Kind'a quiet in here (2025 Update)

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As part of the new entry and house upgrade I put new decking on the new porch and replaced the floors on the old ones.

I searched extensively for alternatives and ended up using cumaru instead of ipe for the (somewhat) lighter color. I like it a lot so far; it's been down since about mid-summer. It also has the advantage of being somewhat less expensive.

I am wishing had gone with the regular T&G flooring instead of the decking, however. Let them talk me into not since is exterior but are covered and is mostly dry here. I don't like the gaps all that much; the stuff _will_ move no matter how hard one fastens down with those little clippies.

I also discovered it is so stiff that one doesn't need the extra thickness of the +32nd option over nominal 3/4 material unless running a very long span; normal joist spacing or even 24" is adequate. The new floors on the old porches were springy with the standard flooring; they're stiff and solid nows. It also is very heavy; definitely will need solid framing to support it.

You _will_ need the installation pry tool or a workaround; the stiffness means can't just bring it into alignment during install by simple hand action like fir or pine flooring.

The material came on pallet bundled and shrink-wrapped; it was in good shape and only one or two boards out of the whole bundle were not usable owing to propensity to move when taken out of the bundle. Having ordered a little over, wasn't a big problem; I don't know what supplier would do if one needed every scrap had ordered; shipping would have been somewhat costly for just the few although I did end up ordering another set of ungrooved pieces to use for the front tread pieces for the steps.

One dissatisfaction was I had hoped to use one-by material to wrap the new porch rim joists to match the flooring; they would not saw one-by material wider than 6", though, claiming it wouldn't be stable enough.

At least for what I was able to procure or order locally, cost was not that much more than any alternative I considered from just replacing the existing T&G SYP to cedar to fir; roughly 20% at most to less than 10% depending.

I did not consider nor price Trex and its clones, though. In the SW KS summer sun they absorb heat to the point of blistering feet if step barefoot and get as pliable as a wet noodle by observation of the installations in town. In more moderate climates, may be ok; brother has one of the lighter shades in MO and finds it tolerable if somewhat susceptible to the hotfoot test. Was what contractor had used; he still wouldn't choose it for new work or to replace an old deck if needed. It has weathered only semi-gracefully; some streakiness and color fades out. It was probably 10 year old by last time I was there...still solid from that standpoint.

All in all, with just a short time, I can agree the S American decking products seem a good choice. I used the online FL heavily advertised bunch; they were responsive and no complaints against them other than the above that they would just do what I asked and let me take the chance on the wide material.

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Guess that all depends on what trying/want to do... :)

It is what it is; have to admit I've not considered much just what one would do with one; perhaps for what they're suited for it isn't that much of a limitation. My first thinking is always more of edge mouldings and the like rather than joining with a router, so probably not much in synch with its application.

So, if one wanted a pattern with a ogee one gives the OD of the largest cutting diameter I guess?

Not really, no. From getting it out of the box to the first joint probably a couple hours, though, altho best I recall I was doing multiple tasks at the time so had many interruptions.

Again, the biggest hassle is tweaking that depth; but I don't recall that had real issue during the "production" run of about 10 drawers of having to tweak much between, the stock all having been prepared identically at one time. You do need some spare stock for trial runs, though...knowing that a priori from reading and their instructions I had save one sizable piece that could just trim the end from for next test. Seems like 2-3 passes were enough, although there were a couple of early missteps like most any new toy.

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Yes still pricey but the Workstation really opens up the usefulness of the Origin.

The Leigh was considerable more. You had to install the indexing arms and those adjustable pads.

The Origins learning curve....I think it came with an owners manual but nothing like the manual that comes with the Leigh.

It is very intuitive. The YouTube videos are very helpful.

Certainly.

It will do what a typical CNC machine will but with out size limitations. You could inlay a whole floor in a home.

I was becoming interested in CNC and the Origin, with out size of project limitations, was CHEAP compared to a decent small CNC.

Yes. It needs to know how far out the bit reaches and or will cut. BUT

If I just wanted a different way to do DT's and or box joints I would not have bought the Origin. It is all the other uses I could and have used it for.

