Are decking boards a suitable replacement for a bench seat?

[dan76n]

Hi all,
I have a timber bench for sitting on that needs the timber slats replaced. The current ones on there are 25mm thick and 70mm wide. I can't find anything that size so have been looking at decking boards to replace them. As the span is going to be 1100mm fixing screw to fixing screw would 86mm*19mm hardwood decking be a suitable replacement?

[havabeer69]

do you have any means of ripping boards down?

alot of places will sell 25mm thick decking boards, they'll just be 135 - 140mm wide. so you could either rip them down to 70mm or just use them as is and see if the spacings line up?

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

It's about 50% costlier; the wider boards tend to be 22-25 mm thick and the per metre price is about 3x that of 70mm(ish) boards, but you should get two usable boards out of each length.

I wouldn't use 19mm thick boards as replacements over that span.

[BMKal]

I have some "Ecodeck" composite decking boards I bought (cheap) from Bunnings a while back when they were clearing some old stock. Eventually will use to replace some old, cracked boards on the front verandah.
But I did use a couple of them a while back to replace the slats on the wife's garden bench. Worked very well and shouldn't dry out and split in the sun like the original boards have done. Also wash very easily with the gerni gun when the birds do their thing on them.