your questions are all discussed in lenght on the WoodZotic site.

I am also in N. Carolina BTW. about 90 miles west.

Its generally recommended to clean and PH balance any new IPE before finishing. The success of any product is prepping correctly. I found the RAD process to be very easy and I was restoring a 3 year old deck that had grayed up. New wood would be a breeze.

With new wood, you'd be suprised how clean you can get it. Most don't recommend sanding.

I am very happy with the WoodZotic look. It is lighter than the penofin I had used previously. I just need it to last a year!!!

You can RAD now but its preffered to do it a few days before you add the WoodZotic.

Mary,

I live in Jackson, MS. I will be building a 1000sqft deck soon and I am also using Ipe. I really would love some pictures of your deck with Woodzotic after you do it. I am thorn between TWP and Woodzotic. I hope everything turns out okay for you. Does your deck get a lot of direct sun light?

After looking more closely at the Woodzotic website and reviewing more posts, and other research, we're just about decided on Woodzotic. The main concern is that TWP does not recommend their own product for IPE decks. We definitely respect and appreciate all the advice and opinions we see in the forum. Makes the choices a little harder when both sides are so well represented :-).

Oh, and yes, our deck gets FULL sun for most of the day - it is on the southern side of the house and because of our pool there aren't trees for shade on that side. We do have a concern about the deck surface being HOT, but, well, we'll just wear shoes. Our concrete pool surface requires shoes as well, so no big deal. On the bright side, in the spring, fall, and even winter it will be cozy warm to sit on the deck basking in the sun.

Bargamon, do you have any pics? Anyone else have Woodzotic deck pics? Especially before and after. I know we won't have pics of the "after" for a while, but I'll post the "before" pics when the deck and fence are completed in a few weeks.

Thanx, all!

Re: "The main concern is that TWP does not recommend their own product for IPE decks." Where do they say that? They do recommend the 100 series for hardwood decks & IPE is a hardwood.

I'm also in Raleigh and just sealed our IPE deck w/ WoodZotic this past weekend. It is lighter than I personally like but appears to be getting darker as it cures more. I personally like a reddish brown & the WoodZotic color is more of a orange/reddish color.

I'd previously used Messmer's & liked the look but it did not contain a mildewcide & black spots began to show up. This time I chose between the TWP 116 & WoodZotic. TWP definitely has more history but I decided to take a leap of faith & try Ken's WoodZotic. We'll see what it looks like in a year.

The TWP is not recommended for Ipe and that was a biggie for me too. There are some success stories out there but the problems out there are ones that do happen from time are acceptable to me.

I was an ex penofin user and I loved the color. The Zotic is a more orange look and I am ok with it. It will actually lighten as it cures. The ligher hues allow a more uniform look to the wood.

If for some reason the Zotic is not to my taste, or another product appears in the marketplace its basically a RAD application and start over.

With TWP, its a lot more work to get it off.

I need to get on the stick with my pictures. I have lots of IPE furniture also. My dog even looks like IPE! But more like the darker Penofin color.

I am IPE'd out man!

Although I cannot say with 100% certainty, I believe the following link has pictures of the Ipe with Woodzotic. I bookmarked the page but forgot to label exactly what I bookmarked. The Ipe pictures are about halfway down the page.

Anyway, my order of Woodzotic arrived today and I tried in on a scrap piece of wood. Very pleased with the look so far...at least on the scrap.

Once our deck is finished and I get it stained I'll post pictures.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ipe with Woodzotic

Hello again, I live in Lake Tahoe, Ca I am a fire fighter,so I have been gone for about 3 weeks due to fires in the area.anyway I have read with great interest over the last year and a half. learned a lot about building decks, and materials,types of screws,tools like the bow wrench and many more tricks of the trade. you guys really help people like me , with just enough skill to get in trouble.We even enjoy the occasional argument. thanks again.

I had 3 decks, one around the back of my house and running down the side. these two decks total about 650 sq. ft. another deck in the front is about 750 sq. ft. I initially was going to replace the decking, but when I started taking off the old redwood planks I found a rotten substructure. last fall I tore the rear,and side deck out and started from scratch, able to address drainage. and new and stronger deck. we initially were going to put down trex, but this site helped us decide on Ipe. I finished laying down the Ipe in november, waited to clean, lightly sand, and seal the wood in may. I used the rad 2 step process, and was amazed at how it turned out. we had also planned to use twp 116, and I did put some on last fall on a warm day on a small part of the new deck. this spring most of that appeared like it was flaking off. I started reading about woodzotic on this site and figured if rad worked so well I would also give zotic a try. well it turned out great, easy to apply and looks great. now if it lasts a year i'll be happy. the only thing that would improve it would be different, or a more red color. we get a lot of direct sun most of the day, a lot of snow in the winter, and easy to snow blow off. my grand kids love how smooth it is, no splinters on bare feet. we had some minor cupping on the back deck, probably due to being close to the ground, but due to granite I could not go deeper to gain some more air circulation.
I am now in the process of tearing out my front deck, about 750 sq. ft., It will tie in with the side deck. I will use the same process and hopefully with the deck in front about 6 feet off the ground it wont have the cupping. I plan to use Ipe posts with stainless wire and ipe top plate. If I can get my wife, who is computer literate, to post some pictures I will.
Thanks again to Ken, Steve, john and everyone else who contributes on this forum

Pics of WoodZotic with ipe and purpleheart, yep - including before and after. Take a look at the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Refinishing a purpleheart/ipe deck

New Ipe deck and then RAD and then WoodZotic.

