My parents are putting in a deck with a traditional sloped roof. The deck looks fine but I am concerned about the structural integrity across the front of the roof. It is a 40 foot span and there are no full length cross members. We live in Idaho and I worry that if there is much snowfall then the weight will make it sag in the middle or fail entirely.

As you can see by the photos, there is a nice seam right down the middle that is held place by the metal plates on the trusses and a single, vertical 2x4 in the back.

They live in a very small town about 30 miles from anything so they hired the local handyman for the work. I am nowhere close to a structural engineer and I tend to be a classic overbuilder so I may just be overthinking this.

Opinons?

Any other subreddits that I may want to cross post?

Hi guys,

I just purchased a new construction house 1 year ago. It seems like they built the deck with non-pressure treated wood in upstate NY. That includes the load bearing parts as well. What should I do from now to prevent rot/warpping or is it too late?

Is this my fault for not staining it early on or the builder for not using pressure treated wood?

Are the decks supposed to have permit or get inspected upon completion?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Thank you all for your feedback. Is sanding the gray area and staining it with Cutek Extreme good enough?

I have a customer that bought a 2 person coleman inflatable hot tub. It holds 177 gallons of water at maximum and it has a 52" inner diameter, 71" outer diameter. She wants to put it on her deck. At first I thought we just wouldn't want to fill it up all the way but thinking of an estimated 1,100-1,300lbs of water weight over 52" inner diameter that's almost 80lbs per sqft. Right?

Would you consider this safe? or should I suggest another location for the Hot Tub?

EDIT: It has been made clear to me that this is not safe. I will NOT be setting up a hot tub on the deck and will use your insight to help explain to the customer why.

EDIT 2: Now I need to figure out if this deck is safe at all as the 6x6's are connected via bluetooth

My wife and I bought a home that was built through a sizeable home building company. The deck that was purchased with the house was built by a sub-contracted third party. Most of the deck is built well in my opinion but there are a few things I still question. Like how the top rail is toe nailed doesn’t look right to me. Another was how the deck boards were nailed in, leaving a hole for water to just sit in there.

We paid right around $6000 CAD for the deck which is an absolute steal, so we’re a little conflicted when it comes to accepting certain build qualities.

We got an excellent deal, so should we be okay with certain faults?

Would love to hear some feedback from you guys.

So a minor oopsie ..I should have taken the outer box all the way to the pool to have a place to attach to. Is there any way to make this even somewhat load bearable. The pool wall is not fixed...they have some movement.

So this deck is old but sturdy. We are adding some new stairs as the old ones were dangerous and some railings as it didnt have any. We've reused some of the deck boards that were on the old steps/picture frame. We have also laid some new deck boards.

My question is about the existing deck boards. I really dont want to replace it all and am wondering if/how I can restore this. Most of the boards are in good structural condition but have gone a nasty green. We will be replacing ones that are in too rough of shape.

Do I just power wash it? Is there a way to seal/coat it to keep it cleaner in the future? I would rather replace the deck board than paint it, but have no issue with stain/tint.

I am out of my element here and am just hoping for any guidance. Even if somebody has a solid guide that I can follow and they can link. I seem to get conflicting information from friends/family as well as Google. So really hoping to hear from somebody that does this professionally and successfully.

Also I have heard that with new PT you shouldnt powerwash, stain, seal, paint, etc. until it has seasoned for a full year. Is this true and have I effectively screwed myself out of a fix for this year by mixing new and old boards?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Frost line is 48” where my deck is being built

Can I keep as-is to pass inspection or are these not up to code? Also doing 3-step stairs - can I get away with just the vertical 2x4s or do I need to cap it with another, horizontal 2x4 (or the like)? Thanks!

First time resurfacing. I know the gaps aren’t great but we saved money and are happy with the results.

Silly us left a few boards on the deck and now we have tan lines. We were planning to stain this here in the next few months, but don’t want to lock these tan lines in.

How would you proceed? My gut says let the rest of it “tan”, and then stain? I appreciate your time and any input you may have

A friend hired a guy to replace some of the framing under their deck, and I'm not an expert but this seems sketchy

The guy even said there's nothing behind the new piece he tacked to the wall - surely he didn't mean the new joist is half-attached to a piece he just nailed to the siding though

Our old deck was attached via ledger and sat flush with the bottom of the door trim. It wasn’t flashed at all, so I have to deal with the consequences of that still, but the new deck is freestanding and much larger so it extends to the right another 18 feet past the original deck.

