Deck Maintenance - Q&A Letters

Rot Doctor

Subject: Deck Maintenance
Date: Sunday, March 29, 2020

I live in Georgia and have a large deck that is a maintenance headache. It is built from pressure treated pine and the railings and balusters are painted white. The white paint peels after a couple of years no matter the prep and priming I do. Would I fair better with normal framing lumber treated with CPES and painted with rhino top?

Mike

Mike,

While paint can fail simply from old age, it your case, it is more likely to be failing from moisture getting into the wood. If it were failing from old age, the failure would be uniform. And to fail within a couple of years, it would have to be of very low quality.

With moisture induced failure, the failure is usually localized to the point of moisture intrusion. In other words, the paint peels more around the point where the water is getting into the wood. With wood structures like decks, this is commonly at the ends of the wood, at any nail, screw, or bolt penetrations, and anywhere that two pieces of wood touch each other.

I don’t think that you would be better with non-pressure treated wood per se. I would recommend a high quality primer, such as the S-1 Sealer, and a good quality top coat paint. The Rhino Top is a good quality exterior paint. Our testing shows it should provide 10 years of life, if not more. We do have a more durable option. Which is more expensive. If you would like to discuss your options, we would be happy to do so.

Doc

Thanks for the info. So even pressure treated wood will be able to absorb the S-1?

Mike

I don’t usually recommend that customers use pressure treated wood, as any cuts, nails, or screws bypass the pressure treated protection anyway. But, if a customer wants to, or has already used pressure treated wood, they can certainly use S-1 Sealer over it, with one notable exception.

Pressure treated wood uses toxic substances and some kind of solvent, water or petroleum based, to get the toxic substance into the wood. While most pressure treated wood is properly cured, it is possible to get wood that is still very wet, or solvent soaked. In this case, S-1 will not perform properly until the wood has had a chance to dry.

Doc

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