Home Depot decks - any opinions?

[NewJeffCT]

I know Home Depot (HD) has been installing decks for people for a little while now, but they just came to Connecticut (my backyard)...

We've had several contractors over to talk about decks, but I was impressed by HD's presentation - they use special arsenic-free pressure-treated wood and what seems to be sturdier construction than what is normal (our deck will be over a walk-out basement, so it will be raised). They also give you a 3 year guarantee regarding the construction and lifetime on the wood.

We got 2 guys that gave us lower prices than Home Depot, but both have only been in business for about a year each. We also got 1 quote in line with HD and 2 quotes that were significantly higher than HD.

My wife likes the guarantees of HD. And since they advertise on Air America, they are acceptable to me.

[Fovea]

1. Go with a local who doesn't pee test his employees

and go with Ipe instead of toxic wood.

[GOPisEvil]

3. I second the Ipe wood suggestion.

You might pay a little more, but it will last longer and is not injected with toxins.

[NewJeffCT]

8. I'll have to see if I can find an Ipe wood contractor

Just to get a quote at least...

I'm having trouble finding one, though.

Thanks

[NewJeffCT]

9. found an ipe wood contractor

And, he is minutes away from our new home.

Thanks for the tip - just left a message to get a quote from them:

http://www.deckspecialists.com/ipe_decks.htm

[Fovea]

10. Hey thats great!

I am glad to hear it.

[jmowreader]

12. And which "toxic wood" is that?

The wood we sell, and the wood everyone has available to them, contains one of two preservatives: Alkaline Copper Quaternary or Copper Boron Azole. ACQ is the most common; I've seen a little CBA floating around but it's mostly used in converted woods, like handrails, little screw-on finials and turned deck spindles.

Alkaline Copper Quaternary consists of three chemicals: 66 percent copper oxide and 32 percent quaternium 66. Quaternium 66 is used mostly in cosmetics, as an antibacterial agent in eye makeup. The third agent can be either sodium carbonate or borax; this small amount of alkali helps pull the copper oxide and Q66 into solution. You can eat this wood and it won't hurt you.

Copper Boron Azole also consists of three chemicals. It consists of 60 percent copper oxide, 34 percent boric acid and six percent tebuconazole. Tebuconazole is made by Bayer, who sells it as Preventol A8--an antifungal for stored grain. I wouldn't recommend eating this wood; that boric acid will give you a grade-A case of the shits.

The "toxic wood" is chromated cupric arsenate. They can't make this for domestic use after 31 December 2003.

Ipe makes a nice deck; another good product for decking is Veranda, which we sell and which is half sawdust and half recycled plastic. There are four systems like this out there--Veranda (formerly Fiberon), Trex, Weyerhaeuser ChoiceDek, and one I can't remember the name of. Of the four, only Veranda doesn't come off looking like medium-density fiberboard. (This is not a "my product's better than your product" thing--I can sell you any of the four.) There's also eOn, which is virgin polystyrene. This is the stuff to get if you have the cash and like synthetic decking.

I'll tell you right now: I don't like the installed decks we do. I think they're ugly, and most of the people who've looked at the sample one we have feel the same way. I've sold a couple, though, so they're not universally unpopular.

[GOPisEvil]

18. Thanks for the update on the wood.

I was unaware that the arsenate wood wasn't made anymore.

I'd still choose Ipe though, if I had the money. But it's nice to know the regular ol' pressure treated wood isn't as harmful as it used to be. :-)

[jmowreader]

19. It's still being made, just for industrial uses

CCA is still a better preservative if you're going to bury the wood more than a couple of feet--anything that you're going more than six feet below the frost line should be CCA, and it's still possible to get it. It's normally a special-order item, though, and it's expensive because they have to change the chamber from ACQ to CCA, treat your order then change it back to ACQ.

Now having said all that, there is a special dispensation you can get if you're building a structure you're going to submerge in marine water (seas, oceans and the like). All copper-based treatments leach copper into marine water, and copper is absolutely deadly to marine life. For this application you must, by federal law, use pressure-applied creosote. And because, by federal law, you're not allowed to use it anywhere else, getting creosote PT lumber takes some serious doing. However, Spartanburg Forest Products on the east coast keeps enough creosote on hand to charge a treatment chamber and can take care of you. I do not know who handles creosote on the west coast, but I know someone is--lumber doesn't have enough profit in it to justify hauling it three thousand miles.

[sui generis]

2. HD subcontracts to the same contractors you spoke with

already. They don't do "in house" anything - they just act as the general contractor and tack on their margin.

You should be able to negotiate guarantees with an established contractor -- get it in writing, and tell them what materials etc. you want.

Don't be afraid to leverage the price that HD was charging you to your advantage -- saving the difference on their fee might get you a nice extra feature you hadn't planned to include originally.

[jmowreader]

13. Those decks aren't subbed out...

Our decks are built in a factory and shipped in as prefab sections, and are put together by our crews. The advantage is that they go together exceptionally quickly once they're on site.

[markus]

4. I hear their decks and other installations lean a little fo the right ;P

I couldn't help it. I've been trying to avoid them in favor of the local Menard's chain or Lowes since learning of their GOP inclinations.

[trotsky]

6. Save Big Money at Menards

The Menards family put competition aside and donated heavily to Rudy Boschwitz during his Senate runs. (Boschwitz, in case you didn't know, established the old Plywood Minnesota empire which has now become Home Valu.)

Between the two, I'd rather go with Menards to at least keep the money local but my first stop is always the mom-and-pop hardware store across the highway from me.

[No Mandate Here.]

5. BUY LOCAL

Sorry for shouting, but this is extremely important.

