Inspecting An Unsafe Deck

Home Inspector Homewood, IL Inspecting An Unsafe Deck

Hey! This is Sean Bacon of Xcellence Inspection Services and I’ll be talking about decks. If you remember I said in a video a couple weeks ago about a deck inspected out in the south suburbs. But here’s another one from northern suburbs in Addison.

It’s a single-family home and one of the things you notice is that it’s a pretty high deck. Deck construction is very important for high decks. I also noticed that there are bowing of the columns that supporting this deck. Typically, you would like to have a larger diameter column that supporting the deck especially if it’s a high one. The other thing that I noticed is that, there’s an improper footer for the columns that are supporting the deck. When you take a look at the footers that supporting the stairs and as I shake it, they’re not even being supported by footers.

The particular piece of the board here which is called the ledger board is also important. It actually should be lag bolted. What could possibly happen as nails get older? They tend to rust and they lose their strength. A lot of decks are constructed like this and it can actually pull away from the house itself. So what you should do is to make sure that the ledger board is lag bolted and not just nailed on.

As we talked about it, we have the inadequate footers which are under this column but then, we also have a missing foot here so it might be hard to tell when you take a look at the underside of the deck. You can see some unevenness of the flooring which makes the columns heaved up because either you’re missing the footers or the footers are inadequate. This deck is definitely shifted. When you look at the handrail to the stairs and the guardrail to the deck itself, its’ way too low compared in today’s standards

If you’re looking and purchasing for a house with a deck, make sure to inspect the deck first. It may not be as safe as you think. Make sure that it is safe for your family especially during spring and summer.

We are ready to help you. This is Sean Bacon of Xcellence Inspection Services. Give us a call at (708) 329-8625 or you can visit us at the web at www.xcellenceinspectionservices.com.

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