Deck re-decking just finished up.

Well done!👍 💪🤘

Beautiful.

We had a synthetic deck on our last house. In the seven years we lived there it developed several soft spots, not unlike natural wood may have otherwise done. I'm sure the product has improved in the last 20+ years since that one would've been installed. Your deck looks amazing and like it was done with excellent attention to detail.

My Trex deck is almost 30 years old and it's still fabulous. I think the only thing I did to it was after 20 years I pressure washed it.

Great job!

Chlorine, especially stuff used for pools, will break down very quickly in UV light. Especially if it doesn't have any organic compounds to react with. So even in undiluted levels, it gets pretty inert pretty quick when not in a controlled environment with reaction stabilizers like a pool or hot tub or something. That's why you have to constantly keep up with it in your pool.

It is a naturally occurring element and is usually inert in "the wild" because it bonds readily with organic compounds which is how it does it's sterilization thing. Because of its high level of reactivity, all chlorine in the Earth's crust is in the form of ionic chloride compounds, which includes table salt. Chlorine doesn't exist on it's own without stabilization. The stuff in bleach and pool chemicals has been refined and stabilized for use as a cleaner/disinfectant. The sterilization action can create other compounds like chloramines which give that "chlorine smell" to a pool. That means the chlorine has already done it's job and your filter is going to filter all of it out. But I'm not going to get in to pool care and chemical management.

Chlorine, even diluted, is still bleach. Both are sodium hypochlorite and the main differences between the pool chlorine and the household cleaner is that pool chlorine has a higher level of active chlorine in it that isn't bound to organic compounds. It's also significantly more concentrated than household bleach. Household bleach can also have other compounds in it like surfactants to make it less prone to evaporation so that you can actually clean with it and it has a low surface tension so it actually works in your laundry.

Pool chlorine has less compounds in it for binding to the chlorine leaving a higher level of active chlorine in it so it's more effective as a sterilization chemical. It also tends to have UV stabilizers in it so it lasts long enough to do it's sterilization thing.

So, that said, be careful with the pool stuff because it is very caustic compared to regular bleach and it can bleach certain finishes, it is terrible for cleaning wood that is unfinished unless you're doing mold abatement and it can deteriorate certain materials like paints or varnishes too. Certain plastics have finished layers that the chlorine will degrade or there are likely UV protective coatings that the chlorine can damage too. It will degrade bare wood, raise grain and bleach it to the point where you'll need to sand it and refinish it to fix the damage and protect it from the elements again. That's due, mainly because of the concentration levels found in pool chlorine. So dilution is a must if using the pool chlorine as a cleaner. I haven't seen the plastic decking get damaged by bleach, it's PVC so it's inert but, like I said, pay attention the finishes as the finished layers could be affected even if the main material isn't.

I know TREX recommends certain cleaners for their stuff. TimberTech does too. TREX officially says to use Dawn dish soap and a mop. They also say to use baking soda and vinegar but I'm not sure why as those two will react with each other and cancel each other out so that seems like stupid advice to me. But both TREX and TimberTech recommend cleaners based on oxalic or phosphoric acid for stubborn stains or heavy cleaning needs. So stuff like deck brighteners or vinyl fence cleaners will be what they are recommending. TimberTech actually sells their own deck cleaner for their products too.

As far as hurting the environment, it'll change soil pH for a little bit after use but it will break down or bind with organic compounds in the soil and the next rain it will be so dilute it won't even register on a soil test as more than a salt. It does hurt the soil biome but since it doesn't linger in reactive states for a significant amount of time, the biome will recover.


Otherwise, the new deck looks great!

Now come do mine!

Yeah, all of it is expensive!

I was just doing my due diligence and trying not to give bad advice. I, too, was worried about chlorine runoff from the pool with it being so close to the lake and one of the environmental guys dealing with the Sherwin Williams SuperFUNd site on the other side of town told me a lot about chlorine and basically said not to worry too much. Algaecides and certain pH chemicals are far more damaging.

I had the smoker running back in May and early June on a couple of things but we were in Texas for most of July and it's been just too damn hot to doing anything with it lately. Plus with the bad drought, there's been fire restrictions. They should be lifted now, though so maybe something soon.