Softwoods like Douglas Fir, Hemlock, Southern Yellow Pine, and Ponderosa Pine easily decay and provide an attractive food source to termites and carpenter ants. Forcing the preservative copper azole, type C (CA-C) into the wood transforms it into a useless food source for bugs and wards off fungi. Pressure-treated wood boards are easy to obtain at your local home center or lumber yard. Because you can pick it up yourself, no shipping costs are involved, as long as you have a truck or a vehicle with a roof rack. You can also paint the wood. Since these are soft woods, pressure-treated deck boards will eventually splinter and crack if not regularly maintained. Precautions should be taken when cutting pressure-treated board due to the preservative content. Cut ends of pressure-treated wood need to be individually daubed with preservative. One way to install pressure-treated wood decking is to side-fasten the boards with hidden deck fasterners. These fasteners use proprietary jigs that help you drive the fasteners at the correct angle, just below the top level of the boards.
Ipe Wood Deck Boards
Ipe is a hard exotic premium deck board that goes under names such as Brazilian Walnut, tabebuia serratifolia, pau d’arco, ipe tabaco, or bethabara. Ipe is a gorgeous dark-brown wood that maintains its appearance with only minimal maintenance. Ipe wood is very dense and hard, which makes it highly resistant to wear and tear. Ipe wood is resistant to splintering and cracking, so that means ipe is a safe choice for outdoor use with bare feet. Ipe is resistant to moisture and UV light, and that mitigates fading and weathering. Once installed, ipe has few disadvantages as a decking material. However, due to its sheer hardness, ipe can be difficult to work with and it can blunt tools. Ipe is best installed by professional decking companies. Clips are necessary to fasten the boards to the joists, which drives up the cost. Also, unless you are lucky enough to live close to an ipe supplier, high shipping prices will add to the overall product cost.
Redwood Deck Boards
Once commonly used for fences, play structures, and decks, redwood is becoming harder to find. When available, redwood is still an excellent choice for deck floorboards. With redwood, heartwood costs about 25-percent more than the less desirable sapwood. No preservatives are required to maintain redwood. Redwood weathers to an attractive deep red color. Since redwood is difficult to find on the open market, this makes it a less desirable choice for decks. Redwood will begin to get splintery over time, making it unsuitable for walking on with bare feet.
Red Cedar Wood Deck Boards
Red cedar is most often used for fence boards. Because red cedar is an oily wood, it falls in the class of other woods, such as redwood, that can be left untreated and left to weather naturally. Red cedar can be painted or stained, too, if desired. Even untreated, red cedar will maintain its structural integrity for many years. Red cedar wood has a reddish-brown color weathers to a silver-gray over time, and it has a fine, straight grain with a uniform texture. Red cedar maintains its look at the onset, but as quickly as two weeks later it will begin to turn its distinctive silvery-gray color. So, red cedar must be treated with a preservative if you do not want gray. Most of the kiln-dried cedar is only available in 1-inch thicknesses. Two-inch thickness kiln-dried cedar wood can be hard to find. Red cedar wood’s excellent strength-to-weight ratio makes it a good choice for use as deck flooring. As with any other deck materials, it is important to consult a span chart for size and spacing details specific to your deck. If the deck will be subjected to heavier-than-normal loads, such as a hot tub, the joists will need to be spaced closer together and may need to be larger in size.
Hem-Fir Wood Deck Boards
Due to the ready availability of inexpensive pressure treated wood and other materials that hold up well against decay, untreated dimensional lumber such as hem-fir is not often used as decking boards, But with its low prices, hem-fir certainly can be used as long as precautions are taken against insects and deterioration. Hem-fir is not a species cross-breed. Western hemlock and Amabilis fir grow in the same forests and look nearly identical, so lumber mills process them together and treat them as interchangeable. When you see a stack of hem-fir at your local home center, some boards may be hemlock and others fir. Hem-fir wood is known for its strength, durability, and versatility. Often used in the construction of roofs, walls, and floors, hem-fir wood is resistant to decay and insects, which makes it popular for outdoor applications. Except for pallet wood, untreated hem-fir is the lowest-cost wood decking board. Because it is strong, it has a great joist distance span. If a painted solid color is what you want in a deck, you can choose a wood like hem-fir. Preservation of hem-fir is difficult. Initially, the wood must be quickly treated with a preservative. Alternatively, the wood may be primed and painted. Site-treated wood, as opposed to wood that is pressured-treated in a factory, needs constant maintenance.
Can You Use Pallet Wood for Decks?
No longer confined to shipping bays, trendy pallet wood can be found everywhere now, from restaurants to residences. Wood pallets are constructed of softwoods and are usually considered expendable by their recipients. Because pallets are often left outside after use, they achieve an interesting silvery-gray weathered patina with rusty nail marks and other signs of distress. Pallet wood is best confined to walls, as the inevitable splinters, holes, and protrusions make it an uncomfortable, unsafe walking surface. Also, breaking up pallets in order to loosen the intended deck boards is difficult to do without cracking the wood. Finally, using short board lengths (40 inches) means that multiple boards are needed to complete one row. Pallet wood, though generally a poor deck floor material, can be used in a pinch, when funds are tight, or as a temporary flooring material.
