Everyone loves a wooden deck but not everyone loves the cracking and greying that can occur with untreated western red cedar or pressure-treated hemlock and fir.
A product new to market has "reinvented" solid-wood decking, promising to maintain its colour and not crack over time.
Called Profile Decking, the product was created by FPInnovations of Vancouver, a consortium of research and development organizations that bills itself as the world's largest private, not-for-profit forest research institute.
The wood used is amabilis fir, or pacific silver fir. It grows in coastal mountains, and has been used mostly in the manufacture "of doors and windows, furniture parts, mouldings and food containers," the B.C. forest ministry's Tree Book reports.
Amabilis means lovely, the Tree Book notes, a reference to its needles, green on top, but silvery underneath. Amabilis fir was chosen by researchers from FPInnovations as a durable decking product because it is more treatable than many wood species. The chemical used in Profile Decking is a copper-based treatment called ACQ. a water-based wood preservative that prevents decay.
A further treatment on top of that is a factory-applied protective coating on the decking that would still need to be reapplied every few years.
"Nothing is no-maintenance," FPInnnovations representative Chris Gaston says. "Even plastic decking has trouble with moisture and sunlight. The motive for coming up with this product is we wanted a solid wood product that looks nicer for longer."
Traditional decking, says Gaston, might last 20 years but it doesn't look good after five years.
"You get cracks and nails popping out."
But with Profile Decking cracking won't happen because the surface of the wood has been "profiled," he says.
"It actually has grooves on top of the wood, a technique the Europeans have been doing for two decades. It looks fabulous so much longer because the wood won't crack and split."
"The No. 1 problem consumers tell us with solid-wood decking is it has unacceptable cracks in too quick of time." The product was featured at the recent B.C. Home and Garden show and is being used by one deck builder -- Dream Decks. Its first commercial application in B.C. was the 2,500-square-foot deck at the Boathouse Restaurant in Horseshoe Bay.
Gaston says it's not yet available in retail stores but he's hoping as more consumers learn about the its benefits they will start asking for it and the big-box stores will want to stock it.
Right now the price is comparable to a standard grade cedar at $1.30 per linear foot.
That's half the price for plastic-wood decking.
"The nice thing about solid-wood decking is it's the best environmentally friendly product. Plastic wood is still half-plastic," he says. "Plus consumers are sticker-shocked with the price of plastic decking."
-- Canwest News Service
