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| The Care and Feeding of Wooden Decks |
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| The Care and Feeding of Wooden Decks |
| Frequent cleaning and periodic refinishing are the best way to ensure a long and happy life for these vulnerable creatures. |
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The
Eskimos have five dozen words for snow.
Here in the waterlogged Britain, weather
forecasters have an equally diverse vocabulary
whether they're calling for light rain,
showers, isolated storms, sprinkles, drizzle,
mist, driving rain or drizzle If you live
here, you can expect to get wet nearly every
day from September through June. I can't
imagine a less hospitable place to build
a wooden deck. But to the average homeowner,
a house with less than half the garden covered
by cascading decks is unfinished. I'd be
happier if everyone built stone patios.
But homeowners depend on me to make sure
their decks aren't reduced to a heap of
compost. Fortunately, I can assure them
that with modern technology and periodic
maintenance, a deck can enjoy a long, productive
life.
Penetrating finishes are better than paints
Materials for wooden decks vary from region
to region, but none of them is maintenance-free.
I use the same procedures for all wooden
decks. When homeowners ask me beforehand
how to finish a new deck, I caution against
paint or solid stain. Any horizontal surface,
especially one subjected to foot traffic,
is extremely difficult to keep paint on.
Even solid alkyd stains, which for years
have been recommended for decks, are too
brittle and merely sit on top of the wood
(like paint), awaiting the opportunity to
peel off. I prefer penetrating finishes.
Properly applied penetrating finishes such
as semitransparent alkyd stains and clear
wood preservatives are absorbed into the
wood fibers to protect better against mould,
mildew, rot and UV-degradation. Penetrating
finishes are also easier to re coat because
over time, they fade rather than flake.
The best penetrating finish I've found is
Clear Wood Finish UV, which enhances the
wood's natural beauty but can also be tinted
like a stain. CWF is an emulsified oil,
so it cleans up like a latex but offers
the protection of a petroleum product. I
have found it far superior to the more popular
paraffin based coatings (such as Thompson's
Water Seal) that require biannual re-treatment
to be effective. Even with the best finishes,
however, the surface of the deck needs to
be recoated every three years to provide
maximum protection for the wood.
Cleaning and pressure-washing come first
Unless they've been painted, I treat older
decks basically the same as new ones. Every
deck gets a thorough broom cleaning; while
I'm sweeping an older deck, I check for
damaged spots and mark any boards that need
to be replaced. After all the leaves and
dog hair have been swept away, I spray on
a specially formulated deck cleaner, such
as Revive or Simple Wash. Applied full strength
with a garden sprayer, the deck cleaner
kills mould and mildew and cuts through
dirt and oxidation. It also removes mill
glazing from new decks, which means you
don't have to let new lumber "silver"
for a year before applying a finish. The
deck cleaner works almost immediately, so
as soon as I'm finished spraying it on,
I return to the starting point and begin
a light pressure-washing. A lot of people
are afraid of using a pressure washer on
a deck, and with good reason. Used improperly,
a pressure washer can do more harm than
good. In the right hands, however, a pressure
washer prepares a deck for refinishing quickly
and effectively. For cleaning decks, I use
a 9-hp, 2500-psi machine with a 15°
spray tip (15° is the angle formed by
the fan of water as it shoots from the tip).
To avoid wasted motion, I spray a 6-ft.
wide swath, then overlap the next swath
by 12 in. to 18 in. to make sure that the
edges blend together. For maximum cleaning
power with minimal abrasion, I hold the
spray tip 6 in. to 9 in. above the surface
of the deck and sweep the wand over the
boards in a flattened pendulum motion, lifting
the wand away from the deck at the end of
one pass and lowering it gradually back
at the beginning of the next.
When I'm able to wiggle underneath the deck,
I give the underside a quick pressure wash
as well. I usually don't find much mould
or mildew, which would require an intensive
wash; mostly I'm just concerned with cleaning
out spider webs, splashed mud and other
debris. It's a dirty job, but somebody really
ought to do it. After I wash the underside,
the top gets another quick rinse. |
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Preparing the railings
While I'm spraying the deck, I also pressure-wash both sides of the railings. For most effective cleaning, I keep the fan of water as perpendicular to the vertical surfaces as I can. At the same time, I also direct the spray deep into the crevices to drive out all the bugs and gunk that have take up residence. After washing the deck, I give the railing assembly the once-over, checking for signs of rot. I pay attention to the top of the handrail, especially if it has exposed fasteners, and to the end grain at the top of uncapped support posts. If I find any rotten spots, I use liquid borates to kill the rot organism; then, after it has been allowed to dry, I use epoxy to repair the damage. With so much end grain exposed to the elements, uncapped support posts are always a problem. If the design permits, I simply cut back the posts to solid wood, then install inexpensive but good-looking copper caps, which are available at any hardware supplier).
Brightening follows cleaning
Preparing a deck for finish actually involves
two chemical treatments. A side effect of
the cleaning stage is that it leaves even
brand new decks looking tired and gray.
