The fires that burned the wood decking in the photos above burned strong for a little more than two hours in late afternoon and into early evening on a day with ambient temperature in the low seventies. If the fire to test DeckProtect were shorter, weaker and on a cooler day, we would not have the proof we need. Therefore we did the test in the middle of the afternoon on a day with ambient temperature around 80° Fahrenheit and fed the fire continuously to achieve a brisk burn lasting more than 3 hours.
We followed the same principle for testing DeckProtect with two man-made decking boards under the center of the fire pit. The light brown board on the left is Timbertech capped composite. The light gray board on the right is Fiberon PVC (no wood content).
Results:
With both tests there was no damage whatever to the Pressure Treated wood, the composite decking or the PVC decking. Because of the way the test deck is constructed, we were able to check the surface temperature of the decking during the burn. And there the temperature on the surface of the decking boards directly under the center of the DeckProtect ranged from 105° F. to 135° F. The surface temperature of the board 3" away from the DeckProtect were heated by radiant heat from under the fire bowl to temperatures as high as 175° F.