Guide on Composite Decking

If you’re looking to add a deck to your Central Texas home that’s low maintenance, beautiful, and eco-friendly, look no further than composite decking. However, many consumers don’t even realize this is a material option for their deck. If you’re looking for more information on composite decking, consider this your guide – let’s dive in!

What is Composite Decking?

Composite decking is made from a blend of wood, plastic, and small amounts of pigments. While the wood provides durability, the plastic provides resistance to water, rot, warping and other long term effects of the natural elements. Composite decking looks just a standard wood deck, but it is even more durable and requires minimal maintenance.

What Does Composite Decking Look Like?

Composite decking is available in a wide variety of colors, graining variations, and sizes – it’s completely customizable to your home’s aesthetics. While most textures available are created to mimic the look of wood planks, there are also completely smooth variations as well. Shades of browns, grays, and whites are the most common colors available, but feel free to reach out to us directly for a full list of color and style options.

Are Composite Decks Fireproof?

Similar to typical pressure-treated wood decks, composite decks are not completely fireproof. However, composite decks have a Class B fire rating, and some lines even have a Class C rating, making them even more resistant to fires than wood decks. Feel free to place your gas-powered fire pit on your deck, but double-check your deck’s specific fireproof rating before adding a wood-burning fire pit.

How to Maintain Composite Decking?

Because composite decking is made with both wood and plastic, you never have to worry about staining, painting, or sanding your deck. It will continue to maintain its same graining, coloring, and texture throughout its lifetime. Composite decking is also sun and spill resistant – to periodically clean it all you need is a little soap and water! Because of the addition of the plastic to the decking, you don’t have to worry about your deck rotting or decomposing over time.

What Composite Decking Does Austex Use?

We use Trex composite decking, a true leader in composite decking manufacturing. Unlike other brands, Trex creates its materials using a majority of recycled materials. While they do use recycled materials, Trex carefully processes all materials to ensure the highest standard of quality. One common concern of composite decking is that it will be hotter to the touch than a pressure treated deck, however, in extensive studies, Trex decks were actually found to be cooler than wood decks.

Now that you have a better understanding of composite decking, are you ready to add a composite deck to your home? For all your decking needs in Central Texas, give our experts at Austex a call for a FREE consultation today.