Shopsmith Forums

In the Home Improvements category I have been recently assigned the task of rebuilding the floor of our front porch. It is only 8' x 15' made up of 3/4" tongue and groove x 4" flooring on top of 2x4's laying flat and anchored down to the underlaying concrete slab. A lot of the wood has rotted off over the years and I have been thinking of replacing it with some of the new plastic stuff that is now being offered as being indestructable. Has anybody here used any of this on a construction project and can I use normal wood cutting stuff (Shopsmith and normal saw blades) for cutting and milling this stuff? Will a regular router bit cut this stuff? The wood flooring was used to make the antique house porch look original when a wood bin was added under the porch for the wood furnace.

I seem to recall some of the Sawdust Sessions, where Nick Engler ran some of the composite wood across the jointer successfully. There's many cases where plastics and UHMW stuff can be worked with power tools or hand tools.

nuhobby wrote:I seem to recall some of the Sawdust Sessions, where Nick Engler ran some of the composite wood across the jointer successfully. There's many cases where plastics and UHMW stuff can be worked with power tools or hand tools.

I have not done this but I believe the only down side would be more rapid dulling of the cutter blades.

I mill MDF often but I move the fence frequently so as to use different portions of the knives and do occasionally have to sharpen the knives. I would expect that the composites are a bit harder to cut.

Plastics are slightly different because plastics are more susceptible to heat.

Composites can normally be worked with ordinary wood working tools. You can do lots of stuff with composites. BUT they normally are not structurily sound. The reason they go over the posts is because the posts provide the strong (safe) structure and the composite sheaths provide the appearance. When using composites you must be carefull of distances between beams and joists. These distances must be smaller than if using wood. Long expanses of composite railings could be dangerous. Yes, they can be worked with ordinary wood working tools. Just be careful of your engineering.

Current project with composite... Air conditioner cover.
The composite will end up attached to exterior of pouch it's attached to
the cover at this point for alignment.

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Composites have very little rigidity. When used as decking, you need to place more supports otherwise you have sags.

It looks like you're proposing using composites as structural members, and I've never seen them recommended for such application, and would not do so myself.

Composites tend to get very hot in the sun. As in blister raising hot. Some break down in the sunlight do to UV instability.

They make "plastic wood plank" decking, but I don't like it. In general, I dislike any material that pretends to be something else. Plastic wood, wood grained tile, stamped concrete, etc. Maybe it will last forever, but (IMO) it doesn't look nearly as good as the real thing.

You say your deck is supported by 2x4's "laid flat" on the concrete? So, are you saying your decking is only 1 3/4" off the slab? I suspect that part of the reason it's rotting is insufficient ventilation under there, and also possibly inadequate drainage.

If I were doing it, and building that near to the ground, I'd consider laying a brick or stone patio instead.

What you seem to be asking about are sleepers. At least in my training they are called that. Either way, they can contact cement just fine as long as they are not structural. If they just lay across a previous concrete pad spaced every 12-16 inches then you should tapcon them down using a rotary hammer and then affix the decking to them in a perpendicular direction. They certainly won't deteriorate but, I will agree with air movement under the boards themselves. Things grow on wood without it. But don't be fooled, I've got a deck I installed with sub par composite decking. It ALWAYS turns black in certain areas. These spots are a form of mold in the composite. Bleaching the whole deck kills it and the deck looks great for a year. Then it's back. Just a routine maintenance that has to be done or replace all. Remember, composite is part wood after all.