Outdoor Living: A couple of synthetic porches

Hi again,

Well we have had a pretty good winter with staying busy especially considering the economy here in Michigan. In this post I am going to review a couple of porch jobs we did on two different manufactured homes.

This first one we did back in the summer, and we used Timber Tech XLM sandridge.

Here is the design a simple 4x6 porch with one column and a 4x4 platform and steps.

The old porch was 3/4 plywood with outdoor carpet, and a square 4x4 column with steps to grade. The porch rotted out and once we tore all that off, we got started on installing the decking.

Here in the picture to the left you can see the vertical skirting style we like to use with deck boards tucked behind the tiered fascia, also notice how the fascia is under the picture frame border which acts as a drip edge for the deck, so water and debris will not be trapped in the fascia/rim joist gap.

Here to the right again you can see our preferred way of doing a solid skirting around a deck to enclose the under side of a deck.

Also this is our standard fascia detail on all of our composite and PVC decks, a two tiered fascia detail.

Here we are finishing up installing the Timber Tech Radiance rails on the porch. We also ran a deck board across the bottom of the skirting to follow the slope of the grade.

Here is our second similar porch that we just actually finished up today, but I thought both of the project would fit good together in this blog post because of how similar they are and how they show a verticial skirting detail.

On this porch we tore off Trex accents because of a carport that fell on the deck and damaged the deck. No one locally stocked the Trex Accents so we went with Timber Tech Reliaboard.

The old deck was built by a Trex pro gold contractor and I was not to crazy about their work, but then again it is so easy to pick apart someone else work so I should probably focus on what I can learn.

Here is the before picture

Notice how they ran the skirting horizontally and they just stacked the fascia down to make the skirting. The fascia is even with the decking so the water and debris build up in the fascia seam.

I have seen this before by homeowners, but by a deck specialist I am surprised. It is never a good idea to fasten deck boards with brad nails and I doubt that it is approved by the manufacture, so you can wave good bye to any warranty. It is always best to stick to the manufactures recommended installation instructions on synthetic products.

So here we have finished the demo of the Trex and we just installed the Timber Tech Reliaboard decking. I was impressed with the Reliaboard it is a better product than I thought it to be, it held up pretty well to abuse it took to build the deck. I have to say they have improved on the product.

Here we just installed the vertical skirting with the two tiered fascia detail. Notice again it is now under the decking so the facia/rim joist seam is covered and the picture frame border acts as a drip edge. Also I much prefer the vertical skirting over the horizontal.