The black weathering should be washed out w a pressure washer. Other than that, just a going over w the pressure washer is enough. I have found sikkens products to hold out the best. They have deck products. Two coats minimum, the first yr. One additional coat the following yr, then just touchups for a few yrs. If you get black/grey spots again, a pressure wash is the best to get it out, then a touchup w a brush. Dog damage would just need a hose down, drying for a day, and then a touchup, maybe two coats.
I generally cut in the edges, and roll the rest. I plan how i will do the sections. I generally go w the direction of the boards, going the full length, so there are no lap marks crossways. Rolling w a nice long handle makes it a lot easier, and faster. A half inch to 3/4 inch roller should work ok.
S
Calling all wood Deck Pro's
by restrangled 14 Replies latest jw friends
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Satanus
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bigmouth
"I have to hand do over a 1000 square feet..."
- Course it'll work, get the husband to do it! Seriously though, I use a couple of buckets of warm sugar soap and a stiff broom so I'm not on my knees.
"....some edges saturated with dog pee...will that work? "
- Good question. I think the answer is do it anyway and make sure the dog pee and soap dries out completely. The pee could be helpful. I know in some textile fields it's used to set dye! -
logic
Clorox sells a product for outdoor cleaning, just spray it on and let set for a few minutes then use a large brush, broom etc. then was off. Never use a wire brush. This product works great on siding, concrete brick etc. I used it on the models in housing projects to keep them looking great.
The pressure treated lumber is claimed to last 100 years. You can use it for most anything. It makes great decking, but many people do not like the look because it has thousands of perforations in it from the process of pressure treating. I have removed some decks made of this and one was over 20 years old but the 2x6 lumber was still in very good shape, and no treatment had ever been done other than cleaning. I have removed fence posts several years old that were still in very good shape. You have to be carefull cutting or sanding this lumber because of the chemicals in it. The pressure treated lumber you buy in most lumber supplies is no. 2 which is not the best. You can order it in no. 1 which makes very good decking but very expensive.
I used to build many decks, arbors etc out of old growth redwood which last for a very long time but does need regular maintenance. It is now very hard to get old growth redwood, it is very expensive. The redwood you get now has been altered to grow very fast and therefore does not contain as much of the resin that made it resist rot and insects that it did.
The new composites are great but expensive. You also have to decrease the span of your floor joist as the product tends to sag .
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BrentR
That is what I found out when I looked at Trex and some of the other plastic composites. No lumber store within a 50 mile radius carried even a small inventory of any of the composites so I had to replace my three decks with pressure treated. In hindsight I really don't like the look of the plastic composites and I am glad I went with wood. It would make more sense here in western WA with the endless rain we get though and eventually my low back will not allow me to be replacing wood every ten years.
Our choc lab has an entire fenced acre all to herself and she can trash it all she wants and I don't have to fix anything. Most of it looks like the surface of the moon along with a couple 4' deep caves she has dug out.
I can only imagine what a couple full sized dogs can do to a deck.
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chickpea
we have a 3/4 wrap-around with 4 sets of stairs..... cedar..... i feel your pain facing a large project....
because we are trying to catch up on all "deferred maintenance" in order to sell the property once there is even the slightest recovery of the housing market, we have done the back half this past autumn, using sikkins products, which are a bit pricey but have a high quality.....
the brochure from the product line instructs the homeowner to clean the decking surface top (AND bottom for the initial application) by treating it with a cleaning solution of bleach and tri-sodium phosphate (TSP) and then powerwashing..... we used a 3 gallon garden sprayer for cleaning and stain application.... it totally sucked under the deck, but otherwise it is the most efficient method we could devise
so far so good..... thank god the cold weather came and we had to stop!!! but i can tell you the difference between the cleaned and stained portion and the still to be done section is AMAZING......
for the record i tried to convince the hub to use extruded wood composite but i was over-ruled so now we are paying an additional 2 grand to spiff the deck up for someone else to enjoy.... go figure