This neighborhood has/had aesthetic covenants, so most of the houses have no guttering. I don’t understand mixing wood-to-ground decking with no hard-surface under the pillars AND without directing water away. Seems silly.
What would you to do short of replacing the entire decking with composite wood at great expense?
I am considering
Bottle jacking the main corner of the porch to get the load off that pillar.
Remove it,
get some pavers OR deck blocks,
get them level,
put the old (or replacement) post back in place on its new hard footing,
then pull up the remaining decking (I’m already sick of this job in my head),
replace the joists with composite or treated
replace decking and railing.
Any flaws? Advice?
The issue for me is how the end of all the decking is rotten back at least 6 inches. What does one do? Can I splice in fresh decking without it looking terrible? Or will I have to replace the entire 18 feet of deck planks (the longest ones) all for the 6 inches of rot on the end?
Personally, not an expert, but I don’t think pavers or even deck blocks are going to do anything; unless they are supported with adequate pack underneath, they will just sink into the mud.
Another question is whether your area gets cold enough for the ground to freeze in the winter, which adds another layer of mess on top of it.
You should be able to salvage the non-rotted parts of the boards and supplement them with new boards; since they appear to be painted, you should be able to do that so it doesn’t look bad. But it will be at best a temporary solution.
It’s a lot worse than silly to have no gutters and no way to direct the water coming down off your roof away from your house (I realize this is not the way you would rather have it). If This Old House has taught me anything, it is that water is the enemy. You could easily have rot in the structural timber in your house. Aside from neighborhood aesthetic covenants (which is a huge red flag against buying such a house to me) doesn’t your local jurisdiction have any building codes?
I want to know how the house is built on the ground.
If it is equally joists laying on dirt with wooden 4x4 “pilings” driven into dirt your goal should be to hide the faults in your deck as cheaply as possible followed by selling the house now, before the whole thing rots into the good, albeit wet, Earth. Which it most assuredly in in the process of doing right now.
Assuming there is a house worth saving here, the next step is to cut off all the deck, put in proper piles on steel feet into concrete postholes, and build a new deck above grade. If you need to reduce some grade under the present deck to have room to do all that, so be it.
This is not something you can half-ass and still save your house from destruction. You can reduce the cost by using amateur labor. You cannot reduce the cost by reducing the scope of work nor the thoroughness of it.
IANA pro contractor; we have folks here far more expert than I who can advise you on what to do.
But IMO as an experienced DIY guy who replaced an equally amateur-constructed deck once, you are a man in possession of an open 5-gallon bucket-o-worms. Which, being open, means you get to eat the whole damned bucket-full. Good luck; you’re gonna need it.
Well, I don’t have any GOOD solutions for you. As a contractor, I would advise you to jack up the post(s) and demo the entire deck. Replacing with pavers would probably be the cheapest option… I ran into these in Fine Homebuilding the other day: footing pad which if you are in a low snow-load area would probably work. I would replace the columns, though. No need for the rail other than aesthetics. If you really can’t gutter (which I question–how can a HOA mandate that your house gets fucked up), then put in steel or treated columns and clad them. All this assumes you want to keep the house and it is on a real foundation. If not, well, put up a lightning rod without a ground.
Start with the basic question: how much have you used the porch in the past and would do so in the future if it was fixed? If the answer is virtually none, then the solution is to simply remove it–not fix it.
Looks like the deck is primarily resting on a ledger (which looks rotted), with some additional support coming from the columns (which look rotted to me). The underlying joists look pretty healthy, but the deck slats are rotting at the end exposed to weather, unsurprisingly. Can’t speak to the railing, but in for a dime, in for a dollar.
Your methodology looks fine; it’s just a matter of what can/should be salvaged. New posts, absolutely, probably redwood. I would do poured concrete footers and install pre-made steel brackets to attach the posts to them.
Your present decking is painted wood. I’d go with a synthetic deck material, which requires almost zero maintenance. It’s what I had put in at our last house, and the decking was still excellent when we left 12 years later, as were the redwood posts. The rear porch decking, which was painted fir, was rotting however.
Actually, with another look at the photos, you’re talking about the columns above the deck, aren’t you? Do those support some sort of overhang above? If so, you definitely was to use concrete bases to support the weight. Dig down, tamp well, dump some gravel in the hole, pour your footing, put bolts in place for the metal brackets and let it set up for at least a week.
Yes! We had a porch that got zero use. In the summer as there was too much direct sun, or it was raining. In the winter there was snow. We were due for a new roof, so I asked the contractor what would be involved in extending the roof out over the porch. It was perfect timing for the project.
We now eat dinner on that porch all spring, summer, and fall even in the rain.
Basic question: Are you planning to live in this house for years to come, or do you plan to sell in the relatively near term (within 3-5 years)?
If you’re staying, I would strongly recommend getting a licensed contractor to look at the porch and the foundation of the house. I’m hoping the house is built on a concrete slab, and the porch is the only issue.
If it IS just the porch, I would follow TriPolar’s advice - have a concrete porch poured. Concrete isn’t a terribly expensive approach for ground-level porches like this.
I’d also recommend having gutters installed. I’ve never heard of an HOA or other neighborhood association refusing to allow basic home-protection features like that. You’re seeing what undiverted water will do to wood, even treated, ground-contact-rated wood. I’m not sure even composite decking would hold up for a long time if water is allowed to pool around it. (FYI, we just had some deck work done at our house; all the contractors we spoke with said we COULD go with composite decking, but they all recommended treated wood instead.)
