I have a 100+ -year-old house with a wraparound front porch – the entire porch was replaced 10 years ago. Because the roof does not have much of an overhang, half of it gets wet every time it rains. As a result, the deck, which is yellow pine, is rotting, even though I back-primed the boards and painted the tongues and grooves before they it was installed. The contractor who originally did the work is suggesting I install Tendura on the floor – the gray that does not need to be painted. We also discussed using some type of Brazilian hard wood or maybe Ipe (although some of it does not come with tongues and grooves), some types of which need to be painted. Tendura also has a paintable version, although I would like to avoid painting unless there is some advantage to using the paintable product.
Any advice using Tendura or any other rot-resistant alternative would be greatly appreciated.
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Houses in my neighborhood (which are just about 100 years old) still have the original T&G flooring on the porch decks. So I'm surprised to hear that your covered porch floor is rotting already. It was common practice to use T&G wood flooring in the time period your house was built, and you should get decades of use from your flooring.
In what part of the country do you live? I live in the Pacific NW, and out here Doug fir was always used for porch decks. Pine or hemlock are typically avoided because of their tendency to rot. However, I think regional weather may play a large role in the ability of wood species to perform well; without knowing where you live, and without knowing the typical performance of yellow pine in your area, I wouldn't automatically say it shouldn't work for you.
Can you supply some pictures and/or describe in more detail how your contractor installed the flooring? For example, did he slope the floor about 1/4" per foot away from the house? Did he install the flooring directly to the joists (no subfloor)? Does the finish floor run with or perpendicular to the slope?
I've heard of people using Ipe successfully in this type of application. The only caveat I've heard is to make sure that the lumber is dry enough (i.e. not green).
Edited 5/7/2007 5:30 pm ET by Ragnar17
The floor was installed correctly - perpendicular to the house and sloped at least 1/4 inch per foot - I live in Philadelphia - we have had a lot of snow over the past few years. I don't have a picute I can send, sorry. The primary problem appears to be that there is not much overhang, so much of the porch is exposed - The porch floor was rotting
when we bought the house in 1990, and the floor we had installed in 1996 is rotting as well.
Thanks for the additional info.
So there was/is no subfloor, right?
Maybe yellow pine is just a poor choice for flooring. Like I said, out here in the NW, pine and hemlock are definitely frowned upon as an exterior wood. Perhaps someone from PA can chime in with their opinion on yellow pine.
The other obvious option is to figure out a way to add some extra projection on your porch roof. Generous overhangs typically look good on older homes, so it may be a good long-term strategy (both aesthetically and economically).
I've used jatoba several times on covered porches and have had satisfactory results. A Penofin finish was used, which needs to be refreshed every year or two, but it's a heck of a lot easier than dealing with paint or poly finishes.
He used SYP instead of heart pine or fir which were traditional
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Here there is a speciality lumber yard that sells clear PT KDAT SYP T&G. (How's that for some acronyms :-)) I think it is 1x4s. How do you thing that might do in a covered porch floor application? Seems like it might look really cool stained, but OTOH, I guess all the old ones were painted?
Pressure treated would do better against rot, but good luck getting it dry enough to lay close
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Thanks...
BTW: KDAT = Kiln Dried After Treating = kiln dry -> pressure treat -> kiln dry
But what my real Q was is what do you think about a stained porch floor as far as some level of "historic authenticity"?
Edited 5/8/2007 10:01 pm ET by Matt
They used to get oiled annually here which is part of the reason they lasted so long
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OK - so, from a historic correctness standpoint there is no reason the porch floor has to be painted. Thanks.
I believe that may have to do with location. Here it is no paint.But I have one client who demands that ugly battleship grey deck paint because it looks right to her. She is a southern belle, from Nashville, Tenn.
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Yes - here I've only seen the gray paint, but remember that I don't see very many "vintage" houses - since that is not what I do...
I wonder if the grey paint is to simulate greyed wood...
Of the ones here that are grey, I can tell you how the old-timers say they got that way.During WWII, the navy or coast gaurd more or less commandeered most of the private vessels to put into service for defense. They painted them grey because that blends to the sea colour to some degree as far as visual spotting from the air.All the local boatyards did the painting as subccontractors with govt issued paint.Seems everybody up and down the coast had a few extra gallons of grey paint by the time the war was won, and several things other than boats were grey.
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Growing up my family had a house on the Chesapeake Bay that was probably built about 1920. The porch floors have always been battle ship gray that I remember. Sis has the house now...
Might be something as simple as the fact that gray is less likely to show the dirt that gets tracked across it.
I used Tendura on my front porch. I forget the original color but I did paint it grey. The house is about 130 yrs old, the porch roof overhangs the entire porch. The stuff was great to work with and has performed very well over the past 5 years, I have no complaints. Porch is wrap around 30' across the front and 10' down one side. I live in South Jersey, about 10 mins outside Philly, so I get the same weather you do.
Ted
The grey textured Tendura is a good choic, but be very careful to follow the instructions regarding allowances for expansion
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Southern Yellow Pine should not be used as flooring outdoors. I've seen it done and it simply rots too easily. Heart pine or clear doug fir T&G are the two woods of choice for houses of back then.
We used Tendura on our 1887 Victorian's porches. They are covered, and one faces Southeast and once faces Southwest. We used the kind that is pre-primed but needs to be painted. We painted them gray.
The paint has peeled on both of them, and I've since heard that that is a fairly common problem. In addition, the Southwest-facing porch has developed a low spot near the edge. I believe this is because it gets direct sunlight in the afternoon - the hottest part of the day - and the Tendura softened enough to sag.
I don't think anyone would mistake Tendura for real wood, but other than these issues, they seem to be performing well.
If you want some not-very-close-up shots of it on one of our porches, you can go to our web site and scroll down a bit on that page.
How much of an overhang of the tendura (the decking itself, not the eave) did you have where it sagged? How long ago was it installed?
Did you contact the manufacturer? I called the company and all they said concerning the part of our porch that will be in the sun for the afternoon was that we had to allow a little extra for expansion -
the tendura comes with aa very speciic chart showing recommended spacings by the variations of temp when installed.Spacing as I recall was paper, matchbook cover, dime, or nickle.We spaced a dime in cold wether - about 20°F and it has always been fine. Some people do mistake it for painted wood.
That was on a south facing porch about 8' deep and 22' long
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The sagged part was not overhanging at all. It's on top of joists. Mind you, it wasn't a huge sag, just a bit of a depression where water now pools.
I didn't contact the manufacturer, because:
a) it's not the end of the world,
b) even if they were willing to do something about it, I don't want the porch torn apart,
c) I have enough to deal with on this house without adding that to the mix,
d) given the quality (or lack thereof) of workmanship demonstrated by the contractor, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that it was installed improperly, especially considering this was their first time installing it.
Tongue and Grove Ipe is available is small widths to match an historic porch floor.
http://www.trimscrew.com/IPE.htm
Edited 5/8/2007 10:13 pm ET by MikeK