Imagine the scene: you have just completed the construction of your new terrace. The contractors have cleaned up and left for the day, and you’re standing in the backyard with your family, admiring your new addition to your home and fantasizing about how much value it will add to your home. Finally, you walk away, satisfied.
Suddenly, you hear a terrifyingly hideous noise, as if several circular saws had been activated at once and then silenced.
You spin. Your new deck is gone. In its place are a few termites, which linger after their meal and scratch their jaws with chips of hard wood.
Okay, so the appearance of the termites might not be so dramatic. But they are a danger to any decking project, since decks are out in the open, unprotected, right in the natural habitat of termites, and in the natural habitat of any other six-legged pest that might crave a meal of fresh wood.
Sure, you could call the exterminator or buy the most toxic pesticide you can find without alerting Homeland Security. But that will become a never-ending process, and no one wants to eat barbecue on a terrace that smells of phenothiazine.
The best way to keep termites and other pests out of decks is to build with material that insects find unappetizing. In most cases, it will be a composite wood deck.
Composite wood decking combines the rustic beauty of wood with the practicality and durability of synthetic materials. It is so named because it is a wood-derived decking product, a combination of wood and plastic that is manufactured rather than harvested like wood. Typically made from the same hardwoods and softwoods used to make standard lumber, composite decking combines sawmill waste, sawdust, and other wood waste with plastic bonding material. As a result, it can be designed to meet specific application requirements. Decking is just one use for composite wood products; They can also be used for homes and other types of construction.
But you wonder: How can composite decking keep termites out if it’s made of wood? Termites eat wood, right?
Well, yes, but it’s important to know why. Termites eat wood because it contains cellulose, a polysaccharide found in most plants. But cellulose is difficult to process: To properly digest wood deck material, termites rely on a complex symbiotic relationship with a series of microbes that live in their intestines, called trichonymphaFor those who take notes.
Termites know better than to eat composite wood decking materials, because they can sense that it has a substantial amount of plastic in it. If a termite decided to try to develop a taste for compounds, the trichonymphaFaced with a substance even harder to digest than cellulose, it would go on strike, and the termite would probably starve.
But termites are not stupid. When they come across decks made of composite materials, they move on.
Mealybugs are also a danger. Although not as destructive as termites, mealybugs get their name from where they live: in wood and decaying plant matter. Because they breathe through their gills, mealybugs actually rely on moisture to survive, which is why they tend to congregate in places where there is a lot of decaying organic matter. But they also eat wood as it decays, which can be bad news for anyone with an untreated deck of wood.
But composite decking needs no treatment, and its combination with synthetic polymers means it won’t deteriorate as quickly as wood, which also makes it unpalatable to mealybugs.
Without a doubt, using composite decking is the easiest and safest way to prevent insect infestation on your new deck. Termites, mealybugs, and just about any other wood-eating insect find it utterly unpalatable, so until nature develops a plastic-eating super bug, or a mad scientist creates a remote laboratory on top of a mountain, composite decking is the way to go.