On Sep 14, 7:27*am, "Edwin Pawlowski" wrote:
"Jay Chan" wrote in message

By the way, what I want from the deck finish a (1) prevent the
pressure treated wood deck from turning grey in order to maintain the
natural wood color or have a nice redwood color, (2) reduce water
absorption into the wood, (3) reduce mildew on the wood surface, (3)
annual maintenance is OK, taking too much time to do each annual
maintenance is not OK.

The current wood deck finish that I have on the deck is semi-
transparent stain.

The semi transparent stain or a solid stain are not going to work well. No
matter what quality you buy, it is going to peel after a year. *Railings and
other vertical parts will be OK, but the deck itself is not going to hold
up. I've tried various products over the past 20 years. They all peel and
the wood turns gray. Live with it or replace the deck top.

If I was re-building, I'd use either Ipe, mahogany, redwood, cypress or
cedar, in that order. *I'd give it a coat of Penofin oil every year as it
has good UV protection.

The other choice is a plastic type material with solid color.

I have read your suggestion of using ipe/mahogany/redwood in your
other posts. And I agree with you. The natural beauty of those types
of wood should require less maintenance than using stain to get the
nice color. And I don't like the plastic look of those man-made
material either. I would definitely switch to use of those natural
woods next time. But I am afraid that will be many years later
because the pressure treated wood deck seems like will out-last me.
Please let us how the natural wood deck holds up when you finally
decide to build a new deck with natural wood.

Anyway I am sorry to hear that the semi-transparent stain (and the
solid stain) will not hold up after just one year. Sound like I need
to clean / sand / re-stain the wood deck every year if I use semi-
transparent stain on my deck. This option doesn't sound that good:

1. If I rent a floor sander to sand out all the semi-transparent
stain from my deck before applying a new coat of semi-transparent
stain, I will have to pay for the rental every year and I will need to
run the risk of creating a lot of toxic dusts from the pressure
treated wood.

2. If I only light sand the deck (to allow a better adhension for a
new coat of semi-transparent stain), the remaining stain will show
through the new coat of stain even though their color are the same,
and the areas that have 2 layers of stain will look different from the
areas that have been sanded through and only have one new coat of
stain; this will look odd; I know this because I did this once before.

Seem like I am better off using clear finish because the annual
maintenance for clear finish sounds like much easier than using any
kind of stain (no sanding involved). Of course, I will need to talk
with my wife to see if she like the color of the clear finish.

Jay Chan