Porch Flooring

[Mike Burke]

Hello, we are in the planning stages of redoing our front porch. It's an old two story home built in 1900. We like the gray flooring look and will be using square white post and railing. We are not keeping it period correct. Not victorian or anything like that.

What would be a good material to use for the flooring ?

I like the idea of composite flooring but have seen some that warps and gets green with slime.
I assume I want to use a tongue and groove flooring, don't really want large gaps like on a deck.

Appreciate suggestions for front porch flooring.

Thanks

[Alex Zeller]

I replaced the decking boards (outside) with hardwood decking. The old pressure treated stuff was checking and splintering. It's been 10 years and the stuff is great. I went with tigerwood. It's easier to work with than some of the others like ipe. Within 6 months it turned silver gray and that's about it for aging. No splinters or checking. I face screwed the boards and then plugged them. I would never buy plastic boards over real wood. At the time the price difference wasn't too much different than composite decking. Now it's probably twice the cost.

[Tom M King]

AZEK or KDAT.

[Richard Coers]

Traditionally is was vertical grain old growth Douglas Fir.

[Cameron Wood]

I've done a bunch of this. Ipe works pretty well & kind of fits in architecturally. One had protected basement below, & I used "Deck 70" urethane membrane over plywood. It has compatible top coat colors but needs a bumpy texture for slip resistance. There are various other membrane and coating systems available- vinyl, rubber, others. T&G fir matches but just doesn't hold up if there's much water exposure, in spite of all back-priming, etc. etc..

[roger wiegand]

The standard in our part of the world is still vertical grain Doug fir. I doubt that what we get is old growth, but the growth rings are still pretty small. Just be sure to run it perpendicular to the house with just a slight slope so the water runs off. Looks good and lasts for many decades in New England.

[Jim Morgan]

Unless your porch is weather-proof, do not use tongue and groove flooring - water will get into the joints and cause the flooring to rot prematurely.

If you are going to paint the flooring, be sure to prime on all sides and edges before installation.

[Mel Fulks]

You can use plywood with a slight slope , covered with canvas glued down and painted . Goes back to 1890s ( with boards).
Lasts for years .

[Mike Burke]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I am thinking about going with vertical grain fir flooring. I think thats the standard here also. I live in southeast Iowa. Our porch isn't weather proof, it is covered with the house roof, so would get more snow than rain i suppose.

If I go with Fir flooring, do I use T&G or just square edge flooring....maybe its not even made non T&G.
I assume there would have to be a sub floor of 3/4 plywood underneath the Fir flooring ?

I have never installed flooring, have refinished several rooms in our house though, mostly this same flooring ( vertical grain fir) and have resided our entire house with 1/2 x 6 redwood lap siding.

Thanks

[Cameron Wood]

Definitely no plywood under the porch flooring.

[Jim Morgan]

Definitely no plywood under the porch flooring.

Any moisture that gets in - whether rain or snow - needs a way to escape. Pitching the floorboards towards the perimeter of the porch, as suggested earlier, helps. The gaps between the boards provide another avenue for moisture to drain.

A variety of sticky-backed waterproofing membranes are available. Laying this on top of the joists before installing the flooring will help to preserve the structural integrity of your porch.

[Holmes Anderson]

Hello, we are in the planning stages of redoing our front porch. It's an old two story home built in 1900. We like the gray flooring look and will be using square white post and railing. We are not keeping it period correct. Not victorian or anything like that.

What would be a good material to use for the flooring ?

I like the idea of composite flooring but have seen some that warps and gets green with slime.
I assume I want to use a tongue and groove flooring, don't really want large gaps like on a deck.

Appreciate suggestions for front porch flooring.

Thanks

If you plan to leave it unfinished, then a tropical hardwood will last longer than doug fir. Cedar is another option for an unfinished deck allowed to go grey. Port Orford cedar is stronger than the red but more susceptible to rot. Leave a 1/8" gap between boards to allow rain water to drain and airflow to dry the boards. T&G will allow rainwater to stand. Face screws with plugs are labor intensive and miserable to remove. Hidden fastener systems are easier. Stainless has long been the standard for fastening tropical hardwoods. I have had bad results with non-stainless fasteners and tropical hardwoods but I haven't tried the latest composite and coated decking screws. If you are lazy and don't care much what it looks like then pre-drill and face screw but don't install T&G as a horizontal surface subjected to weather unless you are building your porch like the deck of a boat.

[Mike Burke]

I plan on painting it the typical Gray.
I understand the water issues that you don't water standing on the wood.
This what I have to work with.
What did the old timers use on these old porches ? Isn't T&G the typical flooring material used ? old porch edit .jpg

[Jim Morgan]

I'm only 71, so I hardly qualify as an old-timer, but I don't recall ever seeing anything other than square-edged boards for porch flooring.

When I rebuilt my front porch several years ago, I used meranti (a/k/a lauan or Phillipine mahogany) for flooring. Unpainted, it is not as durable as CVG Doug fir, but it is similar in Janka hardness and (at that time) was considerably cheaper. I used plastic biscuit-type hidden fasteners. Most of the boards were marked and cut for individual biscuits. The final two or three boards had to be tapered slightly to maintain even spacing; a track saw came in particularly handy for that. These last boards were grooved on the edges so they could be slid into place from the front of the porch.

20180607_125908.jpg

[Darrell Bade]

Guess I'm the oddball here ........ I say go composite and be done with it. I would never do wood again no matter how durable it is suppose to be ..... based on past experience.