The second slider on the right was an addition and isn’t in plane with the rest of the foundation, so it sticks out and if I try to set the height to match the old one it would require a significant scribe on the final deck board to fit.

Thinking of just setting the height so the final deck board will slip underneath the concrete lip underneath that door, so no scribe will be needed and I can gap it off the house for drainage. It would require retrimming and some siding work to fill the vertical gap but it needs to be done anyway.

The last picture shows a laser line roughly where I’m thinking. I have almost zero room for adjustment since drop beams are going right in the piles and have fixed heads.

Would appreciate some insight from people who’ve dealt with similar situations.

Was hiking today and found this absolute beauty of a hunting shack. If they don’t have a hot tub in there yet, they probably need to get one installed ASAP.

Saw this deck in the wild the other day. Might have been 14x14 at most. If we ever get a tornado I think the deck will hold the house in place.

It’s amazing. It gives you a consistent gap and hides the screws. Give me reasons why you aren’t using this…

Taking this Labor Day to show my progress on my first full deck. I’ve done a resurface before but never anything to this scale. 11 months since breaking ground. Did not progress much over winter time. Couple spots to touch up yet.

Just finished this for my favorite clients. They wanted an easier way to get in their new hot tub and a place where they could sit and dangle their feet.

I begged them to let me use redwood. It would have been 100 times easier. They wanted something low maintenance, so we used timber tech (weathered teak).

I explained that it was going to be a complete pain to figure out a way to accomplish their vision without any exposed cuts on the synthetic boards. They also didn’t want to see any of the pressure treated frame. They said… “you’ll figure it out. We don’t care what it costs.”

Help!

Building our first deck, we tore down the old rotted one yesterday and I went to take the nuts off the existing ledger board and noticed there wasn't a rim board. I guess I should have know since floor joist are engineered I-joists. The existing ledge board is just bolted to what im assuming is the osb sheathing. I assuming this is not correct as this seems very weak to me.

My research has not equipped me for this moment, is there a way to connect the new ledger board to the i joists? With blocking or connectors? Really hate to make a complete free standing deck with the amout of rock we had to move for the new foundations. Can't imagine digging more. Thanks, appreciate all the help I can get.

I have an existing 30 year old 14'X22' deck that is 9' above grade. It has a ledger that is connected with 3/4" hanger bolts into the house framing through a brick veneer (this is now against code).

I hired a GC to refurbish the deck and he expected to replace the decking and some of the framing. We didn't need a permit for this, but things got a little more extensive.

The original ledger was bad in a spot so he face mounted a new 2x10 to the existing ledger with screws. However the new 2x10 had a twist and this led to some poor fitting joists. While researching some things, I found that doubling a ledger like this increases the leverage against the brick and makes a failure more likely.

The GC has suggested digging down to the footer of the house which extends 6" from the wall and putting some 6x6 posts flush to the wall and on the footer and cementing them in. These posts would be notched to support the double 2x10 ledger and take the load off of the brick.

Does this seem reasonable?

The decking boards are not installed, but they did put on a knock-off rain escape system. Holding off on anymore work for now.

I know there are Simpson brackets for attaching a ledger through a brick veneer, but they don't support a doubled ledger. So, I would have to trash the existing joists and rain system.

Posts supporting a beam a few feet from the house would also work, but that I want to avoid that if at all possible.

Our deck needs a complete re-face, as our railings have started to rot and fail. We currently have very old, discontinued trex and it's actually held up really well, but unfortunately needs to be updated alongside the railings.

We're currently thinking of doing:

• Trex Jasper boards & drink rail
• Trex signature mesh railing in Bronze, alongside deck
• Trex signature round balluster railing in Bronze, alongside stairs
• Trex signature wedge lights along posts

Would love to know if anyone has any "watchouts" of our selections before we sign the bid. Right now we're thinking of paying higher labor costs for the mesh railing because we like the look & higher visibility, but are wondering if it's really worth the 13k difference. Does anyone have the mesh railings and have opinions?

Pics 1 - 4: Existing house
Pic 5: Top contender boards (we're currently going towards the middle board, Trex Jasper)
Pic 6: Mesh panel railing we want for main deck
Pic 7: Round baluster railing we want for stairs

I'm at the end of this redwood deck and I have about 3" for the last board.

Do I just rip one board to fit? Or divide the space between the last 2 boards? Or 3?