Inspecting A Heaved Deck

Home Inspector Chicago Inspecting A Heaved Deck

Hi. This is Sean Bacon of Xcellence Inspection Services doing a foreclosure inspection on a twenty-year-old property. I am looking at this deck and there are some really significant issues with it. If you’re looking for a house with a deck, these are some of the things that you must look for as well.

As you can see here, there are pretty much floor level and a lot of unevenness on the deck flooring. There’s a lot of it that we need to do especially with the foundation of the deck itself. These are your support columns and it will really support the beam as well. The big issue with this particular deck is that it was initially constructed. First and foremost, you definitely need to have concrete footers which these wood columns sit on. The concrete footers are extended below ground to a level which is below the frost depth because, during wintertime, the ground freezes and heaves everything. This is exactly what happened with this particular deck. As we look up under the deck, you can see how some of the columns are leaning in different ways and the other thing as we pan around to the deck itself.

Some of the support beams are not even in contract with the deck. As we get a close-up, you can see there are portions of the gap between the support beam and the columns. You can see the same thing over there. All of these happened as a result of the initial installation and because they did not place any concrete footer under these columns and it’s really causing a lot of stress on the portions on those columns and the portion of the beam that is actually supporting the deck. Actually, the deck is only being supported by the front columns so there’s a lot of stress with it.

My recommendation to the client is not to use this deck until the necessary repairs have been made. This is Sean Bacon of Xcellence Inspection Services.

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