Laying the Foundation for Decks and Outdoor Spaces
Are you planning to deck your home out with a new outdoor space or renovate an area that needs repair?
Like your home, decks, porches and patios need a foundation. This is essential for providing support, keeping the structure upright, and protecting it from nature’s elements. A solid foundation also helps safeguard your home’s foundation and structure.
Potential Problems
Do you have a deck or patio that detaches from the house? This is a tell-tale sign of a potential problem with your home’s foundation or structure due to rotted foundation materials. It could result from improper flashing installation, not making proper connections to the exterior foundation to secure the deck, or not installing correct footers for support of the foundation or footers for the deck supports. The biggest culprit is water, which can cause extensive damage.
Repair Solutions
If your deck foundation or porch foundation has lost its footing, it’s time to step in and fix it to avoid further damage and more costly repairs. The following are some common problems and ways to solve them:
Footings: Concrete footings provide a solid foundation for decks and porches. If footing repair or replacement is needed, this could require either installing helical pier support (steel foundation rod screwed into the ground) or rebuilding the foundation itself.
Band Sill Rot: Band boards, sill plates and joists are part of your home’s flooring system and sit on top of the foundation. Band sill rot from water damage would require removing and replacing the band sill. Then the deck would be reconnected to the band sill using approved structural screw connections.
Deck Posts: Any rotted deck posts would need to be replaced.
The average range of cost of a deck foundation, patio foundation or porch foundation repair can be anywhere from $3,000-$15,000.
Renovation Preparation
When planning a renovation or expansion of a deck or other outdoor space, consider potential wood rot and foundation footing failure. In addition, be sure your home’s foundation can carry the extra load for supporting the deck where it will connect to the house.
If you want to replace or install a new deck, two options for materials are composite and wood. Composite decks naturally are engineered to have a longer life span and are manufacturer warrantied. If properly taken care of, the average lifespan for a wood deck is 10 years. It needs to be sealed annually – depending on the condition of your deck – using an approved sealing product.
Maintenance Routine
Be proactive in protecting the foundation and structure of your home and any outdoor spaces. The top priority is to keep water at bay. Ensure gutters are installed properly and water flows away from any structures. Make sure water is not settling on or around the deck, the posts or the footers. Check structural connections for any movement. If decking boards are moving or warping, they may need additional screws or blocking underneath to secure them.
Laying the groundwork for a solid foundation is essential to protecting and creating long-lasting solutions for decks, porches and other outdoor spaces.