I have a wall around a deck that needs to be capped. The already is a layer of some weatherproof material down, but it can’t take the sun or wear. A roofing guy was going to put a sheetmetal cap. I thought I could put on a wood cap myself, using either redwood or ipe. But someone told me that wood was a bad idea because of the incursions from the screws and because the movement of wood would open the joints allowing water. I thought I could seals the screw holes and caulk the joints to allow for movement. Now I don’t know what to do, hire the roofer or do it myself. And if I can use wood, which one?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Your mention of Ipe caught my attention, as we're planning on rebuilding our deck using that wood. Just for fun, I plugged some numbers into the Woodworkers' Web "Shrinkulator" and it seems like a very stable wood. You might want to play with it and see what you think. It'll tell you how much radial and tangential change you'd have differing relative humidity levels (or MC, if you choose).
For instance, if you have RH swings from 25% to 70% a 6" Ipe board would have a radial dimension change of .12" and a tangential change of .14". Young Growth Redwood came up at .04" and .08" respectively, much more stable. Seems like your chances are good?
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Thanks, forestgirl. What do you think about the problem of the screws? A red herring?
It's totally a wild guess on my part, thinking that you'd probably be OK. Since you're not getting any other opinions here at Knots, you might want to try Breaktime, where all the contractors hang out. I posted a general Ipe question there last year and got lots of good info. Let us know what you find out, I'm curious!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
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