09-25-2016, 08:02 PM
Trex and other composites are also quite expensive and there may be no guarantee you can get more of it of the same color/style five or eight years down the line when you want to expand your deck. I ran into that problem when I damaged a board on a pale blue deck a few years ago. It was no longer available. Trex is also very saggy; you have to build on 12 inch centers. (You can probably tell I don't like trex.) On the other hand I've seen oceanside stairways made of trex that seem to be lasting forever.
My personal choice is to cover decks and use painted or opaquely stained borate fir. It's cheap and strong. You can run into problems with it since fir can splinter. Nothing produces bigger, nastier splinters than worn fir. And of course sometimes you don't want a covered deck (lanai).
My personal choice is to cover decks and use painted or opaquely stained borate fir. It's cheap and strong. You can run into problems with it since fir can splinter. Nothing produces bigger, nastier splinters than worn fir. And of course sometimes you don't want a covered deck (lanai).