Decks are a common feature on homes throughout the world. They are an outside wooden structure, attached to the home, that provides a space to enjoy the great outdoors. They are usually elevated above the ground and can feature multiple levels. A deck is a great way to extend the living space of a home into the outdoors.
There is a Wikipedia page about decks, found here, which provides a great deal of information about decks. They are often made of either treated or composite lumber. Some decks are made of a composite material and sometimes aluminum is incorporated. Decking installers can use many types of wood to build a deck such as teak, mahogany, or Atlantic red cedar. They can also be made of recycled materials such as PET plastic or high-density polyethylene.
As pine decking doesn’t stand up well to the outdoor elements many homeowners are using hardwoods to build their decks from. This is usually pressure treated wood which helps to make the wood more durable and less able to suck in moisture. This type of decking does well in winter conditions such as ice forming on it. The big issue, though, is that when wood is pressure treated it contains toxic chemicals.
There is also timber decking, often found in Australia. Any timber decking northern beaches, New South Wales, uses eight different types of timber. These are spotted gum, blackbutt hardwood, tallowwood hardwood, northern box, modwood, and merbau decking. The least expensive of these is pinewood, at $3.15 per 140 mm x 25 mm section, while merbau is most expensive at $14.85 per section.
As this Wikipedia page shows, lumber and timber are the same thing. Processed wood is called lumber only in North America with the rest of the English-speaking world calling it timber. Further mixing up these terms, timber is the word used in America to describe standing trees while in Canada lumber only refers to trees that have been cut and surfaced.
Decks can be entered from two different ways. There is a door in the house that opens onto the deck. They can also be accessed from the ground via stairs. One of the great things about decks is that they can make use of ground that is otherwise unusable due to too steep of a slope. In order to use the deck year round, and to block out the sun, some homeowners install canopies or pergolas on their decks. These can be opened and closed to let in more or less light.
Decking contractors usually build decks building a post and beam design. The posts are placed into holes in the ground and then cemented into place. Once the cement is dry the contractor will fasten beams to each of the posts in order to provide the structural horizontal framework of the deck. The flooring is then attached to the beams. Railings are then built along the perimeter of the deck in order to keep people safe from falling off the edges.