Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Any opinions on using other deck coverings other than carpet. Like grizzly grip, durabak, tuff coat or vinyl?

I have a fishing model with a vinyl floor--easier to clean.

Drawbacks--floor may get hot in summer and slippery when wet.

Use the bed liner, you can get it any color in DIY kit, doesn't slip when wet!, protects the deck.

wwind3 wrote:
Drawbacks--floor may get hot in summer and slippery when wet.

hot and slippery when wet is a drawback

chill'nthemost wrote:

wwind3 wrote:
Drawbacks--floor may get hot in summer and slippery when wet.

hot and slippery when wet is a drawback

No wonder you fit in so good

I am still a carpet fan. Indoor/outdoor berber from Home Depot seems to work pretty well.
It seems a lot better on bare feet and your knees if you are down, leaning over the side. I seem to get about 8-10 years of hard use out of it.
My deck is MDO plywood and the carpet, being wet, hasn't hurt it over the 20 years it has been there.

I know how you may feel about carpet, I felt the same way. I used this product pictured below on one of our boats. I followed the directions to the letter when I applied it. It was good looking at first but within a year it was starting to fail. The product at first was showing hairline cracks in the finish and proceeded to peal off to bare wood. I ended up removing it this fall in fact and treated the wood with wood preservative like you'd use on a wood deck. Now I'm not actually recommending you should use wood preservative yourself because I'm uncertain as to how long or well it would hold up. But I wouldn't recommend the tuff coat above or the same or similar under different labels. With the application window and care I took applying it I'm confident it wouldn't hold up for anyone in real world conditions, at least on marine plywood.

Even the truck coating don't like to be applied to bare material, they like to stick to coatings instead, you need a primer coating for it to stick too.

Although this not a deck thing, I used "shark grip" grit on the tops of my pontoons where they stick out past the deck for a non skid surface.
This is a fine grit you embed in paint. Ace Hardware has it. It is good if you want to stand or sit on the pontoon and not slip off.

chill'nthemost wrote:

wwind3 wrote:
Drawbacks--floor may get hot in summer and slippery when wet.

hot and slippery when wet is a drawback

Herb,
I followed the directions including the part about a good quality exterior primer (Sherwin Williams) . I also tented it up with plastic and a tarp to protect it from moisture and dew for a week as the directions stated. It was installed right with maybe the perfect weather window and failed it simply isn't a good product, even at about 70 dollars a gallon.

So just a bad product then, that's sucks when you do every thing right and it still doesn't work.

Durabak and Grizzly grip are two coatings I've looked at that seem to be heavyer than the tuff coat. But still would like to hear from someone that has used them. Thank's for the replies.

P.s. Slippery and hot are not always a bad thing. Just not on a boat

I think these deck liners are made to go over metal. Wood probably feeds too much moisture in from the back side

georgiatoon wrote:Durabak and Grizzly grip are two coatings I've looked at that seem to be heavyer than the tuff coat. But still would like to hear from someone that has used them. Thank's for the replies.

P.s. Slippery and hot are not always a bad thing. Just not on a boat

Durabak sucks...it's not UV stablized and fades in the sun. I used it on my Starcraft v-hull and it turns chalky in a single season. I plan to strip it off next spring.