Composite Deck Hollow is one of our composite decking offerings. Composite decking has its own place in the decking market. Sometimes softwood and hardwood deckboards are not suitable for some installations, maybe the boards are not durable enough or maybe there are stringent budget constraints.  You might have used softwood decking before and found that your garden was too damp an environment, the boards became slippery and didn’t last as long as anticipated.   While we have 15 Year Warranty Softwood, durable Hardwood and Millboard decking as options you might also want to consider our composite decking.

Composite Deckboard durable and environmentally friendly

These composite deckboards are made primarily from a mix  of approximately 60% recycled hardwood fibres and 40% recycled polyethylene. These raw materials are mixed with a bonding agent, colour tint and other additives. An anti-UV agent is added during manufacture and this helps the boards to resist colour fading. However, there will be some fading of colour over time, but this should not detract too much, more of a weathering look that occurs in areas exposed to prolonged direct sunlight.

 

Composite Deck Hollow

Our composite deck range includes both hollow and solid deck-boards.  The hollow core boards feature a honeycomb construction which helps to keep weight and materials cost down. The top of the board features the narrow spaced grooves  which provide an anti-slip surface.  The underside of the hollow boards features wider spaced grooves.  After fitting these deckboards the ends of the hollow boards will have to be capped.  Alternatively the deck can be designed for boards to be run along the outside of the main deck and then mitred into the main run of decking, creating a picture-frame effect.

Hollow board lengths are either 2.4 metres or 4.0 metres, we are currently keeping the 4.0 metre boards in stock. Board sizes are more precise than softwood, the boards are 150mm wide with a depth of 25mm.  These boards are designed to be fixed with the narrow grooves upwards, it provides a better grip than the other side.  Because this is seen as a “total” product these deck boards have complementary accessories including skirting trims, corner trims and end caps.  They are available in matching, or complementary, colours.

These hollow deckboards are now available in eight popular colours. These are charcoal, coffee, olive green, light grey, stone grey, ivory, redwood and teak.  While manufacturing processes and raw materials are strictly controlled there may be slight colour variations between boards from different production batches.  This also applies to fibre cement and artificial grass products. More details on the Solid Core composite decking here.

 

Building your composite deck

Building a composite deck is very similar to constructing any wooden decking. Some notable construction differences include not laying boards in cold weather and more precise spacing between boards.

All the deck boards should be fixed to timber joists or composite joists such as Plaswood. Joist spacing should be a maximum of 400mm.  The composite boards are secured to the supporting joists with t clips and stainless steel screws. Some doubling-up of joists may be required on larger decks where two butt ends meet. This is because each butt end must be supported by its own T-Clip and an 8mm gap must be left to allow for drainage and expansion.  By using the T-Clips you should ensure a gap of at least 7mm between the board edges.  Finally, once the deckboards are secured the deck can be finished with skirting and corner trims. See our Installation Guide web-page for more details.