Decked Out

As a handyman we know the importance of regular deck maintenance and repair. Finding rotten boards and repairing them is important for safety reasons. Unfortunately, most wood rot occurs in places that can be hard to see. Most early rot will occur under the decking boards, at the ledger boards, and on the underside of stair treads. Cleaning and sealing deck boards will increase the life of your deck. If there are nails that or popping up, just nailing them back down is futile. They will need to be replaced with longer deck nails or screws. The vertical wood deck supports should be inspected once a year and repairs made as needed. Masonry deck supports require less maintenance, but still should be inspected.

I receive a wide verity of deck questions. I thought you would like this one.


Question:
We are buying a two-year-old house that just had a new deck added to it. The deck is very nice; it is one of the things that made us want the house. The deck starts on the ground floor, and has steps going to the second floor deck. It is very sound to walk on, but my husband noticed that the piers holding up the deck are covered in cardboard. Is this normal construction? Will this cardboard hold the deck?
Answer:
The cardboard you see is only a temporary form for concrete piers. It is a common practice to build large decks on concrete piers. To form the round concrete piers, they pour the concrete into a heavy cardboard-like tube. After the concrete has hardened, the “cardboard” form can be removed. The concrete finish can look a little rough and show stripes from the form. Sometimes the contractor will just leave the concrete that way; sometimes they will put a finish coat on it to hide the imperfections. This is very good construction, but the cardboard forms should be removed, to prevent a path for wood-destroying insects to get to the deck.

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