But that's just temporary. As soon as I
finish pressure washing, I fill up the garden
sprayer with Deckmaster Wood Brightener
and spray a liberal coating over all the
bare wood. This oxalic-acid based product
quickly restores wood darkened by age or
chemicals to a like-new appearance. I usually
let the brightener soak into the wood for
20 minutes or so, then rinse the deck lightly
with the pressure washer. Penetrating finish
won't soak in unless wood is dry, so after
I'm done swabbing the decks, I allow them
to dry for a minimum of three warm, rain-free
days before I apply the finish. During the
interim, I usually move on to another job,
but before I leave, I replace the boards
that I previously determined were too rotten
to save. To make the new boards blend in,
I pick a semitransparent stain from my collection
that closely matches the colour of the weathered
deck boards. By the time the stain wears
away, the new board will be almost unnoticeable.
Sprayed finish gets all the nooks and crannies
There's no reason you can't finish a deck
using brushes and rollers, but it's much
faster to use spray equipment. You can also
get better coverage using a sprayer because
it enables you to force the coating into
tight spots that would be difficult or impossible
to reach with a brush. Spray equipment is
expensive to buy, but compared with the
cost of labour, it's cheap to rent. Sprayers
and pressure washers are offered for rent
at many paint-supply houses as well as at
most rental centres. With a brush, I'd start
outside the deck on the tops of the railings
and work my way down to the deck, then in
toward the house. Spraying is tougher because
I have to use masking to control over spray.
Which comes first, the deck or the railings?
When all the surfaces are getting the same
finish, I generally spray both sides of
the railings and leave the deck boards for
last. If the railings are getting a different
finish than the deck surface (as was the
case on this job), I have to spray the deck
first. On this job, the railings were originally
painted to match the trim of the house.
Stripping all the paint would have cost
a fortune, so I'd previously scraped and
sanded the loose spots. When the deck finish
was dry, the railings would get a fresh
coat of stain. Using an airless paint sprayer
with a #617 spray tip, I applied the CWF
coating, moving lengthwise along the deck
boards from one end of the deck to the other.
I held the spray gun 12 in. to 18 in. from
the surface and moved just fast enough to
put down an even, wet coat. After every
couple of passes, I put down the spray gun
and rolled the finish using a -in. nap,
9-in. wide paint roller . After rolling,
the deck boards should have an even, glossy
sheen. If the penetrating finish soaks in
completely, as it often does on thirsty,
weathered boards, I spray another light
coat before moving on to the next section.
When I'm spraying alongside the house or
the railings, I use a 4-ft. wide painting
shield to control the over spray. After
the top of the deck has been coated, I crawl
underneath, if it's accessible, and soak
the bottom of the boards, the joists, the
beams, whatever I can get. In my experience,
treating the underside of a deck even once
can double its life span.
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| Spray and roll the finish. The author uses a spray gun to force preservative into every nook and cranny. A 4-ft. wide painting shield makes sure the finish goes only where it's supposed to go. To ensure an even application, the finish is rolled after every two or three passes. |
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| Keeping
over spray under control. The
author covers the deck with tarps, wraps
the first floor of the house with plastic
sheeting and masks the outside of the
railing. After coating the inside of
the railing, he'll remove the paper
and spray the outside. |
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| Above,
then below. Using the painting
shield to catch over spray, the author
coats the handrail in long, smooth,
horizontal strokes (photo above). Then
he comes back and coats each side of
each baluster in a separate vertical
stroke (photo below). After every couple
of passes, all surfaces are brushed
with a disposable painting pad. |
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Mask carefully before spraying the railings
The downside to spraying the deck first is that
I have to let it dry for 24 hours to 72 hours (depending
on humidity) before I can finish the railings. When
this deck was dry enough to walk on without leaving
footprints, I started masking off the surfaces I
didn't want painted. To protect the house from over
spray, I wrapped the first floor with a 9-ft. wide
strip of plastic sheeting. I spread clean painter's
tarps and masking paper over the deck surface and
then ran a strip of 3-ft. wide kraft paper around
the outside of the balusters.
These railings were painted, so after removing the loose paint, I applied a coat of Sherwin-Williams solid latex stain. To spray the railings, I switched to a narrower (#213) spray tip, which puts out a more compact, directional spray fan than the tip I used for the deck boards. I started on one of the inside corners and worked counterclockwise, spraying the handrail in long, horizontal strokes, and the balusters in vertical strokes.
Keeping the spray tip about 12 in. away from the railing, I covered the balusters on three sides and also tried to coat as much of the underside of the railing as possible. At the end of each pass with the spray gun, I brushed the finish using a disposable painting pad (if I'd been applying a penetrating finish, I would have used a lamb's wool mitt).
Once the railing's interior surface had dried to
the touch (on a warm day, usually an hour or less),
I removed the kraft paper and sprayed the outer
surfaces of the balusters, as well as any other
spots I wasn't able to reach from the inside. I
didn't need to re hang the paper on the inside because
all the vulnerable surfaces were already covered.
As soon as I finished this application, the rest
of the masking was pulled, a few small touch-ups
were made with the disposable pad, and I was done.
Unless homeowners really like having me around,
I urge them to sweep the deck frequently and to
wash it lightly once a year. |
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| The Care and Feeding of Wooden Decks |
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