Fixin' The Deck Part 1

This is a photo of the deck at the side of our house...or above the garage/basement. On the face of it, it's a nice deck, but it has some significant issues. For a start, it is constructed above finished space - mostly the garage - which means it has to be waterproof. The person who installed it thought that the way to make it watertight was by packing the boards really close together....oops... 

Sizeable gaps between deck boards are essential for efficient drainage and circulation of air below the deck. Their absence leads to all kinds of problems, starting with vegetation growing between the boards....

...and serious water intrusion in a number of places including at the front of the garage above the vehicle door (technically outside the garage)...

...and inside the garage where water has killed off two (2) of my strip lights and causes shorts in the remaining ones under wet conditions - the day after rain, the garage is usually a dark place.

We get the most water infiltration in the basement. I have to be careful not to leave anything critical in these areas during the winter months. I'm pretty sure water has killed two or three of the expensive LED strip lights I put up in this area....something definitely did.

there's a stain in ma basement...

...what am I gonna do ?

Clearly something has to be done about all of this. The question is....what exactly? I still don't know, which is why it has taken several years of contemplation before this project has worked its way to the top of the list. I'm hoping that if I can make it so the roof surface under the deck drains correctly and efficiently, then maybe it wont leak. Or maybe it wont leak as much. Either way, I have to do something....

The deck was slated to start the weekend after we had all the BAMA folks over for a BBQ. But since then we've had a slew of baking hot weather and a number of other more interesting things to do. This past Monday happened to be the first cloudy day we've had for ages, and since I had been at the desk all weekend, I decided the time had come to start ripping up the deck.

The deck boards are not wood - they are manufactured from some sort of composite/plastic material so they never rot or need to be painted or stained. This material is expensive compared to real wood but obviously lasts a lot longer. I'm not certain the deck boards are going back, but I want to maintain that option, so I took my time with the demo phase.

The deck boards have been installed over perpendicular rails which consist of 2"x4" PT lumber. The gaps between the rails accept a mixture of leaves, pine needs and so on, but do not lend themselves to shedding water:

Boards are attached to the rails with clips that install into groves in the deck boards and are attached with square drive screws. I started removing the clips, one at a time, but this was a slow process and there were a lot of screws where the heads were corroded or stripped.

It was much quicker to twist the clips 90 degrees with a pair of pliers; the boards lift straight out this way.

Moving along quickly...until D came out to "help".

The timber rails continue to the edge of the deck where...shock horror...perpendicular rails are present:

This makes it essentially impossible for the roof to drain. I mean, it's not 100% watertight, but it might as well be. 

I was starting to run out of space to store the lifted boards, and they weigh a lot more than timber. So I don't want to have to keep moving them around. And it would be a lot of effort to move them to the driveway or to the back yard. I started trying to clear a patch of the exposed section of the roof, and it quickly became apparent this would be much easier without the rails.

The rails are not attached to the roof - just placed on the surface - but they are attached to the deck boards I haven't removed yet. The solution was to cut the ends off with the circular saw. I had to be super careful not to cut the roof surface:

After cleaning up the decomposed leaves etc. from between the rails, I can start stacking the boards I have removed. The sections of the roof that have been exposed so far are in decent shape. I'm not sure it slopes very much, but I will take up all the deck boards before I measure the slope.

I just got done stacking all the loose boards when...it started raining! It was seriously weird. It never rains in the middle of August!

After the shower passed, I came back out and lifted another few rows of boards. I have a scale plan of the deck, and all the boards are numbered, so I can put them back if I need to.

This is as far as I got on the first day. After cleanup I have filled more than half of the green bin with leaf mulch and pine needles and I've removed well over half the deck boards. 

To be continued....