Ipe vs. Tigerdeck (goncalo alves) as decking material?

[Dolchas]

Greetings all!

My wife and I are about to put some decks on our house, and after much research, we had pretty much enthusiastically decided to use ipe for the deck boards. However, our builder just told us about something called Tigerdeck (also known as goncalo alves) which appears to be very similar to ipe, and yet our builder can get Tigerdeck for about

20% less than ipe.

Now we are wondering how Tigerdeck compares with Ipe -- any pros or cons we should know about? Are they really just about the same product? Does anyone in this newsgroup have any experience with Tigerdeck that they would care to share? Does anyone in this newsgroup have any experience with the use of this material as deck boards?

Thanks!

Chuck

[John McGaw]

This may or not be pertinent but goncalo alves is a known as a strong allergic sensitizer. In other words some people have an allergic reaction (which I've heard compared to poison ivy) from contact with the wood. This might matter if a sensitive person walked barefoot on the deck. If you do a google search for "goncalo alves allergy" you will come up with plenty of reference material.