The Deck Handbook

Our Certifications

We are certified fabricators of the following composite decking products. Contact us for more information.

GeoDeck Information

Rated a "Best Buy" in 2004 by Consumer Reports, GeoDeck composite decking and railing products are "virtually fade resistant" due to a patented process used in manufacturing. Available in three standard colors: cedar, driftwood and mahogany. GeoDeck offers a 20 year limited warranty.

EON Information

Another Consumer Reports 2004 "Best Buy", EON composite decking and railing products are unique in that they contain no wood materials at all and are therefore completely resistant to fading. They are 100% plastics and resins, but look so incredibly like real wood that even a nose-to-the-board inspection cannot tell the difference.

They even feel like varnished wood. Available in eight wood-emulating colors, EON is definately the choice of those who want the beauty of a wood deck with virtually no maintenance at all. Warranted for 25 years.

WeatherBest Information

WeatherBest Premium Grain decking is made from a mix of fine wood particles, polyethylene plastic and additives which are extruded under high pressure and heat. The material is smooth one one side, patterned on the other to look like rough-sawn wood planks. Available in four colors, cedar, redwood, driftwood (gray) and brown (walnut), the product has the shortest manufacturer's warranty of only 10 years. Still is was also a 2004 Consumer Reports 2004 "Best Buy". Once little more than the homebuilder's afterthought, decks today are the focal point of most backyards. Good for entertaining, curling up with a good book, or just hanging out with a cold one; they serve as the open air family room. As deck materials and construction methods evolve, designers are pushing the limits of form and function further than ever before.

In the 1970s, you could have any deck material you wanted, as long as it was wood. On the west coast, redwood and Western Red cedar dominated. In the rest of the country, pressure-treated pine (that did not have to be painted) was beginning take over from Douglas fir (that did) as the deck material of choice.

Today the choice of deck materials is, by contrast, seemingly limitless: wood (of course), including the standards — pressure treated pine, cedar, redwood — and now imported exotic hardwoods such as Ipe (which are even more rot and insect resistant than their domestic counterparts); composite materials, vinyl, concrete, even aluminum and steel.

Some Deck Terminology

To plan your deck you need to consider all the choices available, filter them through your budget and come up with a number of decisions that will affect how your deck will look and perform.

This little handbook is by no means comprehensive. It merely seeks to introduce you to some of the issues involved in planning and building a deck.

Since we will be talking about decks, we will use standard deck terminology. You can refer back to the diagram at right if you encounter a term in this article that you do not recognize. There are deck components not identified in this diagram including ledgers, beams, rim joists, and stair parts. We did not include them here because they are not referred to in this article.

Decking Patterns

Deck floor pattern choices are endless. They can add style and panache and can make a deck look larger or smaller, or accentuate different areas. Deck floor patterns can be achieved using any flooring material. You can stick with a single pattern or combine different patterns for another look entirely.

Different deck frames support different patterns, so it is important to choose a floor pattern before building. The location and spacing of the supporting joists depends on the decking pattern. Decking boards must always be oriented across the joists. Decking board ends must be rest on a joist. They cannot float in mid-air.


Straight: The basic straight pattern. Deck boards are laid parallel to the edge of the deck.	Diagonal: An excellent pattern for smaller decks, deck boards are set at an angle to the edge of the deck.	Split Diagonal: A rib board separates diagonal sections.	Herringbone: Alternating diagonal sections may be butted or separated by rib boards.

Complex Decking Pattern This complex composite deck is a combination of straight and diagonal patterns. The carefully aligned deck screws are concealed by caps installed flush with the deck boards. By combining these basic patterns, a deck may be made as complex as you may wish. The complex decking at right, for example, is made up of a simple combinations of straight and diagonal patterns.

Generally, the more complex the decking pattern, the more labor and material involved and the more costly the deck. Cost is also influenced by the method by which deck boards are attached to the deck framework. The most common and least expensive is to nail or screw through the deck boards into the framing structure. This leaves the nail- or screw-heads visible in the deck. There are also a great variety of hidden fastening systems for use with wood decking, and proprietary attachment mechanisms designed by just about every composite decking manufacturer for use with their own product. All of these involve some sort of hardware device that attaches to the deck board from underneath where it cannot be seen. As a rule of thumb, hidden decking attachment involves about twice the labor of surface attachment, and about one-third again the material expense for the additional attachment hardware.

How helpful is this article? Did you find it comprehensive and easy to understand? Let us know what you think.

Rate this article.

Continues...