All I can say is it looks great.

I finally have a moment to get some pics up - here they are. We haven't sealed it yet, but some pics of the deck after a rain have "the look". The fence is cedar, and we plan to seal it with ready deck sealer. We also need to finish off the roof and cap it - we're capping it with copper - and get the sod planted at the deck edge.
Thanx to everyone for all of your advice - research definitely pays off!

Looks great. I wish there was some sealant available that would allow us to keep that "wet" look but also last for a reasonable period of time.

It worries me that you may not have enough cross ventilation for the Ipe.

That one defently needs floor vents all around,time will tell. If the man gets away with that I cant agrue with sucess. John

From the pics, you can't see that on the 2 sides with the fence, the deck is 3' high. about half way toward the hill, the land begins to slope up. Do we still need to vent?
Not sure what we're "getting away with"...???

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I\\\'d like to personally thank everyone that has posted their results with Restore-A-Deck and WoodZotic. We are playing with some color variations so we can offer more choices next season. On my message board we have some pics of customers results with the RAD/WoodZotic combination.

I have been posting less over here but I do read all the wonderful testimonials and again.. thank you for that.

A little PS: I literally stripped a deck today that had one year old TWP on it. I have to say, it looked horrible and was a difficult strip. The customer is a reader here. John, try that smaple I sent you. You will not be disappointed.

alb1k --

I know from your previous posts and pictures, you used stainless steel screws for your deck.
From the new pictures with the Woodzotic stain, it looks like the Woodzotic colored the heads of the screws and they seem to blend into the deck a lot more....
Is that true? Or is it just the camera angle playing tricks on my eyes....
I wonder if the stain will "hold" on the screw heads?

I am trying to decide between the stainless steel screws and the brown headcote screws....
I may do the stainless just in case we ever wanted to let the deck weather to the natural silver. It would look weird with the brown screw heads showing...
Plus, the stainless look (especially on your deck) is cool looking.....

thanks.
mike

The stainless screws do stand out, if it's any concern, use the headcotes.

The stain fills the square drive hole, and knocks the brightness down a lot, but that's it.

If you use stainless heads, it's really important to get them as perfectly straight as possible, for instance, I snapped chalk lines along my joists and also used a jig to line up the screws. Center of the joists is not good enough because the PT joists will not be perfectly straight.

Alb1k:

Do you mind giving a littel more info on the process you used to stain? I've seen your pic before, but can not find that posting. Did you sand it before staining?

Nelson, my process became a journey and I'm still on it.

Originally I sanded the entire deck with 60 and 80 grit. Then TWP 501. After a week there was quite a bit of fading, so I re-applied the 501. I expected a fade from what I had read, but the stain was more than fading - it was leaving. I pretty much washed the stain off with a hose. I found out later that it wasn't meant for ipe.

I used restore-a-deck and then stained it with Woodzotic. No sanding this time.

I can't speak to the long term success of Woodzotic, I've only had it down a week, But I can tell you that it has been performing great so far. It has been through a lot this week this week, between my 3yr. old boy and my 11mo. old dog - I wish they came with a remote.

My process would now be, sand the problem areas, RAD the thing, stain with Woodzotic. The RAD is all it claims to be. I know I just put the Woodzotic down, but it looks great, and water doesn't seem to touch it.

I

Thanks a lot for the info alb1k. This is very helpful. I just got started on the frame, and have not decided on the stain yet. But I'm 90% sure I will go with the Woodzotic.

I hope it will look as good as yours. Great work you did.

ms_raleigh,

Do you have photos of your deck since it is approaching the 9 month mark? With the exceptionally dry season we've had these past months, I'like to know how stained hardwoods held up under the more extreme exposures in NC.

Thanks,

Celeste

I have used Woodzotic on my IPE deck 2 years in a row. I would like a little darker hue and also a little more red than orange. I used the RAD system which really does a great job prepping the wood for stain. As far as the Woodzotic stain, it doesn't last a full year. It's maybe good for a max of 9 months here in Maryland. I don't feel it last any longer than Cobot's ATO or Penofin for hardwood.

I just went to the restore a deck web site to purchase more Woodzotic and saw the price has jumped to $46 gal + $6 shipping (WOW $52 a gal) and it's out of stock on top of that. I can get Cobot's ATO for under $30 gal. at my local hardware store, so I'm going with ATO for now, especially since the Woodzotic is out of stock.

Here's some pics of my deck with the a fresh coat of Woodzotic:

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