LOL. I know right? I helped Swingman several years ago move some 16' length of this stuff from a the front yard of spec home he was building into the garage. It was like carrying a heavy 16' wet noodle...

The cool thing is that the pocket I cut was exact. Obviously the fit was too tight. So I just changed the settings to cut -.005, then -.008 larger on the same pocket, and you see the result. The Origin automatically aligned perfectly. And that alignment was not coordinated with an z,y axis. I manually placed the location to start and it remembered where I told it to start.

Thank you for that loooong comment. I'll look into that material. I have also heard that the composites do get hot in the summer. BUT I ordered a sample from one of the manufacturers, Not Trex, and tossed it out on the concrete back yard patio in direct afternoon sunlight. It is still there. ;~) It NEVER got hot, just a little warm, I was shocked.

It's not _nearly_ as bad as Hardi Plank. You might as well be handling brittle noodles. I had to move it several times (painted it on both sides before hanging). The first move was into the garage. I think I broke the first four pieces, until I figured out how to handle them. I was in serious pain at the time (found out later that I'd fractured my hip) so it was no fun.

Were you successful on your first try? How long do you think it would take you to be confident enough to do a floor? There are some pretty amazing videos on Youtube.

Trex says that their decking doesn't get hotter than any other decking material. That's probably true, if you measure it with a thermometer. Feet tell a different story. It's not about temperature it's about heat. They're not the same thing. Think: "boiling oil" (SWMBO got nailed with sugar splatter while making Christmas candy yesterday).

Two things -- first, find a neighbor with a deck and compare to the small scrap; I'll bet the deck will be significantly hotter with more volume and less cooling area and no concrete heat sink under it.

The other point is it will depend markedly upon the shade as to the reflectivity/absorption fraction besides the point that it isn't just surface temperature but conductivity and heat transfer coefficient. Similar to the difference between hard floors and carpet in the winter; they're both the same temperature but the floor is cold to the feet because of better heat transfer. Trex is similar unless they've redone the surface texture or made other design changes to reduce the problem. The Trex datasheet lists thermal conductivity; it's about 2X to as much as 5X as wood, depending on species.

Probably not. Pool decks will burn feet also. BTDT, even in NY. There are pool deck coverings (films or thick paint) that help a lot.

That's what I said. It's about heat, not temperature. Not so much conductivity but specific heat (specific heat has a mass term which has to be taken out, or put in depending on your POV, the equation).

In this case the opposite process takes place. Your foot is warmer than the floor so the floor is the heatskink.

It's not the texture, rather the material. A material with a high specific heat will feel hotter, even though it's the same temperature as one with a lower specific heat. It "contains" more heat at the same temperature. The specific heat of steam at 100C is 100x that of water at 100C.

Conduction actually hurts the situation because your foot is the heatsink. It will absorb heat from a larger area. The hood of a car in the summer is pretty "hot".

Again, it's about heat, not temperature thought heat flows from higher temperature to lower.

The equations are exactly the same as electronics, where thermal resistance is analogous to electrical resistance and specific heat is analogous to a capacitor, temperature ~= voltage, and heat ~= charge. When I was a pup in IBM, our heat transfer folks used our electrical simulation tools to do their work. They had models of components that made our electrical models of the same components look trivial.

Yes, other than adjusting the pocket to ultimately be .008" oversized.

How long do you think it would

Obviously I would be cautious and provably test on a scrap. The Orgin remembers your scanned work spaces and knows the difference. If you have two workspaces, side by side or on another table, it recognizes that you moved from one to the other.

And Origin uses the same drawing of what to cut. You tell it to cut, on, outside, or inside that line. And then adjust accordingly.

There are some pretty

Yup!

IIRC I put that sample piece of composite material up to my face.

Good point but the concrete was plenty hot. Hotter than the sample. And I laid the sample piece out on the deck/porth to our store room. It is PT lumber. Same result.

Oddly some materials don't get hot. My 97 Chevy pick up bed would get very hot in the sun. BUT after spraying in a black rubberized bed-liner, it felt like 40 grit sand paper. That bed never got past warm to the touch.

That's pretty cool. The part of the body most sensitive to heat is the piece between the upper lip and nose. It's a great infrared sensor, in fact.