Since I had paid $2.59 per linear foot a few days earlier, and I still had one unopened bag of screws and T-Clips to return, I decided to make the drive back to Menards to return the unopened screws and hopefully receive a refund for the difference in the price for the boards. I’m sure they would have laughed me out of the store.Ī few days after the purchase I received a Menards 4th of July promotional email stating that the Ultradeck Fusion product was now on sale at $2.19 per linear foot. Having dealt with Menards in the past, I decided against trying to return 40 or so bad screws from a 100 count bag. I probably have around 40 of them that I held onto in case they wanted to analyze them. At first I was throwing them away, but then I started saving the junk ones. He offered to swap the screws out for more, or to return them. One of their buyers emailed back right away and stated that they were looking into the issues, and that they took them very seriously. I did reach out to Menards in regards to the screws. The T-Clip and screw issues pretty much doubled the time that it took to complete the project. Of course, this method took a lot of time as the steel and clamp had to be repositioned for just about every other clip. With the squeeze clamp as tight as I could get it, I could then use the mallet to hit the next board into place. In my case my original deck and framing was built over dirt, so I devised a plan to stick a piece of flat steel in between the slats of the previous boards down into the dirt a ways, and then use a squeeze clamp from the flat steel to the board I was trying to install. If I were to snug the clips to a point where I thought the board was secure as shown in the installation videos, then the next board simply wouldn’t go into place far enough with a rubber mallet. I would assume I received the latest version of the clips. I noticed in the videos that I watched that some T-Clips have little fins on them, and some don't. In order for the next board to fit simply using a rubber mallet, the T-Clip would have to be left very loose. The next issue that I ran into was the installation of the boards under the T-Clips. The remaining bags also seemed to be a mix of both good and bad. Finally I got to the second bag which seemed to have a mixture of some decent screws along with some of the same quality of the first bag. The entire first bag of screws seemed to have been made of the cheapest grade of metal that could have been found. Even with brand new bits (I tried Milwaukee and Bosch bits too), the screw heads would strip almost immediately. After installing the first plank, right away I noticed that the screws that were included with the T-Clip fasteners were probably the softest and worst screws that I've used with any product. The screws that come with the T-Clips use a #1 square drive head, and each bag of fasteners comes with 2 square driving bits.Īfter loading the boards and arriving home, the fun began. Their configurator recommended 5 bags of 100 fasteners for the project. Then the theory is that the next board can be hammered into place with a rubber mallet under the side of each clip. Once the first board is installed with regular style screws down the side of the plank, the T-Clips are installed on the other side. The Ultradeck Fusion product uses a T-Clip hidden fastener to hold the boards down. I used their deck configurator online, and it spit out a total of 21 20-foot boards that I could cut into 10 foot lengths, and a single 12 foot board to ensure coverage. Menards was the only store that actually had everything in stock that I needed in a product that's not designed to fade quickly over time. I checked online inventory for Lowe's, Home Depot, and Menards to see what was available. I had some vacation time last week and decided that I needed to replace the boards on my 10'x 18' deck next to the house. I thought I'd share my experience with the Menards Ultradeck Fusion composite decking product.
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