Concrete Patio or Composite Decking: What Fits Your North Shore Lot

The lot decides more than the finish does

Concrete works as a poured slab sitting on prepared ground, which means it wants a location that is already close to grade, or can be brought close to grade with fill and compaction. On a flat or gently sloped backyard, a concrete patio is the simpler structure: excavate, compact a gravel base, form it, pour it, and it sheds rain as a solid surface with a slope built into the finish.

Composite decking is a surface material fastened to a structural frame, joists on posts and beams, and that frame is what actually does the work of getting you out over a slope, a walkout basement, or a grade change without a retaining wall. On the steeper North Shore lots, in areas like Deep Cove, upper Lynn Valley, and parts of West Vancouver where the house sits well above the natural grade at the back, a raised deck is often the only practical way to get usable outdoor space at all. In that situation the material comparison is almost beside the point, since a poured slab is not an option without a substantial retaining structure underneath it.

Where both are genuinely on the table, ground-level backyards with no meaningful slope, is where the rest of this comparison actually matters.

What each one costs in 2026

Concrete patio work runs $18 to $35 per square foot installed on the North Shore in 2026, with the range driven by finish. A broom-finished slab sits at the low end, stamped or exposed-aggregate concrete moves toward the middle, and a full stone-look stamped and coloured finish with a sealer reaches the top of the range.

Composite decking runs $35 to $65 per square foot installed, and that figure includes the structural frame, not just the decking boards on top. A simple low deck on a few posts sits toward the lower end. A raised deck over a walkout basement, with taller posts, additional footings, and a code-compliant guard system, runs toward the upper end, and a deck with built-in lighting, a privacy screen, or a roof structure over it goes higher still.

The framing underneath a composite deck is usually pressure-treated lumber, since the composite boards are a wear surface, not a structural member. That frame has its own lifespan and its own moisture exposure, which matters more on the North Shore than in a drier climate, and it is a cost most composite quotes bury inside a single per-square-foot number rather than breaking out separately.

How each one handles Vancouver's rain

The Lower Mainland gets over 1,500 millimetres of rain a year in most North Shore areas, and that changes how each material actually performs compared with how it performs in a marketing brochure written for a drier market.

A concrete patio, built with the correct slope away from the house, sheds rain immediately across the whole surface. There is nothing underneath it to trap moisture, because there is no cavity. The failure modes on concrete here are surface ones: efflorescence, the white mineral deposit that appears when water moves through the slab and evaporates at the surface, and spalling from freeze-thaw cycles when water gets into surface pores and expands. Both are manageable with a properly cured slab, correct air content in the concrete mix, and a quality sealer reapplied every few years.

Composite decking sheds surface water well, since the boards themselves do not absorb moisture the way old wood decking did. The real question with composite on the North Shore is what happens underneath the boards, in the gap between the decking and the ground or the space below. If that area does not drain and ventilate, it becomes a damp cavity, and the pressure-treated frame underneath, along with any storage space below the deck, stays wet for long stretches through a North Shore winter. A deck built with proper spacing between boards, a drainage system under the frame on decks over living space, and ventilation at the skirting performs well. A deck built without those details traps water exactly where you cannot see it.

The detail that decides which failure mode you get is whether the deck sits over living space. A composite deck built directly over a basement walkout or a lower patio needs a true waterproof membrane system under the frame, not just gapped boards, because water passing between the boards has to go somewhere other than the room below.

Maintenance: what each one actually asks of you

Concrete asks for very little on a normal year. Rinse it, keep debris and organic matter from staining the surface, and reseal a stamped or coloured finish every 2 to 3 years to maintain the colour and protect against moisture intrusion. A plain broom-finished slab can go longer between sealing without much visible consequence. The main risk over time is cracking, usually from ground movement or a control joint that was not cut deep enough or spaced correctly during the pour, and a properly built slab with control joints every 2.4 to 3 metres manages that risk from the start.

Composite decking is marketed as low-maintenance compared with wood, and for the surface itself that is accurate: no staining, no sanding, occasional washing to clear algae or mildew, which grows more readily on composite in a shaded, damp North Shore backyard than most owners expect from the marketing. What composite does not eliminate is inspection of the structure underneath it. Fasteners, joist hangers, and the ledger connection to the house all need periodic checking, the same as they would on a wood deck, because the composite boards on top tell you nothing about the condition of the frame they are fastened to.

Neither material is maintenance-free. Concrete trades occasional resealing for structural simplicity. Composite trades surface upkeep for a frame that needs the same periodic attention any elevated wood structure needs in a wet climate.

Lifespan, honestly stated

A properly installed concrete patio, poured over a compacted and drained base with correct air-entrainment in the mix for our freeze-thaw cycles, lasts 25 to 40 years before it needs replacement rather than repair. Cracking can appear earlier, but a cracked slab is often still functional for decades; it is a cosmetic and sometimes a tripping-hazard issue rather than a failure of the whole system.

Composite decking boards themselves typically carry manufacturer warranties in the 25 to 50 year range against staining, fading, and structural failure of the board material, and quality composite genuinely holds up well on the surface. The frame underneath is the piece with the shorter honest lifespan. Pressure-treated lumber in a wet, shaded North Shore backyard, especially where drainage and ventilation under the deck were not built in properly, can need structural attention well before the composite boards on top show any wear at all. A deck that looks brand new on the surface at year 15 can still need joist and post replacement underneath if the moisture management was never right.

That mismatch, a long-lived surface on a shorter-lived frame, is the single most common thing we find when we are asked to assess an older composite deck for a homeowner who assumed the whole structure carried the boards' warranty.

BC Building Code guard height requirements for elevated decks

Any raised deck on the North Shore runs into a guard requirement the moment it clears a certain height, and this is where composite decks on sloped lots need real design attention rather than an afterthought railing kit from a hardware store.

The BC Building Code requires a guard where a walking surface is more than 600 millimetres above the adjacent ground or floor level. Where required, Article 9.8.8.3 sets the minimum guard height at 900 millimetres for a walking surface serving a single dwelling unit where the walking surface is not more than 1.8 metres above the adjacent ground level, and 1,070 millimetres where the walking surface is higher than that. On the sloped lots where a composite deck is most likely to be the right choice in the first place, walkout decks over a basement or a steep drop-off, that higher 1,070 millimetre threshold applies more often than owners expect.

Guards also have opening limits. A guard must be built so that a 100-millimetre sphere cannot pass through any opening in it, which governs baluster spacing and rules out a lot of the open-rail aesthetics homeowners bring in from Pinterest without checking the code first. Getting this wrong is one of the more common items that stalls a deck permit at inspection, because it is easy to design a railing that looks right and fails the sphere test by a few millimetres.

Which one we actually recommend, and why

For a ground-level backyard with no meaningful slope, in neighbourhoods like Norgate or the flatter parts of Edgemont, we lean toward concrete more often than not. It is the simpler structure, it has fewer places for water to hide, and the long-term maintenance is lower-effort even though it needs occasional resealing.

For a sloped lot or a walkout basement situation, common in Deep Cove, upper Lynn Valley, and much of West Vancouver's hillside terrain, composite decking on a properly engineered frame with real drainage and ventilation underneath is the right call, because it is often the only way to get usable outdoor space without a major retaining wall project. The cost premium over concrete is the cost of the structure that makes the space possible at all.

The mistake we see most often is choosing composite for its low-maintenance reputation on a lot where concrete would have been simpler, cheaper, and just as durable, or building a composite deck over a basement walkout without a proper membrane because the quote didn't include one. Match the material to what the lot actually needs, and the maintenance conversation mostly takes care of itself.