How Often Should a Deck Be Stained or Sealed?

Staining or sealing your deck is considered among one of the most confusing tasks. When it comes to stain a deck, there are several choices in the type of stain to use. Some of the most common choices are transparent, semi transparent, semi-solid, and solid stains. What is more confusing about staining or sealing your deck is that you cannot understand when you need to stain or seal your deck.Staining Your Deck

Following factors are important to keep in mind when it comes to stain or seal your deck.

Check Your Deck:

You can conduct a simple test to check whether your deck is protected. Just splash a few drops of water onto the surface of your deck and see what happens. If you find that the water beads up and remains on the surface, it is probably alright. However, if the water soaks into the wood quickly, you are in danger of splitting, twisting, and rotting. In that case, you may need to stain your deck. You need to test in a few different areas of your deck, because each board is different.

Staining Your Deck:

The general rules is, the newer the deck, the more transparent the stain. Typically, the newer deck is not covered by a high-pigment stain. If the stain is more transparent, then your deck wears faster and you will need to re-stain your deck more often. However, if you can stain a new deck with good quality solid stain, you may need to re-stain less often. On an average, heavy transparent stain will need to be re-stained every year and a solid stain will need to be re-stained every five years.

Sealing Your Deck:

If you seal your stained deck with a UV-rated weatherproofing water seal twice a year, this will probably double the time between re-staining. Weatherproofing water seal actually offer wet weather protection, and the ultra-violet helps to protect your deck against the damaging rays of the sun.

Weather Condition:

If your deck is in shady areas and exposed to humid conditions, the deck will wear very quickly as those decks that are exposed to hot and dry conditions. Typically, the stain is likely to be washed away if it is exposed to wet and humid weather condition. Wet weather also allows fungus and mold to penetrate into the wood. You may also find blackened areas in your deck and you may need to sand, bleach, and clean to remove them. Those decks that are exposed to year-round sunlight or humidity will need to be stained and sealed more often since this would help you deck to keep up with the weathering process.

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