First off you needed to clean and balance the wood before you used the sealer product. The prep work you do has a lot to do with how the product will work. It might be a great product, but its not if your don't prep it right.

Conditions vary with wood and environment. Im not sure there is just one product.

At least you don't have any peeling or cracking of the finish, so your marriage is safe.

I used with little success a product that was also recommended to me. It may have been reasons other than the product, but we'll never know.

I recently cleaned and prepped using the Restore-A-Deck product that I was very very happy with. I also used the new product by them called WoodZotic which is for woods like IPE and they claim will last longer then some other brand names.

There is a sect of believers on this board that swear by TWP 116 product so you have two factions of opinion. TWP is not recommended even by the manufacterer for IPE but one of the brilliant contributers swears by it. I for one would not go with a sealer as if somting goes wrong its a mess to correct so I am more with the masses on this one.

2500Sq feet is a lot of deck! I'd use the RAD product and then use a product that your comfortable with. Yes, I did use WoodZotic and did so based on faith as there are no long term users yet.

POst pictures, I'd love to see 2500 sq feet of IPE!

Here is a link that might be useful: Restore a deck

As with Bargamom we built a 650 sq. ft deck with Ipe, built last fall, it remained unsealed over the winter. We live in Lake Tahoe and recieve plenty of snow, and lots of sun. Over the last week, I spot sanded, using 60 grit, used the 2 step Rad cleaning system, and then protected that with their Woodzotic product. It turned out beautiful, brought out the Ipe color, and we are hoping it will last at least 2 seasons. but if it only lasts a year, ok. I had tried some TWP 116 on a portion of the deck last fall before the weather turned bad, and this spring it appeared to be badly flaking off. I followed jh instructions, wet on wet, but not satisfied with results. We are getting ready to build another 700 sq. ft. section on the front of the house, and will use the lessons learned to make it go smoother.Their are some good posts on this subject on this site. Having replaced a former 15 y/o badly worn Redwood deck with Ipe, no question ipe is the right choice for us. sounds like Rad, and woodzotic is the way to go for you.
good luck,Bob

I don't have a great many photos of the deck - it's a hard one to photograph well, because it covers a lot of ground and has a lot of levels. But here's a good shot of the lowest platform, built to house a small, round strap-iron gazebo. This is just after the first coat of tung oil was applied, so it's open to question whether or not it'll ever look this good again!

Here's a shot of the overall setting, which won't give enough detail to satisfy all you deck nerds out there, but will give you a sense of how it all comes together. This is the main section of deck, which continues to wrap around the house to the right. The big pergola was built to provide shade for an outdoor dining area in our hot summers; it'll eventually have table grape vines and clematis growing over it (they're climbing now, but they have a way to go before they get over the top).

Here's a shot that shows the level changes between the main platform above and the gazebo platform below. In case you're curious, the skirting is HardiPlank fiberboard siding, the same as on the main house.

That should give you an idea.

What's the essential difference between Woodzotic and TWP 116, for the non-professionals among us?

Josh my Man,,that is one most outstanding project I have seen nothing like it short of Mrdeck.com. You have used the best decking material on the planet I havent seen purpleheart used in a long time, last visit was with Green&Green projects.

I have to add it seems you need vents installed in the skirting, cross ventalation is very important with the S American lumber.

Ken has come up with a finish using a twp guy that probley will work,the man is a go get em business person. I havent used it. I cant be of any help far as the differance between twp and the zotic finish.

I have used twp 116 and 516 with results keen to my Business and my Wallets.

As of now I am not responding to any more outdoor finish questions. J

Thanks, John. It's heartening to hear that a pro thinks highly of the project, since it took so much blood, sweat, and tears (and money) to do it.

The deck was part of a pretty huge remodel/landscaping project, which I spottily documented on a side section of the blog I've been writing since our son was born - you can see more photos about the construction process and the landscaping that went along with it than you'd ever care to see at the link below. (Josh, BTW, is our son; I'm David. I'm not REALLY as obsessed with the little booger as it sounds, I've just gotten used to using my daddy-ly identity as my online handle.)

