Composite Decking for Ireland — Specified for Wet All Year, Not Frozen in Winter

Wet All Year Is a Different Problem From Frozen in Winter

Our German and Polish pages are about what happens when water freezes. Neither is much use here. In Ireland the water never really leaves, and the deck that fails is the one designed as though it would.

There is no drying season, so drainage is not seasonal either

Most of our European pages can say from November to March about damp. Here it is closer to most of the year, and a north-facing deck may not properly dry out at any point. Algae on a permanently damp surface is the number one complaint in this market, and it will appear sooner than a customer coming from timber expects.

It sits on the surface rather than in the material, so it washes off and it is not a warranty matter — but that sentence is much easier to say at the point of sale than at the first complaint. What actually keeps it manageable is drainage: fall on the substructure, board gaps kept clear at 5–7 mm, and a perimeter that is not sealed tight. A flat deck boxed in at the edges will hold a film of water permanently, and no board survives that gracefully.

Almost no freeze, which removes one problem and exposes another

Hard frost is rare and prolonged frost rarer still, so the frozen-puddle failure that dominates our Polish page is not the risk here. What replaces it is constant wetting and drying with very little temperature swing, which is gentle on the board and hard on everything organic around it. Keep leaves and debris out of the gaps — in a climate this damp they turn into a mat that holds water against the surface rather than washing through.

The expansion gap still applies, for a different reason

With a narrow annual temperature range it is tempting to think the end gap matters less. It matters as much, because the board still heats in direct sun — an August afternoon on a south-facing deck moves the board regardless of what the air temperature did in February. About 5 mm to a wall, 3–5 mm at butt joints, butt joints on double joists. The figures are below.

Atlantic Wind, and Why It Lands on the Fixings

Ireland gets weather off the ocean that would carry a name elsewhere. For a deck this is not really a board question — it is a question about everything holding the board down.

Uplift is carried by clips and substructure fixings

Wind over and around a deck produces suction, strongest at edges, corners and anything raised. What resists it is the mass of the assembly and the clips tying boards to joists — not the weight of an individual board. So on an exposed site the clip specification and the edge detail are the parts that decide the outcome, and they are exactly the parts usually left to whoever is on site that day.

Wind loading is set by your own code against the location and exposure, and whoever signs the structure off will be working to it. Give us the exposure and we will give you the fixing specification in writing with the quotation — and on a raised or pedestal deck, the layout to go with it.

Salt reaches further inland than people plan for

The island is narrow and the wind is persistent, so salt-laden air is a factor well beyond the first row of houses. The composite handles it. Screws, clips, joist hangers and post bases do not — and they are exactly where nobody looks until the deck has to come up to reach them.

Specify A4 / 316 stainless rather than A2, and treat it as part of the specification rather than an upgrade line. On a coastal Irish site it is the cheapest decision that prevents the most expensive failure, and the cost difference across a domestic deck is small enough that it is not worth the argument.

Raised decks and roof terraces get it worst

Anything lifted clear of the ground catches more wind underneath as well as over. That is a structural conversation for whoever designs the substructure, and the pedestal system page covers the layout side of it — closer pedestal centres and more clips in the edge and corner zones than in the field of the deck.

The Decking Range

Capped co-extrusion and classic uncapped, hollow and solid. Six of the sections ordered most often — the full schedule runs to well over a hundred.

Co-extrusion 23 × 138

Capped, hollow · 2.85 kg/m

The main capped section. This is the profile our slip test was run on.

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Co-extrusion 23 × 148

Capped, hollow, premium

Wider capped board, four-sided cap. Fewer boards and fewer clips across a large terrace.

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Co-extrusion solid 20 × 140

Capped, solid core

Solid throughout. Specified for commercial traffic and exposed edges.

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3D embossed, round chamber

Deep-grain surface

Heavier embossing than a standard woodgrain, in the capped construction.

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3D embossed, square chamber

Deep-grain surface

Same surface, square-cell core. Lower cost per square metre than the round-chamber section.

