knoxtom said:

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I live in Colorado in a 25 yo house. The current deck is about 30x12, raised about 15 feet off the ground and it slopes down over a big canyon. It was WAY overbuilt with 2x12 rough hewn beams on 16", 6x6 posts, and a bunch of other seriously heavy construction. That has lead to sagging and it has dropped about 3 inches on the part farthest from the house, causing great stress where it is tied to the house. We were going to repair it, but I decided to take it out and do it right.

Not sure if anyone wants me to post as we go pics but here is what is being done.

Old deck to be removed along with 2 50 foot cottonwoods. Aspens will replace the cottonwoods.

2 50 to 60 foot retaining walls will be built, one 4 feet high and then a second tier 3 feet high, all done with Colorado red rock boulders. Surface will all be lined with water barrier and filled to grade. We need to stop erosion. Lower level sliding doors replaced with french doors. Half of the underside of the deck will be fenced, providing a lower level "garage." All ground under the deck to be covered with compacted granite. May put a hot tub down there as well.

On the deck level the new deck will be 50 feet long and between 12 and 15 feet out from the house. In addition to the existing living room door to the deck, we will have a dining room door added where there was previously a window. 6x6 posts, all steel framework, and trex decking. New deck will have some cantilevering to hang slightly more over the canyon behind the house. Two shaded areas, one is a pergola and the other is solar sails.

Anyway, demo starts end of Sept and should be a 3-4 week process. I can post progress reports and pics if anyone is interested. Not sure if anyone wanted to see a steel framed deck being built.

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Please do post updates with pics... Include closeups of any "blinds" that will be used for hunting!

In for the updates.

Quote:

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you guys interested in watching the progress?

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yes

in!

Ok, i will put up existing pics including issues in the next day or two and then will bring in updates. Plan is to bring schematics to the pikes peak regional authority in a week or two, tear down in late sept, do the retaining wall the first 10 days of oct and build the new deck the last couple weeks of sept. Not sure when the tree removal will happen.

One interesting thing is that 6 engineers have refused to do the plan due to soil out here.

CJS4715 said:

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Post pics of your large deck right meow.

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What is your budget for this project?

Is your current deck sagging?

Not going to say what it is costing. It will be worth it. 6 deck companies looked at it. I also talked to six engineering firms. 3 deck companies wouldnt touch it without an engineers report but no engineers would write a report due to pockets of bennonite clay in the neighborhood. Of the remaining 3 deck companies i didnt like 2 of them.

The deck doesnt really sag as it is so massively overbuilt. It has 2x12 beams every 16 inches covered by plywood then decking. All is supported by 6x6 posts set every 6 feet. Those are set on 10 inch piers. there are areas of rot where water pooled between the plywood and decking. minor, but might as well do it right

One beam is broken where a large cottonwood fell on the deck but that would be a minor repair. Real problem is that the sheer weight of this deck is causing it to sink. It has dropped about 3 inches and is pulling on the side of the house. Even with the sinking, i have no doubt at all you could drive a car on it. The builder went drastically overboard. But those piers wont support that much weight so i decided to take it out and do it right. I dont want to do it again in a few years and this solution should last longer than me.

All i will say about the cost is that it will be less than the kitchen. On that project i am taking out the dining room and combining it with the kitchen to form a huge two island "commercial" style kitchen. That is why we are adding the second patio door, to make kitchen access easier. Also redoing the master bath and an upstairs bathroom and adding a bathroom in the basement.

I will take some as soon as i can find the camera

Well, this is finally about to kick off. Permitting has been quite difficult.

Seems when the original deck was built the contractor (who also built the house) never closed the permit or had it inspected. In fact he never closed it on the house either. 15 years or so later, the City closed it and I live in essentially an un-permitted house with an un-permitted deck. In addition, they never filed a parcel survey so the City doesn't know the limits on my lot.

Lesson learned, always check the permit status yourself on anything you buy.

We submitted the project and the City said they wouldn't approve without an engineer's report and a survey. Said they didn't care about the old unclosed permits. I have already talked to a half dozen engineers who said they wouldn't work in my neighborhood due to some other houses sitting on Bennonite clays and moving.

So the City gave us a few names of engineers who will work our area. First one came back at 2250 for the survey and 6-8000 for the engineers report. I told him to pound sand and eventually found a surveyor for 950 and a firm for 2500 to 3000. Not what I wanted to spend but at least it is moving forward again. They are including soil testing as well as foundation and structure approval.

Long story short, we are finally going forward. Should have the survey in 2 weeks and the report a week after that. Total we will be delayed about a month and work will be mostly in November instead of right now.

