I have been holding off replacing my old pressure-treated deck with a synthetic deck because in my opinion there have been serious downsides with all of the synthetic decking. For years the industry has created the composite deck which is a mix of plastic and wood fibers. Very heavy, structurally weak, scratches easily, and contains wood fibers which are subject to mold & rot. The colors it came were pretty bad too. The stuff offered no benefit over solid wood and cost more. A few manufacturers then came out with some hard rigid plastic decking but I believe this stuff had serious hot/cold expansion/contraction issues and it felt and looked just like hard plastic. Finally celluar PVC decking was invented (by Procell I think) which is light, structally strong, and scratch resistant. Cellular PVC decking is the same throughout so de-lamination is not possible. You can machine it with a router. However the stuff was only available in light colors which looked exactly like vinyl siding. Another downside is the very high cost. If I was to fork out big bucks for cellular PVC decking it would have to look better than vinvy siding! Both Trex and Azek have a cellular PVC decking product. The Trex cellular PVC product is called "Escapes". Azek only sells one line of decking and it is cellular PVC. It is simply called Azek Deck. The Trex Escapes product seems decent but it is still only available in the light colors. However, Azek is just now finally producing cellular PVC decking in dark colors that look much more like real wood. The new for 2010 colors are: Sedona, Redland Rose, Morado, Acacia, and Tahoe. I especially like the brown Morado.

Trex now has a new line of decking that they call "Transcend". This stuff appears to be constructed of a wood fiber/plastic composite core ecapsulated in a hard plastic shell. My main concern with this new stuff would be the hard plastic shell seperating from the core - time will tell. I really do like the brown "Treehouse" color it is available in. Due to the lower cost core I imagine that this stuff would be less expensive than cellular PVC decking.

I think I am going to get a price quote for Azek decking in the color Morado. If anybody has purchased Azek decking in the past and remembers roughly how much they paid per 16' board or per foot I would appreciate any info. I would also appreciate any info regarding anybody's experience with cellular PVC decking in general.