Thread: Green or dried decking?

Doesn't green move ?

Over here we mainly use merbu or treated pine.

most BOATS are decked with dry timber

Depends on what shape you want the deck to be in a couple of years, if you use the green stuff, it will surley change as it dries, I know as my brother chose the green stuff 2 years ago, it is now so warped it has to be repaired

Could some moderator move this to the appropriate place please?

Oops sorry, wrong forum, I just saw the building and repairing bit.

Originally Posted by Ivor

Oops sorry, wrong forum, I just saw the building and repairing bit.

Hmph. Take one grump from petty cash

Originally Posted by Ivor

Just about to put a decking on the back of the house. Green tallowood or ironbark is cheaper that dried and I have got conflicting advice about whether to use green or dried.

The trouble with green is that you don't know what you're getting.
Only when it dries out will you see how much shrinkage (i.e: cracks)
open up. Tallowwood and ironbark aren't too bad in terms of tangential
shrinkage (around 6%-8% from memory), but even that's enough to
ruin the look if you get bad pieces. Merbau is 3%, which is why it exhibits
much less surface checking, but it's only durability class-2, compared
to class-1 for tallow and ironbark.

I recently installed a turpentine deck (13% tangential shrinkage!), and
bought "seasoned" timber. Much of it was okay, but some of the
dark-brown pieces cracked quite badly, which surprised me. Later I
found out that "seasoned" and "kiln-dried" are not the same thing.
The "seasoned" decking I'd bought had simply been lying around in
the shed for a while, so some pieces were fine after full drying in
the sun, but others definitely were not.

Verdict: make sure it's "kiln-dried" if tallow/ironbark/etc. You might
get away with undried Merbau because of its lower shrinkage
properties, but it won't be as durable.