1. Unless you are building an agricultural building, ALL treated lumber is now arsenic free. You cannot buy the old stuff anywhere.

2. HD gives tons of money to the rethugs- nationally and the management individually

3. They don't pay their installers that well- they have to cut corners somewhere in order to really make it.

4. Buy locally. that lumber yard down the street from you employs your neighbors, and supports the town better than HD does.

5. Their warranty probably includes some very fine print that tells you to stain the wood every two years (at the maximum) for it to be valid. Treated lumber is not care free- far from it. Since you will be seeing the bottom of the deck, you will likely want to stain that, also.

I would strongly recommend you consider either Trex or Timbertech. These are composite products that cost a good bit more initially, but all you have to do is pressure wash them every other year. It is not structural, so you still need treated lumber for the joists, posts and beams. The other cool thing about this sort of material, is that it is made from recycled grocery bags and saw dust.

[jmowreader]

14. Trex and Timbertech look like shit

Both very strongly resemble medium-density fiberboard, which is not known for its long-lasting beauty.

There are two synthetic decking materials that don't look like crap. The first is Fiberon. Home Depot calls it Veranda. It's made by Fiber Composites, and I get it through Boise Cascade. The wood chunks are bigger in it, and it just doesn't look like pressboard. The other is eOn, which is a completely synthetic decking material made from polystyrene. This stuff looks like wood, it's held down with little clips so you don't see fasteners through the top of the deck boards, it holds a lot more weight than any of the composites...exceptional stuff. Comes in, IIRC, six colors including cedar, redwood, a gray that looks like aged teak, white and two other colors I don't know yet because they've not sent the names down to the dealers.

One thing ABB didn't tell you about composite decking: the wetter it gets, the less slick it is. This stuff is very popular around pools for just that reason.

BTW, if you do use composite decking, DO NOT screw it down with anything but the TrapEase screw. It has a really weird threading that pulls the mushroomed decking back into the hole.

[No Mandate Here.]

16. Thanks for the info.

My main points were:

1. Treated lumber is high maintenance

2. Buy LOCAL. Support your neighbors.

I will learn more about those products. Thanks.

[bleedingedge]

7. Kitchen Remodel Through HD Was A Disaster

I know it ain't a deck, but we did our kitchen through HD and it was a complete ordeal:

1. When the cabinets came in, the HD "kitchen redesign specialist" who had measured and laid out the plan had forgotten to factor in a certain aspect of the design and the drawer near the entry to the garage would not open all the way because it hit the door jamb.

2. They failed to schedule things appropriately (really, they failed to schedule at all - we paid them tons of cash and, in the end, we had to call the contractors personally to set up appointments, etc). We ended up without a kitchen sink or counters for three months.

3. They failed to ask us if we were planning to replace the floor. Since, we have spoken to several contractors, handymen, etc. who have told us that the first thing you ask when people remodel a kitchen is if they're replacing the floor. If they are, you take the cabinets out, THEN put the floor down, then put the new cabinets in. HD put the new cabinets in on the same day they took the old ones out, which made the floor a much larger, harder project.

4. After we had paid them for the contract (all up front, by the way), they never once called us to check on our satisfaction, etc. The only way the knew there was a problem with the counters and sink was when we went to the store and asked "Um, where the hell are our counters?" and only then did they realize they had forgotten to schedule them for make and install. Their solution was to give us the business card of the guy they were supposed to call and told us "At this point, you'd probably be best off getting in contact with them yourself". In their defense, they did give us a 4 foot pre-fab counter into which we could put the sink temporarily. But I had to hook up the faucet myself.

HD contracts with local contractors anyway. When you deal with them, you're adding an extra "screw-up-enabled" layer to something that's already got real potential for screw ups anyway. Go with a contractor directly. That's what wifey and I have done since the HD debacle.

[DemWitch]

11. Go with local companies...

Local lumberyards, contractors, etc. Home Depot is owned by Wal-Mart, hence the loads of money going to the repugs. Home Depot also is guilty of the Wal-Mart syndrome of moving in and killing all local business. I've found that other than lumber, Ace/Tru-Value Stores has exactly the same stuff as Home Depot and give or take a few pennies, the same prices, and much better, more knowledgeable, and friendlier staff.

[jmowreader]

15. Home Depot is NOT owned by Wal-Mart, you idiot!

This has got to be the stupidest thing I ever read.

Every year we send our store manager to Atlanta for the Annual Management Conference. Every year the first morning is the same thing: "How to Fight Wal-Mart."

Wal-Mart would like nothing better than to figure out some way to kill off Home Depot. We're one of the few companies in the world that poses a threat to them. (Home Channel News does a list of the 500 top home improvement companies. On this list you will find everything from retailers to producers--we're on there, Georgia-Pacific is on there, Maytag is on there. Home Depot is number one on their list...Wal-Mart is number three. You can well imagine they're not happy about that.)

BTW, we have $4 billion cash sitting in Wachovia Bank of Georgia waiting to be used in an acquisition. We've all been telling them to buy Kmart and make Super Home Depots that sell everything you need to build, furnish and live in a home.

[NewJeffCT]

17. Not to defend Home Depot

But, in West Hartford, Connecticut (which is a fairly wealthy and surprisingly fairly liberal large town of about 50,000 to 60,000 people) the residents fought tooth & nail against Home Depot in their town. However, several years later after Home Depot has been there for a while, local residents & businesses have been generally pleased - many of the small local businesses have seen an increase in business because of Home Depot: somebody might see something in Home Depot, but not exactly what they want, so they go to a local hardware store or plumber to get a more specialized & more expensive item.

While I am against Wal-Mart, it seems like Home Depot has been a responsible citizen in West Hartford, CT at least.