No matter what kind of decking you have on a 90-degree day, you are hot and it really doesn’t matter if the decking is a few degrees cooler. On a 90-degree day you are probably inside in the A/C. Having considered all of these factors, most people use their decks at the end of the day. I also wonder about lighting strikes with aluminum-type of decking. The drawbacks to aluminum decking are: looks like metal, feels and sounds like tin, does not do a good job of imitating a traditional deck board and feel. Aluminum decking would be a good choice if temperature is your number one concern. For example, aluminum decking stays pretty cool. The coolest decking would be a hollow profile where there is not a lot of material to heat up. Cellular PVC boards will not retain quite as much heat, but are still hotter to the touch than wood decks. The lighter the board (in weight), the less heat retention it will have. Heat retention in capped composite deckingĬapped composites or composites will be the hottest since they have the most mass. Technically speaking though, the products would show a difference if measured with a thermometer. In other words, if you have a lighter colored main deck and a darker border and you step from deck to border you will not be able to feel a temperature difference. It’s definitely not pleasant to bare feet.Ĭolors do play the obvious role in this the darker will be slightly hotter and lighter colors will be slightly cooler, but the difference will not be noticeable on bare feet. If you do step out barefoot in those conditions, you will know immediately. That feels good on a 65-degree day, but on a 90-degree day with a deck in full sun, you will want to wear flip flops. The flip side is that you will not have any splinters to worry about, but you will definitely see a temperature increase. If you are used to a standard pressure-treated lumber deck that you might have been on before, most of the low-maintenance products will be hotter than pressure-treated lumber decking. This will be more of a factor for people with pool decks or where people are more likely to be barefoot, like more of a beach setting, or a dock. With the rise in popularity of composite and capped composite decking which offer a low-maintenance lifestyle, this is something to consider when making your product selections. Note there was cloud cover at 2pm.We often get asked what is the coolest decking in our low-maintenance options. Surface temperatures of each board were taken every hour from 9am to 4pm.The test frame (see below) was outside in full sun on a clear, 29°c, sunny day.To test the surface temperature of the boards, a FLUKE 63 IR thermometer gun was used, with an accuracy of ±The hardwoods we tested were merbau and spotted gum (both raw and oiled), as well as pine (raw and painted Colorbond Monument). In composites, we tested four of the Ekodeck Designer Series boards (Leatherwood, Backbeach, Alpine Ash and Riverbank Red), as well as Greystone in the Ekodeck Classic range. In this article, we share our findings from this experiment to see how the Australian sun affects composite and timber decking. To help people understand this, we tested composite decking against timber decking (raw, oiled and painted) to see how they compare when left out for a full day in the Australian sun. The Australian sun can be unforgiving, so when installing a new deck, how hot your new deck could become is a variable that many people consider.
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