What Is Happening to Your Deck Right Now in the Snow and Ice

The win­ter is not a vaca­tion time for your home’s wood deck. Rather, this is a time where your deck goes through some of its biggest tests. As deck­ing pro­fes­sion­als, the tech­ni­cians at SEAL-A-DECK can help pre­pare your deck for the winter’s snow and ice to give it the best chance to make it to spring­time with­out issue. Work­ing with deck­ing experts to win­ter­ize your out­door liv­ing space is an extra assur­ance that you are doing every­thing you can to pro­tect your deck­ing invest­ment. This blog will tell you a lit­tle about what your deck is going through dur­ing the bit­ter cold and how SEAL-A-DECK can help you avoid those issues with prop­er main­te­nance and planning. 

Freez­ing and Thawing

The biggest impact on your deck is the process of freez­ing and thaw­ing that will hap­pen through­out the win­ter. The freeze-thaw cycle can even hap­pen dai­ly, depend­ing on the fluc­tu­a­tion of the tem­per­a­tures. Even though you may not be able to see any­thing hap­pen­ing, your wood is actu­al­ly expand­ing and con­tract­ing with the tem­per­a­tures. If your deck was prop­er­ly installed with the cor­rect spac­ing, you shouldn’t have much to be con­cerned with. Alter­na­tive­ly, if your deck wasn’t con­struct­ed with the prop­er spac­ing for the expan­sion, it will be test­ing the lim­its of your foun­da­tion, rail­ings, and even the stairs. You can find these areas buck­ling and/​or collapsing. 

Wood Dete­ri­o­ra­tion

If you have not had a deck treat­ment in the last cou­ple of years, your wood may be hav­ing issues on its own. The typ­i­cal SEAL-A-DECK treat­ment includes strip­ping, wash­ing, con­di­tion­ing, and the appli­ca­tion of sealant. If your deck has not been sealed in a while, you can bet that water is per­me­at­ing through the mate­r­i­al. Although wood is nat­u­ral­ly porous, an over­abun­dance of mois­ture cou­pled with freez­ing tem­per­a­tures may cause ear­ly decay or soft spots on your deck. Even though it may be cur­rent­ly cov­ered in a New Eng­land frost, beneath those lay­ers your wood is under­go­ing some intense fluc­tu­a­tions that often lead to decay. 

Best Case Scenario

You may be one of our cus­tomers that does every­thing right. You do pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, take part in our Advan­tage Plan, win­ter­ize, and remove snow as need­ed. If this is true, you are in the best-case sce­nario for deal­ing with snow and ice. Your deck will still be sub­ject­ed to the same harsh win­ter as oth­ers, but it will be by far more pre­pared. The sealant, along with your deic­ing and snow removal, will mean that come the thaw of spring, your deck will be ready for mak­ing mem­o­ries and host­ing your friends and fam­i­ly. Our experts only sug­gest that you con­tin­ue with the same plan mov­ing forward.

SEAL-A-DECK Can Help

You don’t have to be the best at deck main­te­nance and plan­ning to make sure that your out­door liv­ing space makes it through the win­ter. This is where the pro­fes­sion­als at SEAL-A-DECK come in. We can help you pre­serve the deck you have to make it through the freez­ing win­ters and beyond. Call 877-SEALADECK today to dis­cuss your options.