my friend and me were discussing building this framing and he brought up a suggestion i thought i would run by you guys since i have not seen it before. the front deck on my boat is going to be about 4 feet wide by 5 feet long. the first foot of the length is a bench and the last foot of length is a bench, so i am left with a 4 foot wide 3 feet long area to frame. he thought we could potentially use pvc pipe instead of aluminum to support the deck since the aluminum benches are there. my instinct tells me that it would all buckle but i figured i would ask anyways.