teak decking

hi all what is the best way to care and look after teak decking. what products do you use and how often.

Moonraker,

This is a "bucket of worms" - I know.

Just search the site for Teak Decks. A couple of thousands posts to filter through. Pick the answers that work for you.

Best of Luck.

moonraker boats said:

hi all what is the best way to care and look after teak decking. what products do you use and how often.

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Approximately once a month salt water (never fresh), Lemon Joy, a string mop, and a few times a year a Doodlebug scrubbed LIGHTLY across the grain of the wood with the Lemon Joy/salt water solution.

Twice a year we use the white 3M scotch pads with Cascade Liquid Dish-washing detergent to clean the decks. After cleaning and drying we use SEMCO, Natural. It does not make the deck slippery and is easy to apply.

Index

We do not use acid cleaners, sand paper, stiff brushes or internally put salt water on our decks. We have seen first hand and talk to deck guys who repair teak decks where salt water has gotten into the core, under the planks or in the seams. When it comes time to do repairs the salt residue left behind is a PIA. If your sub-deck is plywood or balsa core and has been immersed in salt water, short of removal it will never dry and will always attract moisture. I know, historically salt water has been said to be good for decks but not on Hobo. Our decks are in good shape but 100%, sometimes I would like to think so.

Problem is that if it's fresh water that gets down into the subeck, rot will get started much faster than if it's salt water. It's why a lot of wood sailing ships had boxes of rock salt along their bulwarks so that rain water would carry salt down with it into the structure of the ship and thus at least greatly delay the onset of dry rot.

This issue is not that salt water is good for decks. I don't think it's any better than fresh water in that respect and none of the experts we've talked to have said anything about salt water actually being good for teak. Or bad. They just talked about the need to keep it clean.

But salt water is always recommended for washing teak decks because of the ever-present possibility of water getting down under the teak and thus into the subdeck via the deck screws. The salt water is far less encouraging of rot than fresh water.

If one has a newer boat with a glued down teak deck as opposed to a screwed down deck the risk of water getting down into the subdeck is limited to deck hardware that's not properly bedded. So it probably makes little difference in that case whether you wash with fresh or salt water.

I thought that salt water, unlike fresh, helped retard the growth of fungus and mould on the teak decks in cold damp conditions. Mind you, I have no scientific authority to back that theory up.

Andy G said:

I thought that salt water, unlike fresh, helped retard the growth of fungus and mould on the teak decks in cold damp conditions. Mind you, I have no scientific authority to back that theory up.

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I have heard that and if the deck gets frequent dosings of salt water it will probably work that way. To control algae/slime development on our main deck during the winter we wash them periodically with a very weak mixture of water and a cleaner containing bleach, like kitchen and bathroom tile cleaner.