Wow, I realize this is pretty well after the post, but for what it's worth for others... I have about a fifteen-year-old ipe (called Pao Lope when I bought it) deck. All framing beneath is pressure-treated pine, up-sized by a factor of one, sprayed with Thompson's Water Seal and left to dry and change dimensionally for a year before the ipe was applied, with the frame's joists first re-leveled by cutting, sanding, or adding pressure-treated spacers before the good stuff went down. My ipe boards are plain, 6" x 1" decking, fastened with trim-head square drive stainless steel screws over 16"-spaced joists. Posts are 4"x4" ipe, balusters are 1.5"x1.5" ipe, and railing is a 2"x6" ipe over 1"x4" ipe. All connecting bolts, washers, and nuts are stainless steel, as are the hurricane ties and nails connecting joists to beams. No two boards terminate on the same joist (it requires careful planning for doubled joists where needed) I have never applied a finish to it. For years, I only pressure-washed it to clean. Now, each year, I apply Wet and Forget cleaner, and later wash the deck with a 2700 psi power washer with a 40º tip held close to the wood (just water), and it turns a lovely beige that weathers to a beige-grey until the next time it is power-washed. It looks as if, when the house collapses, the deck will still be there. I still have railing miter joints that are too tight for a piece of paper to fit in. Fine Homebuilding has wonderful deck-construction books that I bought and followed when I built my deck (12' 4" x 50' - three separate projections following the outline of the house, with 45º outside corners, and sections that wrap around the side of the house for an additional 6')

Retaining walls retain things like dirt/rain.Normaly they have nothing to do with the House structure. It very well could have been the walls were put in because the basement would flood out during a heavy rain bringing all the dirt with it. Your right that is part of landscaping. If you decide to take em out anyway the piers for your deck support should go below the leval of the missing walls. Geting cross ventalation depends on the final deck plan. Its a deal with skirting I have taken to runing the skirting right into the ground because if I dont the Wallet yells at me because it dosent look finished. This happened so many times now I just do it as drill. Its not a good idea>> the skirting soaks up water,the weed eater hits it,dirt builds up around it things like that

Salmon: Thanks for your great work in compiling this. This link shows how to create a link within a document. A few things I'll add: 1. Another "where to buy" place is ABS Wood. I worked with Jeff at East Teak. 2. The decks.com guide is good. American Wood Products also publishes a good code reference. 3. I bought several deck books, and the most useful (starts with the basics, lots of photos) is Black & Decker's. It's updated for recent code changes. 4. I sketched out my plans and used decks.com's $99 plan drawing service. They did the load calcs, produced a framing plan, footer plan, and materials list in 24 hours. A great time saver! 5. Tools: I love the Bostich metal connector nailer, and have the Paslode framer and finish nailers (love them too, even if the framer took a nip out of my finger). I buy all my expensive power tools on ebay, and prices are generally 30-50% off retail for tools in good condition. If you're only using them for one project, you can put them back on ebay and probably recover most of your expense.

The long list of Class Actions against trex,some still going on, as well as thousands of very unhappy Customers are easy to find.This " documentation " is all over the web. Its a given trex has been a big seller.Reason being they advertised a lot back then using decks that did not exist.They no longer can say" No Maintaince " after being forced to quit by the Law. Small wonder their customers did not keep up with maintanice that wasent required by their adverstising. A big differance between trex and other soft composites like Moisture Shield is the cooling down process. T hits the boards with water, the material is on the truck in 15 min, Moisture Shield cools down their product for 7 hours naturaly. This goes a long way explaining the trex mold coming from inside the product.No amount of cleaning will stop it. Its also a given the adverage Customer is buying manmade so they dont have to do any or very little maintance. There is at least as much work keeping manmade clean and bright as there is keeping finish on a wood deck.It is possible to use outdoor finish on composite with good results far as keeping maintaince down but of course including this fact in the Co info would blow the whole idea of manmade. J.