Adding a deck to your Atlanta-area home can add value, improve your family togetherness, and help you appreciate the beautiful weather and views. If, though, you spend hours each year struggling to keep the deck looking good, you may wish you had opted instead for maintenance-free decking expertly installed by Atlanta home improvement contractors.
Choose Wisely
If you have not yet had a deck put on your home, you have two choices in materials:
- Pressure-treated wood
- Synthetic products such as Trex, TimberTech or Aztek
Pressure-treated wood is generally less expensive to purchase and install, but it is problematic. If you value the clean environment, pressure-treated wood is not your best choice. It cannot be burned, for example, and manufacturing it releases harsh chemicals into the air and environment.
Pressure-treated wood cannot be painted effectively during its first years of use. It will silver with age, unless stained and coated with water-resistant liquids. These generally have high levels of paraffin in them to create a water-repelling surface, but paraffin is highly flammable.
Advantages of Maintenance-Free Decking
Synthetic products range from combinations of wood and plastic to all plastic. At first glance, Atlanta-area homeowners may question Atlanta home improvement contractors about how environmentally sound plastic products could be. Plastics, after all, are made from fossil fuels. Yet most maintenance-free decking is made primarily from recycled plastic, so it actually reduces landfill and uses almost no new fossil fuels in production.
Additional advantages for synthetic decking accrue with age:
- No painting or staining, ever
- Chip, gouge and split-resistant
- Never rots
- Less flammable than pressure-treated wood coated in paraffin-based water sealer
- More stable across temperature changes than wood
- Easily cleaned once a year with a pressure washer; looks new for years
- Completely recyclable at the end of its useful life
Disadvantages of Composite or Synthetic Decking
Two factors point against using maintenance-free decking. Atlanta home improvement contractors will honestly tell you that the material costs more up front, and it often does not precisely resemble real wood.
Additional potential drawbacks:
- Special hardware needed during construction
- Fluctuating availability
- Unknown upper lifespan, due to the relative newness of the material
Among Atlanta home improvement contractors, Echols Roofing stands above the rest by offering deck products from three maintenance-free decking manufacturers. We can install Azek, Trex or TimberTech products to make the deck of your dreams a beautiful, maintenance-free reality. Contact us today!
Read: Does Your Roofer Have the Personal Touch? How to Know.