The average cost per square foot to buy the wood is about two dollars and to have the deck made with this wood it is about ten to fifteen dollars per square foot.

One of the problems with choosing this wood for your deck is if it has been treated with chemicals. Some people can develop problems with their health from being around the wood. One way to solve this issue is to look for wood that has been only treated with a water repellent at the factory.

A very common choice is either Cedar or Redwood. These both are types of wood that are resistant to rot and insects without needing to be treated. Due to this feature there are no chemicals needed to preserve them. This is a wood that will make your deck last for about twenty years and be almost maintenance free.

The cost of cedar and redwood is somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two dollars per square foot to have installed or about five dollars per square foot to purchase. However, with the redwood, the pricing does increase according to the grade of the redwood. This is a very expensive type of decking and may not be affordable to the average budget. The cedar sapwood is not a good idea to use if the area has a moisture issue.

A very durable kind of wood is the tropical hardwood. The hardwood is twice the strength of oak and will last in good condition for almost forty years. The average price of having a deck constructed with this wood runs about twenty-two dollars per square foot or is about five dollars per square foot to purchase. This is an extremely hard wood and will probably need to be pre-drilled in order to do the nailing for the installation. This will drive the cost up higher making it an expensive choice.

A composite wood might be a good choice. This is a wood that is combined with plastic that has been recycled and fibers of wood. There is very little maintenance required with this wood because it has a natural ability to resist rot, UV rays and insects. There are several different brand names for this type of wood. To have the decking constructed with the composite wood the cost is around twenty dollars and about three dollars to buy the wood per square foot. There is a possibility that some of the colors of the wood will fade over time and it does have the appearance of plastic rather than wood. Also it might need some joist spacing and this will raise the cost of the installation.

Vinyl is a possibility for the decking material because it has very low maintenance. The pricing of the vinyl fluctuates a great deal and does end up being rather expensive making it a questionable fit for most budgets.

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