The cylindrical forms (Sonotube) are for when you want a concrete column above the footer. Here in MT frost depth is 4’, so that’s bottom of footer and you need concrete to go above grade, so Sonotube and rebar. If your soil is cohesive, there is no reason you need to have footer forms. Pouring in a hole or trench is just fine (wet the soil, though).
Here’s a further out view of the house, so you can see the PORCH and the PORCH ROOF aren’t some"nothing" structure, it’s not necessarily integral to the structure of the house, but it would be a MAJOR HOME REMODEL to remove the porch.
WE JUST MOVED HERE. We just got married, took on caregiving of my mom and moved to this house as at least mom’s forever home without much intention of leaving after that.
I’m curious if this should have been found during inspections, or if there is anything in this where there’s liability since WE JUST BOUGHT THIS HOUSE IN 2022.
THE HOUSE IS ON A CONCRETE FOUNDATION. The house doesn’t have the issue the porch has. If you look at this photo, you can where there’s a concrete foundation behind where the porch ledger board and decking starts.
House has concrete foundation
Porch can’t easily be deleted (gonna say this is just not an option).
Porch POSTS (ie the pillars holding up the roof structure of the porch) are 4x4 and the bases are not rotten, but it is correct they are supported in places by nothing but the ledgerboard, and in places, JUST THE FASCIA BOARD good grief that’s scary.
I’m going to contact our real estate agent and see what they have to say about all this.
Turns out the covenant is no longer strictly enforced, and a walk around the 'hood last night, I saw a lot of “strategic” guttering–which tells me houses here have found water problems and are putting guttering to direct water in specific ways.
I think that will be my next step after structural repair.
For example one house has guttering just on one angle so the water pours off in a controlled manner.
Thanks for the additional info! I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this. We bought a 35-year-old house from flippers at the end of 2022, and between their cavalier attitude toward the work they did and the issues they just refused to fix, we’ve been spending a TON of time, effort, and money getting the house and yard in shape.
Your porch issue definitely should have been caught during inspection. I dunno what your options are based on that, though. It’s worth researching, in my opinion.
Tride is right: The rail can be dispensed with if you want to save a little cost. If you like the look of the rail, you could add one in at a later date.
Forms are required here. If I recall they specify Sonotubes or equivalent. For one thing, concrete poured in a hole can’t be inspected after the fact. No way to look at a hole full of concrete and know it’s dimensions. Also, without some kind of form the concrete may end up with substantial inclusions of soil making it very weak and eventually coming apart if subjected to freezing.
My recommendation remains the same. Have a concrete slab poured for the porch. You can use it as is, have a pattern pressed in the concrete when it’s poured, or install stone or tile on top of it. You could also put a wooden or composite deck on it if you want, but use pressure treated wood or composites, don’t could on painted wood for outdoor flooring. You will be pouring some concrete because there’s no other way to make those posts holding up the roof secure and stable. If you can’t add gutters put a gravel path around the porch. It looks like you need some drain zones for the runoff from the rest of the roof also.
If you skimp on this work now to save money you’ll have to spend at least twice as much in the future to get it redone properly. I certainly can remember being forced into that position by a lack of money, so skimp if you have to because not doing it all might cost four times as much in the end.
So you have real frost and snow load issues. I assume you have building code enforcement (which should have prevented that construction in the first place). You will want footings and sonotube to grade (or higher) for the posts. Code generally requires treated lumber within 16" of grade. Your home inspector may be liable for not catching this. Any wood construction that close to grade is a big red flag. I would definitely pursue this with the inspector, the realtor, and the local building department. You could easily spend $20k fixing this.
It’s quite likely that local codes won’t require permits or inspections for this work. In Portland, it was only required on a deck that was 30" or more off the ground (ours was). If the columns are loadbearing, that might require permit and inspection. Best way to find out is to look on the county websites for permitting requirements. If you can’t find something specific there, you can go down to the department with a drawing and photos and just ask them.
As for the home inspection: if the rot damage was visible, it should have been caught. Otherwise, it’s easy to miss. We didn’t find out that our back porch underpinnings were rotted until I asked a painter for an estimate. It went from a $400 job to $4000 overnight.
This is feeling more and more like the right move.
I was also thinking I could get away with a bunch of strategic pavers under all the contact points under the deck–but–I’m going to have to tear the whole deck out either way, why on earth would I do it halfassed at that point?!
Money is of course always an issue, but , there are options.
I am to a point in my life where I can fix things “good enough” or “do it right.” I’m doing it right.
I hope there’s some recompence, or offset or SOMETHING because it feels PRETTY MAJOR. I’ve contacted our agent and she’s getting with the inspectors.
The initial response was “if it’s anything that required removing wood to visibly see, it’s not their problem.” But, our entire porch sagged at least 1 inch under a cracked threshold they noted and marked. They didn’t sniff around to see why there’s a 1 inch gap there…? “”
I stepped on a dang nail head-side-up, so I spent most of this afternoon in urgent care.
I’ve removed all remaining nails but I’m taking a break…and some antibiotics.
These guys have liability insurance. You may need to get an expert on your side, but a wood porch with no foundation is kind of a big deal. A good inspector has a remote camera and moisture sensors. Your homeowner’s insurance may come to your help also.