Best outdoor material

[Hoang N Nguyen]

Hi guys, need some help/advise from you guys. A friend of mine recently just had a home built and his back porch is held up with just raw 6x6 post. He wants me to wrap the post for him and I'm having a hard time figuring out what the best wood/material to use. I'm trying to stay away from hardie board since that's what was used on my house as well as butt joints and it looks horrible. He want's the columns to be 8x8 and the trim he wants is simple enough. My jointer is only 8" so after cleaning up all the edges and such, I'm looking at 7-3/4" at best. Anyways, what do you guys recommend. The columns will be primed and painted once finished.

[Jamie Buxton]

For painted exterior trim, you might look into Windsor One. It is primed pressure-treated pine intended for exterior work. Contractors around here use it a lot.

[Jim Finn]

Steel or aluminum would be my choice.

[Art Mann]

I think your best bet would be PVC planking or sheets. This material is used extensively on many high end houses and commercial buildings. It takes paint well and will never warp, split or rot like wood.The two brands I use are Azek and Versatex. The big box stores sell their own lower cost brand and it will probably work just fine. The two brand names I mentioned are more fine grained, which means they carve better on a CNC router. I use this material a lot for exterior signage. Here is a couple of links so you will know what I am talking about.

http://www.azek.com/
http://versatex.com/

[Mike Hollingsworth]

I think your best bet would be PVC planking or sheets.

Bingo!
Though if the 6x6 are in the ground, it's probably too late.

[Peter Quinn]

Paint grade? No question, PVC extruded. You can get it in strips up to 20' in various widths or 4X8 sheets. It glues up with PVC cement, either a solvent based or one of the pretty decent low odor versions, they make some great screws with plugs to hold it down that makes attachment a breeze. You could spend a fortune on spanish cedar, or western red cedar, mahogany....but for painted decks plastic will bury them all. Its not cheap but its very competitive versus exterior grade wood species, and it works reasonably well.

[Mike Hollingsworth]

PVC shavings are a bitch. They float around cuz they're so light. Difficult to get out of the garden.

[Art Mann]

PVC shavings are a bitch. They float around cuz they're so light. Difficult to get out of the garden.

You ought top see how they fly when you cut a sheet with a CNC router. A powerful dust collector is almost essential. They are static charged and stick to everything.

[John TenEyck]

A lot worse in the shop, but still a minor issue for a product that solves so many problems.

John

[Jerry Olexa]

Simple solution might be CEDAR...

[Mel Fulks]

Since you already have structure I would lock mitre EXTERA mdf . I've had good results with the way it hold up,you could glue three sides together in the shop using the fourth side to help hold it together ,then glue last side at install.

[Mel Fulks]

All of these ideas would work ,some will be easier for your location than others. Don't let choice of "best" be the hard part.

[Alan Hick]

+1 on PVC. I've mostly used AZEK products. Machine well, hold paint, never rot, etc. But there are some things to consider. PVC expands/contracts a LOT with heat/cold cycling. You need to plan for that. If you want to do a "good" job you'll also need to invest in some PVC cement. I use "Bond&Fill Structural" 2 part adhesive to fill nail or screw holes and to bond PVC boards together along their length if I'm boxing something, or at their ends if I'm butt-jointing boards together. With the cement, the seams never open, and after filling and sanding fastener holes, you'll never see them.

[Hoang N Nguyen]

Thanks guys, it seems PVC is the way to go so now I just need to source it out for a reasonable price. Friend is on a budget so I'm trying to keep it down on the low end which isn't easy considering the price of these PVC boards. Cedar was my first choice and if I can source it out for a decent price, I may go that route. Won't make a decision until I head to the lumber yard to see what they have. Thanks all for the advise.

[John TenEyck]

PVC is not cheap no matter which brand you use or where you get it; no way you can get it anywhere near the price of cedar. But you only do it once with PVC; that's the beauty of the stuff. If your friend is more interested in price than durability we shouldn't have had this conversation.

I built some porch columns a few years ago. The columns were 14" square at the bottom and tapered to 12" over their 48" height. The cost of PVC was astronomical, so I used MDO for the columns and PVC just for the trim at the top and bottom. I mitered the corners of the columns so there were no exposed plywood edges. 3 years later they look great. If your design has a lot of flat surfaces you might want to consider MDO for those sections and just use PVC for the trim. If you go with MDO just be sure to keep it up away from directly contact with concrete, etc. at the bottom and prime/paint all edges as you would the show surfaces.

John

[Max Neu]

I agree pvc would be best, but if you decide to use wood, I would consider using locust. It's very rot resistant and hard,so it won't get dinged up very easily.I don't think it's very expensive either.

[Mel Fulks]

The treatment With MDO is good and I have used it in situations where there was no existing structural column and for new work. But where there is already structure I like the EXTERA just because it is easier to lock mitre than MDO. When given a work order for EXTERA I check if there is structure and refuse to use it when there is none.

[Bill Adamsen]

I wrapped some columns years ago that were wrapped in a way I would have never thought to do it. I was asked to do the same thing. Advantage for you would be that you could plane the "wrap" with the 8" jointer. I think I used western red cedar (what I would likely choose today). MDO, redwood, maybe even locust might be good choices as well. Peter suggested PVC and that too would be a good alternative though less traditional.

[roger wiegand]

PVC/Azek, hands down. The cost of doing it again dwarfs the cost of the material.

[Dan Neuhaus]

Azek (and I assume others) make pvc post wraps specifically for this situation. I just wrapped 12 posts on a screen porch and it was a breeze. The wraps come routed with a miter lock and taped so that you can glue up 3 sides, slip over the post and glue on the 4th side. Works great.