Spa N Deck is tacky

[dan76n]

Hi all,
I just coated my front porch in 5 coats of Spa N deck and it seems to still be a little tacky to walk on. I did the coats 3 days ago. any ideas as to why this is?

[UteMad]

Why 5 coats? The tin says 3 coats with an optional 4th if you know what your doing and your not happy with the evenous of the sheen level....

One for you Jim i reckon!

cheers utemad

[dan76n]

I was planning 4 coats but it started to rain after the 4th was dry so I dryed the rain of with my applicator then applied another coat.

[jimj]

There would be a few more questions that I would ask but to just speed things up I am going to assume several things and base my answer on my assumptions and 1-2 times I have had a slightly tacky result. If you put down 5 coats in one day and follow the 2 hour inbetween coating times to the minute it will always turn out sticky unless you were laying down the product in very warm, not humid and slightly blowy conditions. All of these scenarios can also lead to problems. I once did 4 coats in a day , to the exact minute and the air was quite humid. You said you had rain and dried it off with your applicator. I would think that the humidty was very high and what you thought was dry was probably still wet. I realise this next explanation may sound like a contradiction but I have found with Spa&Deck that you can apply it over wet boards(squeegede with no puddles) but only if you are going to have optimum drying conditions to follow. Low humidty, slight breeze and warmish weather.

I have now learned that the safest option is to do only 2 coats in a day with a 3.5 hr break inbetween. I know they say that you can clean and finish in a day and I guess you can if you are doing 10m2 but I do many 80-120 m2 decks and weare generally talking 5 days from start to finish.

If there was any good news this may be of help. The stickiness will pass fairly quickly( compared to the many other products out there) When this happened to me I spoke with a fellow in Cairns who has the same type of small deck restoration business as I do. When I explained to him that I had a sticky deck he intially just laughed for a very long time. As his laughed progressed longer and longer I started to have that sinking feeling that I was going to have to sand it all off and start again.
When he finished laughing he then said that this happens all of the time in Cairns due to the humidty and then he described how he solves it. He asks the customer to hose off the deck over the next 3-6 days and that removes the stickiness. When I said that it sounds crazy he agreed but he discovered often a sticky deck improved quickly after a heavy rain. When I asked why this occurred his answer was he didn't have a clue. I don't either. As long as when you hose off the deck that you don't see white milky spots you are fine and I doubt seriously after 5 days since coating that you could or would. Just hose it off and hopefully wait for it to cease being sticky as the alternative of taking it off is not a fun option.

This whole deck coating caper is 2 steps forward 1 step back.

Good luck!

jimj www.restore-a-deck.com.au