Designing the Ultimate Deck and Outdoors Spaces That Last

Story at a glance:

• DSI offers high-quality, durable, aesthetic options for fencing, deck railing, porch columns, and more.
• DSI solutions are low-maintenance and easy to install to complete your outdoor living area.

Railing, fencing, porch columns—these are often among the first things people see or experience at a person’s home. “This product is something you touch and feel. It needs to look good on your home,” says Lawrence Boyts, vice president of sales and marketing at Digger Specialties Inc (DSI). For 40 years the family-owned DSI has been offering these solutions and more to create cohesive outdoor spaces that last.

Loren “Digger” Graber founded DSI in 1984 in Bremen, Indiana. The company initially served Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, and today supports a customer base all across the central, eastern, and southern US. They manufacture fencing, deck railing, porch columns, and entry gates. Their solutions are not only low-maintenance and provide design flexibility to specifiers, they create a durable canvas that is shaping outdoor spaces today.

“We specialize in railing, and we make fencing,” Boyts says. “Those products plus the porch columns we make are all made to last a long time. They’re high quality.”

Diverse Colors and Designs

Boyts has seen many changes in the industry over the years, especially as it evolved from vinyl products to a demand for aluminum and more. DSI offers aluminum deck railing, vinyl deck railing, glass deck railing, and cable railing to meet any project’s needs. “People want to personalize their deck surfaces,” Boyts says.

DSI’s Westbury Aluminum Deck Railing includes a variety of designs, colors, and textures so you can do just that. Aluminum allows for a wider variety of dark colors that are popular today, too, like DSI’s Tuscany offering. “We’re at the right place at the right time with the right products,” Boyts says. “All of that makes for a beautiful end result. We have colors like speckled walnut, a textured bronze, a textured gray, as well as your black and other colors.”

Tuscany features classic two-rail designs accented with a stylish top rail and three-quarter-inch balusters with a variety of satin, textured, and multi-color finishes and a lifetime limited warranty. Westbury also mixes well with woods and metals or any of DSI’s custom solutions, Boyts says. Westbury Aluminum Columns are produced with premium quality durable lightweight aluminum and come in 12 standard colors. They have a load bearing capacity of 5,000 pounds.

DSI also offers a comprehensive line of Westbury columns to meet virtually any column requirement for residential and commercial uses. Westbury Columns are available in composite, fiberglass, and aluminum.

DSI also offers its expertise for custom-designed entry gates. Whatever designers dream of—decorative scrolls or engravings or heavy-duty gate hardware and structural posts—they can make it happen. “We’re more than just a supplier; we design products and make custom things as well.”

Sight Lines

DSI’s VertiCable Cable Railing is another option that’s easy to install, and its hardware mirrors the Westbury C-Series products so contractors and builders can count on consistent design, performance, and configuration. Boyts says DSI products tie together seamlessly across outdoor spaces.

VertiCable is available in 12 standard powder-coated colors. The system’s contemporary vertical cables and balusters were recently revised to provide even more strength and durability.

DSI’s Veranda Glass Deck Railing is yet another option that offers increased visibility. The crystal clear design incorporates full glass panels into the classic two-rail design.

Powder-Coated Products

Boyts says architects often don’t realize they can get a great powder coating finish that lasts for years because they’re used to working with subpar products that chip off or peel. “I think our architectural grade powder coating is the best in America. We’re one of the few companies that are verified and compliant on several levels and maintain a third-party verification,” he says. “That gives comfort to the engineer, the architect, and the homeowner—and confidence to the distributor and the contractor because they have their names on that.”

DSI’s Designer Fencing line incorporates vinyl and aluminum to reap all of the benefits. With Designer Fencing you get the privacy of vinyl infills as well as the durability and aesthetics of a powder-coated aluminum fence. It’s a great option around pools, hot tubs, patios, and yards. “It gives variety to people for enclosure and privacy around your backyard,” Boyts says.

Especially post-Covid people want to make the most of their outdoor spaces—and that’s not expected to change anytime soon. Boyts says the yard and porch areas have become almost another living room. “All of our products lend themselves to that. We have fencing around the yard, privacy screening, and we have ornamental or decorative fencing. Decorative fencing is used around the front of the house, comes in 12 colors as well, and is beautiful with screwless fasteners.”

Sustainability

All of DSI’s vinyl solutions can be recycled, and aluminum, too, is easy to recycle.

The powder coating in itself is also an environmentally friendly process, with minimal wastewater sent to the city waste stream. What is sent can be treated and released with no special process used at the wastewater treatment facility. “We treat our products with reverse osmosis water, like drinking water, to give it a nice clean finish like you would your car,” Boyts says. “It’s very friendly to the environment versus the old spray enamel booths you’d see years ago. We don’t have any of that.”

Powder coatings are also a more sustainable solution than liquid coatings, he says, as liquid coatings emit VOCs during the curing process.

The Complete Package

All of DSI’s offerings work together for ease of installation with complementary styles and colors. Fences install quickly in the ground, typically around two to three feet deep. “The quality of the install is just as important to make the product look good,” Boyts says. “People like choices, and they like something fast. Buyers today are looking for better quality products.”

All DSI Cable Fence sections are delivered assembled, tensioned, and ready to install. Their CourtYard Aluminum Fencing includes a hidden picket fastener system so you don’t have to worry about unsightly screws, and Regis Aluminum Fencing is available in residential, commercial, and industrial-grade systems—also with hidden picket fasteners.

All of DSI’s aluminum products are covered by a Lifetime Limited Warranty, while their vinyl products are covered by a Transferable Lifetime Limited Warranty. “We’re in an era where people don’t want to spend their time maintaining things. Our grandfathers would have been out there scraping paint, but we don’t do that anymore,” Boyts says.