I am replacing T&G cypress porch floor with T&G AZEK PVC. Current framing is 2×6’s perpendicular to long wall of house, so the flooring runs parallel to house. I know traditional floors run perpendicular to the long wall. Is it worth changing the framing so I can do this? Can I accomplish this by placing 2×6’s, 16″oc between existing joists? I like the look either way, but since we’re spending lots of money on the AZEK, I want to do it “right”. Porch is L shape and almost 400sq. ft.
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I think it's fairly common to run porch flooring parallel to the wall. It is run t he other way primarily out of drainage concerns (and framing convenience) but you can go either wiay.
But be aware that AZEC almost certainly needs more frequent joists than cypress, so you may need to add more joists anyway -- it's disappointing to have a floor that looks nice but makes you sea-sick walking on it.
keeping it parallel
Thank you DanH for the input. I think I will keep the current framing. I may add some bridging just to tighten things up, but to change all the joists would be a lot of work. The porch gets a little weather on the first few boards in and the rest stays pretty dry so drainage isn't a problem.
wood
Here's my review of Azek porch flooring.
16 oc is ok-no noticable spring to the floor.
Butt joints-ONE end of the plank is already slightly eased-so if running the long way-we eased the square ends just a bit-knocked the sharp off with a sanding block-boom boom boom-just enough, not as much as the eased end of the Azek (and you won't see the difference. Of course, check for square-we found them to be good, so butting an uncut or cut to the first board was just fine. PLAN AHEAD if you run the long way. With the right dimension, a rampant pattern might look fine-and it might look bogus. We had 36 ft to run (by 16 ft deep)-and chose to pick the same repeat on the joints. Except for the ONE DAMN plank that somehow got installed OFF the pattern, this method looked great. The scrap needs to be used of course, so pick a pattern that does that. The pcs are long so rampant might not look like an interior HW floor comprised of many shorts.
The stuff moves (IN LENGTH). DONT miss a joist with a screw if you use that method. We air assist nailed with SS cleats in a flooring gun. DON"T miss a joist with a nail either. The beginning coarses we screwed.
If doing again-I'd SCREW the butts and continue to nail the rest of the field. We experienced movement in just a few boards. Enough that if the homowner wasn't running the job and chose to do it that way-I'm sure there would be complaints that might need to be addressed. We did see in a couple of the more open butts-that the board pulled right off the cleat nail.-hence my caution to screw the butts.
TRY to keep the planks in the shade up until install. With enough people, I would cut down below and pass them up to the elevated deck (facing south and in full sun all day). Once I got the repeat down, I was able to overfeed the 3 up above installing. I SHOULD have passed up ONLY what could be put down in a timely manner. We also worked in the spring-where the flooring was down below-in the shade and seeing night temps in the 40's. But the sun quickly warmed the darker colored flooring (brown........sort of ) and this might have had something to do with the expansion and resultant shrinkage. They did not rebound when the summer hot season came on.
I can't emphasize this enough-NOT ALL the planks moved-just some of the first couple we installed (some all screwed-some mostly nailed. Weird but that's the way it went. All in all, it looks beautiful and homowner is pleased.
Now that he finally has his lighting-I will work on the last tread board boards (holding the rabbited in LED tape). There's some column work out of PVC with pediment trims that needs finished as well (we work on this as he is ready). If I find any other things worth mentioning I'll try to pass them along.
If yours is a covered porch partially shaded you may not experience this problem. This was more of a huge slightly curved deck w/Azek beaded ceiling below. We used TREX rain escape to direct the water that made it through, to a covered "drain" system Running the direction parallel to the house allows quite a bit of water to go through (as might a perpendicular run). I was surprised the amount going to the drain. Had we not dealt with it with that pain in the rear Rain Escape, it would have leaked like a sieve.
Best of luck.
Will help a lot
Calvin, you have answered a question I had about whether to use screws or nails. I will now use both. I didn't know about the butt end being eased. Is this like I see on one edge of drywall? That's how I'm picturing it. I will do what you did to match up the ends better. The porch is covered with only the first few boards getting weather. I would not have thought the boards would move lengthwise. The cypress moved outward, separeted and just didn't hold up. Of course it was down for 21 yrs with the last few looking pretty ragged. My porch is 36' 4.5" long so I will be laying out the flooring first to see what looks good. Thanks.
wood
Just a clarification-we used StainlessSteel Cleats-out of a flooring nailer. Run a bit over a hundred a box............cleat nails come in a rather small box-I can go look if you need me to-but believe there's a thousand in a box.
The screws we used were 2-1/2 "deck screws" Small heads, a bit bigger than a finish screw, but no way an old style deck screw.
READ Azeks install guide for the fine points on screw size etc.
The eased end I'm talking about is slightly rounded. About what the long edge of the porch flooring has as far as the slight roundover.
And YES, shrinks or expands in length, not width. About a strong eighth in the 16' long board. Two together would leave easily a qtr inch gap shrinking and push itself apart that much if expanding. That's why we eased the ends and like mentioned earlier-Would screw the butts. Heat is what does it.