About Decking Materials

Pressure Treated decking is the cheapest and most common type of decking material.  It can be left untreated or stained.  If you start staining a pressure treated deck, you will have to keep doing it every year and it will be peeling off each time.  Every 4-5 years you will have to sand it.  If left untreated - it will last about 15-20 years, but it will crack and splinter.  We do not recommend this material.  In the picture above it is only installed on screens, skirt and railings.

Western Red Cedar decking is an upgrade from the regular pressure treated.  It looks great when it is new and it smells awesome.  However if left untreated it will grey and crack.  Cedar last up to 15 years, some decks (with higher moisture conditions) last only 10 years.  To retain the look of a cedar deck it needs to be treated or stained each year.  Every 4-5 years it needs to be sanded.  It is a fairly economical solution, but a lot of work is required to retain its good initial appearance.

Siberian Larch looks like cedar when new.  It is however double the density of cedar and it lasts over 30 years.  This is a fairly inexpensive material (just a little more expensive than cedar) and it performs well over its life span.  It will grey like cedar or pressure treated if untreated and it will also develop cracks.  It can be stained or treated, but this process would need to be repeated annually.  This is a good choice for an economical, long lasting deck.

Ipe is the best natural wood you can install on your deck. It is extremely dense, very hard to scratch (five times harder than cedar!) and it is very stable outdoors.  It can be oiled or left untreated.  Even when left untreated it will devlop only small cracks and will not deform.  Oiling is an easier process than staining a cedar deck and it is done to retain the brown look of the wood.  Ipe decking lasts 40 - 100 years.  We are the largest and most experienced installer of Ipe decks in the Niagara Region.  Ipe work really well around water and pool, it is not damaged by salts.  Its only downside is the high price.  

Composite decking requires virtually no maintenance.  It has a wood and plastic mixture core with a plastic wrap on the outside.  The biggest manufacturers of composite decking are Trex, Timbertech and Fiberon.  These materials are more expensive than conventional wood decking choices like cedar, but they require no maintenance and retain their appearance for many years to come.  Above mentioned brands come with a 25-30 year warranty.  The downside of these materials is that they do not have a natural look, they heat up quite a bit in the sun and they are more costly than wood decking.

These are the best maintenance free products on the market.  They have very attractive color choices and have PVC inner core and PVC outer shell.  The biggest brands of PVC decking are Azek and Wolf.  These products cost a little more than the Composite Decking products, but they do not heat up as much in the sun and they perform better in moist or wet environments because the core of this material does not have any wood particles than can potentially absorb water and mold.  The downside of these materials is that they are costly and still do not look like the real wood.  They also heat up more than the regular wood decking.