Easy question... new decking... pull old nails or hammer them in?

[jntmjt1]

My old porch deck was wood. I'm replacing the wood with composite decking. I have the old wood pulled up. There are eight million nails still in the joists. Should I hammer those on in, or pull them? Or does it even matter?

[pushkins]

While you might find plenty of others that say whack them in, the correct answer would be to remove them. Not only will you have future rusting metal in the wood, you most likely will have issues trying to drive in new decking screws (hitting old nails) and this is especially troublesome if your using hidden fasteners on your new composite decking. Many deck fasteners are made of stainless steel (almost all that I use) and they particularly don't like obstructions.