Composite & vinyl decks are designed to stand up to the elements, allowing your deck to maintain its beauty for years. There is no need to paint, stain or seal it, which is often a burdensome and costly yearly project with traditional wood decks.
In the 1990’s companies started marketing Composite Decking Boards. Composite decking is a blend of wood fibers (sawdust), chemicals and plastic fillers. Composite decking was intended to be longer lasting and friendly alternative to wood, however many shortcomings soon became evident. Many companies flooded the market with their brand of composite and made big promises and offered long warranties but after a short period of time many brands started having problems with mold, mildew, splitting, fading and even crumbling and decomposing. Many composite companies were sued with class action lawsuits and either went out of business or were sold and names changed. There were however a few good composite decking companies. TimberTech was a pioneer in composite decking and has not had the issues many other companies had. If you choose to build a deck with composite decking instead of vinyl decking then TimberTech is our recommendation. We have been installing TimberTech composite decking for over 13 years and have not had any customer complaints concerning TimberTech’s decking.
Many people are surprised to hear that pressure-treated decking can be more expensive than composites in the long run. The initial cost of wood is less, but when you add in the cost of on-going maintenance on a wood deck, including cleaning and sealing every few years, a composite deck can pay for itself in as little as eight years.