My weekend in one picture...

[jcims]

Fortunately the weather is supposed to be beautiful. Hopefully this newfangled decking pays off, it's a whole lot less exciting than the 8' backhoe I could have got instead. Now I'm off to go pick up a $800 bucket of screws and brackets. Gah...i'm in the wrong business!

 

[zman007007]

what is the gold purity percentage of those screws and brackets you are using? OWWWWWWWWWW lol zman :confused2:

 

[dodge man]

We went with composite decking, and it looks and works out great. We went with the brackets that hid all the screws, it looks great, I just hope I don't ever have to get one of the boards up. We did have a lot problems with the side boards or skirting. If I look in your photo, I think I see some of it on top of the stack.

If you do have some of it, I'd take it back and get rid of it. It will be nothing but trouble. Its too thin for its width. It warped on our deck really bad. so bad some of the gaps were over a 1/2 inch. The guy that came and fixed it for us said it doesn't matter what brand it is, it warps and he has seen a lot of it. He just replaced our side pieces with deck boards that were ripped the correct width to cover up the side boards. Some times it took 2 or 3 of them to cover it up. It sounds like it wouldn't look as good, but it looks fine using the deck boards on the side.

 

[MacLawn]

Yeah, let us know how this project goes. I am interested in the composite stuff too. I did see some at a restaurant on a lake last week that was disintegrating. Don't know what kind they used, but it was kind of coming apart like the old "pressed board" used to do. Post photos as you do the job, looking great so far.

 

[jlsmith]

Can u come by my house and build mine lol

 

[jcims]

Just a quick update.

It was SLOOOOOOOOOW going. My brother and I put in about 10 hrs on Saturday and my stepdad joined us on Sunday for another 6 hours, and this is all we got done.

Spent the first couple of hours on Saturday truing things up. With the TimberTech XLM material being so 'flimsy', I wanted to remove any crowns in the joists, because I knew the decking would just hump and sag to follow every imperfection. To do that, I built my 'Equalizer', a cheapo Skil planer plus a little outrigger frame made from 2" aluminum angle.

It worked much better than i had imagined. The outriggers average the planer height between the two adjacent joists to take big height variations, and the 'seat' angles keep it centered on the joists.

The whole thing is pretty light, you just lean on the back and keep making passes until you stop making curls. The 2" angle is plenty stiff to keep it from flexing, and the whole thing probably weighs a pound or two. The bolt heads would get hung up on high blocking, but the planer is just friction fit, so you just pop it out, touch up the spot, and put it back in. Worked like a champ!

After that was all taken care of, we started on the decking. I don't do this professionally, so I probably took too much time to make sure everything was good to go before we got started. With just two guys, it's not an efficient process at all, and we only got about 150 sq ft down on Saturday. Three guys is a minimum for an efficient crew, four would be better.

Fortunately, our site supervisor did a good job at keeping morale high

I feel like a bit of a sucker for paying so much for this stuff, but aside from the softness of the fastener screws, the quality of the product is pretty evident. 'Skipper', our sacrificial beater plank used to pound the new boards into the last row of fasteners, took vicious blows from a mallet all weekend long and is quite literally unscathed. It's easy to cut, no crowns, bows, cracks, splits, knots, uneven milling or any other issues to deal with. Installation, albeit tedious, has been easy and i'm hoping that the low maintenance claims pan out...because deck staining sucks.

 

[jcims]

Ground the bolt heads down on the 'equalizer' and she's a pretty smooth sailer now.

YouTube - Joist Equalizer

 

[dstig1]

I don't do this professionally, so I probably took too much time to make sure everything was good to go before we got started. With just two guys, it's not an efficient process at all, and we only got about 150 sq ft down on Saturday. Three guys is a minimum for an efficient crew, four would be better.

Au contraire, mon frere! Sounds more like you did the things that the pros know should be done but generally won't do unless they are being paid massive gold to do just that.

 

[Lt CHEG]

Ground the bolt heads down on the 'equalizer' and she's a pretty smooth sailer now.

YouTube - Joist Equalizer

I like that quite a bit. I may have to rig something like that up myself some day. Good idea and nice job.

 

[ustmd]

That Equalizer looks great.

I have Trexx (same basic stuff) on a small 2nd story deck and set of stairs. I put it in last year and have been happy with it. My only problem with it, is that eventhough it has the wood grain on the top, when it gets wet, it can be slicker than a greased pig. Several times I have almost gone a%$ over tea kettle if I go do the stars too fast in the rain.

I used some of the excess as decking on my wifes new mounting block. In that situation, I flipped it upside down so the sides with the grooves were pointing up. That was a big improvement.