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Classic 140 × 25

Uncapped, square chamber

First-generation grade, shown in Walnut. Cost-led work with routine cleaning.

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Getting a Container to an Irish Port

Worth understanding before you plan a season, because the routing here has an extra step that most of our European markets do not have.

Usually a transhipment rather than a direct call

Most deep-sea services from Asia reach Ireland via a hub — the box is discharged at a large North Sea or continental port and moves on by feeder rather than the mother vessel calling directly. That is normal, it is priced by your forwarder, and the thing that matters for planning is simply that it adds a leg. Build it into the date you promise your customer rather than discovering it.

Sea time on the main leg is about 50 days port to port; the feeder leg and the inland delivery are your forwarder's to quote. We confirm production separately when we quote against your volume.

Ireland is in the EU — ask your forwarder to price it both ways

Ireland is an EU member state and the United Kingdom is not, so a container discharged at an Irish port clears into the EU once. Routings that move goods through Great Britain involve a different set of formalities.

We are a manufacturer, not your customs adviser, so we will not tell you which is cheaper — but it is worth asking your forwarder to price both and to be explicit about the formalities on each, because the answer moves with service schedules and it is the sort of thing that is expensive to assume. Whichever you choose, we prepare the documentation to match the route from the start.

What we need in order to quote properly

The discharge port you intend to use, the delivery county, and the date the material has to be on the ground. That is enough for a real per-unit price within 24 hours rather than a range with a disclaimer attached.

Ireland: Route, Transit and Terms

Loading is Nansha or Yantian, both in Guangdong, both within trucking distance of the plant.

What the Board Is Made Of

Straight from our own catalogue, with nothing rounded up.

60% wood powder, 30% HDPE, 10% additives

That is the whole recipe, and we would rather publish the additive share than print two numbers that do not add up to a hundred. On the capped range a co-extruded shield wraps a WPC core, and the shield is the wearing layer. In a climate this consistently damp the practical benefit of the capped grade is that the surface is easier to clean back when the green film does appear. The material can be recycled and reused at end of life.

Sections and textures

ZSGJ138H23A and ZSGJ138H23C at 138 × 23 mm, ZSGJ138H25 at 138 × 25, ZSGJ140S23 at 140 × 23, ZSGJ140S25 at 140 × 25, ZSGJ145S30 at 145 × 30. The capped generation runs round chambers rather than the square cells of the classic range — they clear water instead of holding it, which in this climate is not a detail. Full schedule with metre weights on the model page.

Colours — three ranges

Capped co-extrusion: Teak, Antique, Redwood, IPE, Light-grey, Walnut.
Classic uncapped: Teak, Redwood, Walnut, Coffee, Chocolate, Ebony.
3D embossing: Teak, Red Wood, Walnut, Chocolate, Light Grey, Dark Grey.

Grey lives in the capped range (Antique, Light-grey) and the 3D embossing range (Light Grey, Dark Grey). One local note: under a consistently overcast sky a board reads cooler and flatter than it does in a showroom, so look at samples outdoors before deciding. And order the whole job in one batch — pigment goes into the extrusion, so two runs of the same colour will not be identical.

Installation and Accessories

From our own installation guide. In this market the drainage-related items are the ones to get right first.

The gaps, and the double joist

5–7 mm between the sides of adjacent boards. About 5 mm between a capped board and a wall. 3–5 mm at butt joints where two board ends meet. Butt joints sit on double joists — each board end gets its own joist, never a shared one. Set a gutter at the base so water drains rather than ponds — in a climate with no drying season that single detail does more for the green-film problem than anything else on this page.

Accessories, with sizes

Stainless steel start clip, plastic clip, expansion screw, L-shaped corner trim 50 × 50 × 3000 mm, WPC joist 40 × 30 × 3000 mm, aluminium joist 40 × 25 × 2900 mm. Note the aluminium joist is 2900 mm, not 3000 — an easy hundred millimetres to lose when you take off quantities. On this island, specify A4 / 316 stainless as standard rather than as a coastal exception.