West Texas Lawyer said:

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Does your deck lean to the left or the right?

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Whichever is better for drainage.

OP Did you ever get this project completed? I'm curious how you like the Trex decking material. We need a new deck, much smaller project, in Austin and are debating natural wood vs non and looking at Trex and TimberTech in the non-natural materials. Deck plus stairs total is sub-400 s.f.

 

We did our dock three years ago with timber tech and couldn't be happier. No maintenance other than cleaning off the poop deck from the migrating geese.

Do you find it to be significantly hotter than wood decking?

Yes it's warmer than wood decking, but not enough that I would have done anything differently.

I also live in an area where the temperature rarely tops 90

We're in Austin with a North facing deck. Thinking it wouldn't be too hot and during the times of year when it is crazy hot we wouldn't be out there anyway so who cares.

lawless89 said:

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Still no deck pics

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Thank goodness

chet98 said:

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We're in Austin with a North facing deck. Thinking it wouldn't be too hot and during the times of year when it is crazy hot we wouldn't be out there anyway so who cares.

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Even the ipe I left natural on my North facing deck in Austin gets too warm for bare feet at the height of summer. And like you said, when it's too hot to walk on we usually aren't spending any time outside except to walk to the smoker.

Just met with one deck guy here in Austin (Austin Deck Company) and after discussion we're now considering ipe. Are you liking the ipe decking? You're letting it gray naturally?

knoxtom said:

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Deck will probably be finished today. They will still have to install the doors as we are replacing 2 and adding 1 where a window was. I will post a bunch of pics once done, probably this weekend.

I have a huge deck. Sorry, just had to say it

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I bet my deck's bigger...

Alright, let's see if I can remember how to put a photo into a post and I can show the project.

So our deck was 25 years old and showing its age. It was about 25 x 12 with one doorway and a fence around the bottom to form an outside "garage" for storage. 25 years of poor construction and erosion had lead to the far edge dropping about 3-4 inches, thereby pulling on the house. The piers themselves had dropped.

To make it worse, the deck was WAY overbuilt, thereby weighing an incredible amount. They built with 2x10 rough hewn joists. You use those on bridges, not decks.Also, the rock retaining wall was too close to the deck and water was eroding it away.

In addition the deck had a couple broken joists from a tree falling on it and rot in others where the former owners had planter boxes.

Last, we had 2 cottonwood trees, one male and one female. The female covered our lawns all summer with fuzz and the male made us sick.

So we decided to take out the trees, demo the existing deck, rebuild the retaining wall correctly, and rebuild the deck.

I interviewed 6 builders for the project. 3 said no way, too hard. 2 said they would do it un-permitted and just shim up the existing deck, and 1 said she wanted to do it. I didn't want to have to do it again in a few years so we started putting together a plan to take it out and rebuild. Almost forgot, I also wanted to extend it to the length of the house (53") and add a second door to the patio.

Permitting was not pleasant. The city demanded I do a slope test and slope survey since my house is a "mountain house". They did not demand a soil test. No engineers would touch the survey or structural on the project. Probably talked to 10 engineers before one would do it. We almost had to walk away from the whole thing. The HOA was fine, talked to them one time and they said go for it and gave me my letter. I think he wanted the trees gone. Overall took 2-3 months to get my permit. Ironically, closing the permit took 6 minutes, including the walkaround inspection.



Male cottonwood I wanted gone so the aspens can grow and our sinuses quit going crazy.


female cottonwood that ruined our yards every summer. Note the huge boulder and electrical box right next to it. Cheyenne Mountain and Norad in the background.



The old retaining wall and 6x6 posts. You can see erosion was all the way to the piers. It was a matter of time before this failed and the retaining wall was a piss poor job. I knew that if any of these piers failed it would pull the whole deck out of the house and cause a lot of damage. Water tends to drain right at this corner, there is a french drain, but it doesn't work well. That wall is about a 8-10 foot drop at a 60-70 degree pitch. The tree there was really the only thing holding it all up.



This is the old deck after we pulled off the facia boards and saw the broken beam and obvious rot. You can also see the underdeck storage area (or what is left of it).



One more pic of the underdeck storage area and some feeble attempts to control erosion by placing concrete shingles in the worst areas. Deck joists look good in this pic but the ends were all rotten. The cracks in the posts are superficial, they were going to fail unless the piers failed. Last thing, the piers dropping had stressed the old system a lot by increasing the angle at which the joists and crossbeams were attached.


I will post some more demo next from up above. You all have a great weekend.