Derek Broughton wrote:
Gill Passman wrote:


Well we don't get sun either....at least not this year - last year we
had a drought.....our deck gets periously slippy if we don't do any
maintenance on it.....had a nice slide across it the other
day....prolonged water and frosts surely can only damage wood and there
has to be a limit to the length of time you can have "weathered wood"
and wood that needs replacing....


Sure, but it's not appreciably different to the time that painted wood will
last. Wood generally does pretty well as long as it's not exposed to water
over the long term. My last deck, which was treated but not painted, was
going fine for 13 years before we moved.

Yeah, "treated" is what we are thinking of for ours. Do you know of a
pond friendly woodstain?

Cheers
Gill