A New Life for Decking Lumber

Decking Lumber’s Rapid Increase in Popularity

While decking lumber has always been popular in backyards, it is becoming increasingly common to see tropical decking and exterior wood mounting the outside walls of individual’s homes as siding. It makes perfect sense, too! The most durable and sturdy woods are used to build decks, so why not layer it on the walls of your house? Weather resistant tropical woods can withstand anything that Mother Nature throws its way. The woods lock moisture out, so they stay fresh and beautiful.

What Brought on This Innovation?

When wood siding is used, its beauty tends to become tainted by the unpleasant, gaping screw holes that are left behind or the tongue and groove joints that connect at the edge of the wood. This made wood siding an unappealing option for many homeowners- that is, until the hidden clip fastener system.

The clips are secured to the furring strips, which serves to hide all of the noticeable fasteners. This leaves you with a gorgeous finished product. Now your home can have exquisite wood siding without any trace of screw holes, nail holes, or any other form of unsightliness.

The hidden clip fastener system is also functional. It sets spaces for a consistent break between the pieces of wood, which allows the wood to breathe throughout the four different seasons. It will have room to expand and swell in the summer, as well as space to contract and deflate in the winter.

In order to mount the wood decking to the four sides of the house, the decking boards need to be grooved in the proper place to hold the wood boards.

Potential Problems

Between the clips there is an open indentation, and these indentations can collect water and can be places that insects find attractive. There are ways around this, though, and among hte multiple manufacturers that produce the new hidden clip system, each claims to have their own way of preventing water accumulation and insect damage.

Several of the industrialists simply fold the groove up behind a slanting edge, which completely keeps the water out of the groove. But although this may resolve the water problem, it doesn’t fix the insect problem. The insects will still be able to get into the groove and nest. To combat this, the lumber experts at McIlvain recommend selecting a wood that is naturally resistant to insects.

Usually using an insect repellant for tropical wood can also work, but there is still one issue to be conscious of when treating the wood with repellants: If you use insect resistant on tropical wood, the long drip edge that is created by the siding could absorb the moisture unevenly, which unfortunately will lead to the crumbling of the siding material. Therefore, it’s usually best to choose a wood that repels insects on its own.

Bright Future Ahead

In the end, we think these are exceedingly minor problems. They’re small issues because they can be solved quite easily by using a top quality tropical decking product that is insect, water, and rot resistant. It is expected that the popularity of using these beautiful, tropical hardwoods for siding will continue to skyrocket. Tropical hardwoods will have a whole new market!

McIlvain Company is an industry leader in the lumber import and wholesale sector. For over 200 years, they have been meeting the domestic and exotic lumber needs of customers all over the United States, and their customer base continues to grow. For more information on all that McIlvain has to offer, visit their website today.

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