I would love to have this thread continued, as I am also in St. Louis and am exploring decking material now too. Thanks!

I used to live in Kansas City so I have a pretty good idea of the weather you will be facing. Veka and Azek are both great brands. Neither of them will absorb water, making it impervious to mold, rot and insects. I definitely wouldn't suggest a cedar deck in St. Louis, unless the deck was somehow shaded. And with all the maintenance that comes with cedar, you either spend a week every 2 years sanding and staining, or you neglect it. I would suggest Azek personally, and if you are interested in a composite deck made of recycled material, I would go with Trex. Both Trex and Azek have very excellent warranties and will make you want to spend more time in your backyard. If you take a moment to view our profile you can see that 90% of our work is done using Trex.

Here in New York & as an example the house pictured in background of our profile picture - we are pulling up more & more Trex every year ,it gets saturated with water once the spacing gets clogged up & the water sits on it ,it then swells & then warps as it has lost all its integrity.

We started to use Veka , its lifetime warranty is very attractive to homeowners with large decks to resurface or build , it comes in many attractive shades plus they seem to be adding more & more choices recently .

Another option is Brazilian hardwoods , not all all of them are as expensive as Ipe, They have come down in price over the years for example , Cumaru AKA Brazilian teak has the same Janka rating as Ipe but for a fraction of the cost & has the same lifespan of over 50 years ( last time i checked it was about $2.75 a LF & Ipe was around $3.75)

Hope this was of some help