Repairable or not

Hi All. Hopefully posted in the right place :-)

The picture below shows the current state of the handrails on our deck. They've been in place for maybe 15 years or more and I have "bogged" them up and painted them a couple of times. I'm not sure whether to abandon and replace them (big job) or if there is something that can extend their life. I was wondering if a wood hardener and then a poly or some epoxy filler maybe. They are continually exposed to the weather 24/7. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Peter


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Mate, they're stuffed, and regardless of what you do they're just going to get worse and the intervals between fills etc will just get shorter if you want them looking good.

You could easily fill them with builder's bog, or Agnew's water putty or similar if you level the filler properly as those fillers are hard to sand when dry despite what it says on the tub. You'll get another year or two on the surface before it degrades visually, but that won't change what's happening underneath.

Wood hardener serves an entirely different function on the surface of defective timbers rather than filling them, and it ain't that great anyway despite what it says on the tub.

The big question is to what extent has the structural integrity of what is essentially a safety rail been compromised?

Assuming your handrail is there to provide support for people leaning on it and to stop them falling through it, or the same if it's on stairs, and that you don't want someone falling off your deck where there's some hidden bit of major rot that gives way when someone leans against it and your kid or spouse ends up a paraplegic or a visitor sues you for their injury and your insurer refuses to pay because there's a clause in your insurance contract that says claims can be denied if the house isn't properly maintained, just replace the handrail and its supports to comply with current building regs.

Yeah I sort of resigned myself to replacing them and for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Just a massive job. Anyway thank you for the advice. Cheers

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Originally Posted by palace

Yeah I sort of resigned myself to replacing them and for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Just a massive job.

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Been there, done that, hoping to find a way of avoiding something that I already knew really had to be removed and rebuilt like my rotting 11 x 6 metre deck many years ago. The negative side of the internet, which didn't exist when I did my old deck, is that you can spend countless hours looking for solutions when if those hours had been applied just to rebuilding whatever it is, you'd be half finished.