Ask About a Specific Profile

Send the section, the volume and the county

What Owning the Line Gives You

Capacity you can book against

Roughly 2,000 tonnes a month, about 100 containers. What matters to a distributor is not the headline but that a repeat order does not queue behind somebody else's. Send the volume and the date; we answer with a slot, not a hope.

Dies are ours, so sections are ours

We own the moulds and cut them in-house. That is why the schedule runs past a hundred sections rather than a catalogue page — and why a market-specific profile is a conversation we are ready to have.

A test report with every shipment

Goods are checked before despatch and the report travels with them. Routine, not negotiated — and on a routing with a transhipment in it, paperwork that matches the goods is worth more than usual.

Certification: What We Hold, and the Exact Scope

Irish specifiers verify, so here is the whole picture including the exact scope — a certificate covering three profiles covers those three profiles. Ask and we send the document itself.

Get the Documents Themselves

Nothing above is a claim you have to take on trust. Tell us which documents your project needs and we will send the PDFs — certificate, Declaration of Performance with the reaction-to-fire class, the laboratory reports, the ISO certificates and the warranty schedule.

Request the certificates and test reports

What We Do for a Distributor

A first order can be well under a container

Minimum order is 70 m². Well under a full container, so a new distributor can test a colour, a profile and our paperwork before committing to a 40HQ. In a market this size that matters more than it does in Germany.

Samples are free

You pay the courier and we credit it in full against your first order. Ask for a sawn sample: the cut end shows whether the cap runs all the way round the section or stops at the sides. Look at the samples outdoors under cloud rather than under a showroom lamp — the colour reads differently here.

A real number within 24 hours

Send the specification and the volume, get a per-unit price rather than a range. We need: profile, colour, quantity in m², discharge port, county, how exposed the site is, and the date it has to be on the ground.

Private label, market-specific sections, testing on your profile

All three are conversations. We own the tooling, we already run sections cut for particular export markets, and where a project needs a test our documents do not cover we will put your profile through the laboratory — fee up front, credited against the order. Every result we send you names the profile it was measured on.

Three Things That Go Wrong When Europeans Import WPC

Not sales copy — these are the three that cost distributors money.

The frame is set out for timber

A joiner spaces joists at whatever timber decking takes, because that is the habit. Composite has a maximum support spacing and it is tighter than timber. Get the figure for your profile in writing and put it on the drawing before the frame goes down. Wrong, and the deck does not collapse — it flexes underfoot permanently, and the fix is lifting the boards.

The end gap gets left out

The most expensive of the three, because a buckled deck is a full relay with no partial fix. It is easy to under-gap here precisely because the winters are mild — but the board responds to direct sun on the surface, not to the annual average. The figures are in the installation section above.

Batch colour is not matched later

Pigment goes into the extrusion, so two runs of the same colour will not be identical. Order the whole job in one batch and keep spares from it. A board replaced in year four will not match — ours or anybody else's. Distributors who hold a buffer from each shipment avoid the argument entirely.

Warranty, and How a Claim Works

Stepped, not flat

Capped co-extrusion carries 15 years, classic uncapped 10. Both step down by year rather than paying full value throughout: 100% of the value of the affected goods in years 1–3, then 80, 70, 50 and 40% through years 4 to 7, then reducing in bands to 10% in the final years. It covers peeling, cracking and overall uneven fading.

It starts at the destination port

Cover runs from the date the goods arrive and are signed for at the port — not our factory gate, and not the day your customer installs them. On a routing that includes a transhipment that distinction is worth reading twice, and it works in the distributor's favour.

Surface algae is not a warranty matter

Worth being straight about it here rather than letting it surface later: the green film that appears on any permanently damp outdoor surface sits on top of the material and washes off. It is a maintenance item, and the warranty covers peeling, cracking and uneven fading instead. Say so at the point of sale — in this climate it is the single most predictable question you will get in year two.

Talk to Us About Ireland

The full enquiry, if you would rather send everything at once. Tell us the county and how exposed the site is. You will hear back within 24 hours with a real per-unit price.

Distributor and project enquiry

Ireland: Common Questions