How To Fix Treated Wood Peeling On Deck

by Alex
(Ontario, Canada)

How do I fix the treated wood on my deck from peeling? The treated pine deck boards are "peeling" in certain spots, as part of the wood is lifting up. How do I fix these problem areas?

I'm not sure what these are called, so I'm having trouble finding a solution online or on youtube on my own. What is this effect called?

If it helps, this was a spruce pine fir pressure treated deck. We did our best to identify which side was crowning and always put the crown on top. Also the weather here has shifted between hot/dry and cold/raining a lot lately. The deck has only been built for less than a month.

Hopefully that additional context helps. And thank you for your help.

Editor's Comments

In a nutshell, this is just one of the potential effects that you can see with certain species of treated pine.



It's hard to say but the second image you provided makes me think this is almost a bit like a pitch spot in the wood. But maybe not. It might just be the brittle nature of the wood; as the bias grain line crosses the plain of the board it creates a weak area.

Take a look at the end of the board on this image and you will see what pitch spots look like.

Judging from the grain pattern this looks more like a northern species of pine, maybe white pine which is more common in Ontario. It certainly does not look like a yellow pine board which has much larger growth rings.

So the good news is, white pine has tighter grain lines because it grows in a colder northern climate and that makes it more stable and less prone to twisting and warping than yellow pine which grows quickly and retains water more easily.

The bad news is, this is a fairly common effect as the wood dries. Ultimately your solution is to do some carpentry surgery. You could take some construction adhesive like a like PL Premium and carefully dab some underneath the pieces that are lifting up. Put a brick or something heavy on it for a day and them come back and sand it down.

Alternatively, you can cut out the sliver and then fill it with a wood filler. You might want to fortify the wood filler a bit by taking some common wood filler and mixing in a little white glue to make it stickier. Come back a day later and sand it down.

There is no real simple fix to this problem of peeling deck boards. Just some mitigation techniques. But it should look fine if you follow those tips.