We have a Fiberon Horizon deck built in Fall 2018. This summer 2022 will be its fourth. Our deck gets morning sun and late afternoon shade. We live in the Colorado foothills at 7600' elevation with big snow loads in winter, strong UV in the summer, and incredible 40- to 50-degree temperature swings in spring and fall. We chose steel framing, which helps the decking to lay nice and flat. When deciding which decking to purchase, I laid out on our existing wood deck a sample of redwood plus about 7 samples of composite and PVC decking from different manufacturers for about 2 weeks. Some definitely got hotter than others, but the Fiberon Horizon was only very slightly hotter than the existing wood deck. If I needed something on my feet to walk on the hot Fiberon decking, I would also have needed it to walk on the hot wood decking. Our deck builder uses Fiberon Horizon because it causes him fewer problems afterward, and time is money. In the end, that is the product we chose in ipe color and with walnut color at the edges of the deck for contrast, clip-type fasteners, and we LOVE it. Easy cleaning and maintenance, no warping or sagging or twisting, no delaminating, no rot, no fading even with the strong UV here in Colorado. Has held up to the snow load and is not noticeably slick when wet. Surprisingly tough and scratch resistant. So far, so good. I would make this choice again. I think it important that the material is stored properly before the build and that the installers know what they are doing.

We put down a trex deck on east side of our home with lots of shade 3 years ago. No problems with mold until we had a very wet spring and summer in minnesota this year. I expected to have to wash and maintain this low maintenance deck. We had lots of mold staining everywhere on deck. After tring Behr deck mold and remover with no luck I was extremely unhappy. Tried Simplying Green full strength with no luck. After pulling out my hair and complaining to my husband about why he wanted composite instead of wood I told him I would have been better off spending 2 days staining a real wood deck. After lots of reading on various threads on composite decking problems and trex websites on how to clean it,I finally found a product that working amazing! I used Mold Armour ez deck wash from Home Depot. I know the product contains a bleach solution but it worked in a matter of min. I did wet down the surrounding areas with a water hose including the railings and grass. Wet down the deck boards first before applying the product with a soft brush in an ice cream pail. No scrubbing was required but I had control with application by this method. I did small section at a time and rinsed off after only 5 min or so. You can see the product work! Be careful not to let solution on boards to long because it does contain bleach and bleach will fade anything it comes in contact with. I did this project on July 4 and want to see how long mold stays away. I plan on buying a more eco friendly product in future like Corte Clean but didnlt try it this time because no stores in our area carry it and it is quite expensive. You also have to watch expiration date and have to buy it on line. Has anyone had luck with this product with mold spots and how long does the mold stay away with Corte Clean or Mold Armour? By the way my deck looks amazing and has no structure problems like some I have been hearing about. My husband built deck himself and followed all the proper guidllines to install. We also used hidden fastener system for instalation and used proper support system underneath. We have the saddle color with accents brand. Hopefully the mold issue will be a controllable one since we plan on staying ahead of it this time and not wait so long to wash it. We also had alot of snow this winter and I didnt always get out there to promply to remove snow. Let me know if you have had better luck with other products as I dont want to use a product so often that contains bleaching agents. Still wish my husband would have agreed with me to use cedar but I lost the battle and had to settle for composite. I keep telling him I told you so about composite and I am stuck with an $8,000 deck that is not low maintenance. I appreciate any feedback on a sealer or something to put down so i only have to wash deck to maintain and keep mold spots at bay. Any luck with sealers or stains?

Since this post IS so old, I wonder if some who posted early in this string made any decisions, what they went with, and if they are happy with the choices they made. I have builders trying to get me to use EverGrain, another one wants to build with Latitudes. Neither of them want to use composite railing. They are really trying to sell their composite (I'm guessing they have some discounted contract with their dealers), but somehow no one likes composite railing. I was leaning on building using composite (possibly TimberTech, but I haven't found anyone in my area willing to go with TimberTech yet), and I was hoping the deck railing could be complimentary to the material on the deck and actually be made of the same composite material. This seems to be next to impossible for me to accomplish. What am I missing here?

Consumer Reports: For certain items, their advice is good (things like digital cameras, cordless phones, some appliances, etc.). The advice seems unbiased and reliability data is gathered from consumers. But for things like cars, I believe the editors have a strong bias against US manufacturers and the "scores" in their ratings include subjective categories like how the car feels and its styling---things that don't mean a hill of beans. Somehow, someway, an imported car (typically Japanese) will always "perform" the best in their tests, even if objective data like 1/4 mile times and braking distance is better on the domestic. The overall score ends up lagging if the GM product is "long in the tooth" or has "shiney plastic on the interior trim" or other nonsense. Honda somehow does everything perfectly as far as CR is concerned. It cracks me up to read their ratings of wine and ice cream---things that they have no business rating since it's all a matter of personal taste. Then for something like a mattress---part of it is comfort but part is price and how well it's made---they seem to have no opinion at all. Decking? Well, I think they pretty much admit that they don't know it all. I evaluated a bunch of them for a deck and screened porch I'm having built. For a variety of reasons, I wanted composite on the deck portion instead of wood (wood in the porch). In the end, I settled on Fiberon Professional Series with the slots to accommodate hidden fasteners. The contractor I hired seems most comfortable with this particular material as he has specified it many times before and seems to have satisfied customers. I liked the darker brown color enough to go with it. I tested it against the Fiberon "Tropics" which looks nicer to me, but I didn't like how easliy "Tropics" scratched. Pro Series took harder keying before showing gauges. Also, he gave me a better price on Pro Series. One material I liked is Pro Cell which I guess now is called Azek Deck. It's lighter weight and I think all plastic with no wood fill. The colors were a little light in shade---like pastel---but the material was nice looking, like painted wood. Evergrain was nice, but not reversible. I heard good things about Geo Deck, but didn't like the look as much as the Fiberon, and it didn't feel as substantial. I might regret not picking the Azek Deck because over the long haul, it probably ages better than the Fiberon, but I do think the Fiberon is a good product in its own right. "Veranda" is made by Fiberon and appears to be the same product but with the HD label on it. Fiberon is 2nd to Trex in Sales, but has not had nearly as many issues reported as Trex has.