Vents would surely be a good idea - probably something we should have thought of in the first place. Our contractor was and is very good, and had done a number of decks before, but nothing like this, and his main business is high-end home remodels, not decks. I shudder at the thought of retrofitting the vents in the HardiPlank (the stuff is a pain in the butt to work with, and messy), but I'll put some noggin time into figuring it out. I can't imagine the moisture/heat differential between the top and bottom of the planks, either in winter or in summer, is particularly good for the wood, and it might explain some of the early cupping and general movement. (Keeping the posts plumb and square is another problem, since the 4x4 ipe moves a lot more than the supplier advertised; he assured us that it doesn't move at all once it's in place, when in reality it's been twisting and shimmying like a belly dancer.)

Just curious - why did you retire from answering outdoor finish questions? More hassle and controversy than it's worth?

Incidentally, in case anyone out there is paying attention, I love the purpleheart, and no doubt the deck will outlive me - the Atlantic City boardwalk was supposedly made of the stuff back in the 70s, and is still just fine, in a much harsher climate than ours. But the expense was far above and beyond what we could have imagined in our worst fears, not in initial material cost, but in labor. It's just so difficult to work with and hard to fasten that the costs blew out of all budgeting and were hard to contain. Part of that was the contractor's inexperience in working with the stuff, and part of it was the complexity of the design, but be aware when you're doing a comparison with more traditional materials (redwood, cedar, composites, etc.) that the up-front cost is the least of your worries when dealing with these super-hard tropicals. Just my two cents' worth. I love it, and we wanted wood, not a composite, and didn't want to be replacing a redwood or cedar deck in ten or fifteen years, but we weren't prepared going in for what it would take in all-in cost.

Here is a link that might be useful: Remodeling/landscaping album documenting the process

David that is one sweet project I have used purple heart as detail for table tops but I have never seen that much of the stuff in one place.

I strongley recomend cross ventalation, with some cupping going on now its a sure thing you will get more without it. If it were mine... open some holes run big fans thru them for several days install some fancy spancy screen vents in the skirting and the stairs. I have seen ipe with a slight cup going on lay back flat after the fans had run thru the project. Belive me I learned the hard way about ipe and ventalation.

The ipe posts were set so early on the movement is normal. Bolting ipe 4x4s to the frame allows movement that wont happen if the posts are set in the frame with construstion adhesive but they look fine now.

Those copper rails add just the right look and feel to the deck with a finish already on them all the copper will need protection from the cleaning that will have to happen before the finish goes on. If you decide to use Ken's rad system or some other combo of stripper/oxalic acid wash be very sure the copper protection is complete.

You and your builder did a very good thing with that outdoor addition. John

Nice deck! Very impressive. The octagon thing was a great picture!

Yes, ventalate those boards.

Regarding finish, there plenty of talk here and on the restore-a-deck site. tung oil is not going to get it done for you ling term.

In the end, there is no right or wrong finish. Its all our own choice and we have to live with it and weight the costs and maintence potential.

Again, great looking project!

Thanks, guys.

I guess what's not clear to me is the difference in follow-on maintenance between, say, Woodzotic and TWP. Does either of them require stripping of some sort before future refinishing can be done? Or can additional finish simply be applied on top of the old, presumably after cleaning?

I'm sure in terms of short-term results it's probably true that there's no right or wrong finish. After all, the tung oil looked gorgeous the next day. What I'm concerned about is not being back in this same spot a year from now - or, worse, discovering not only that I have to refinish the deck again (which is likely) but that I have to go through a bunch of additional work to strip off what I put on this year.

Which gets me back to one of my original questions from which we somehow got distracted: do I need to strip off the tung oil somehow, or will RAD or something like it do the job well enough?

Thanks for all your help and kind words, guys!