Someone’s got a big deck

yeah, this is well out of my limited range of expertise. one contractor suggested removing/rebuilding the roof over the screened in porch, other thought it might be able to be braced up while everything under is demo'ed.

even if i did have the expertise, the time is a big factor. i can't fathom how many weeks it'd take me to do the demo, do the vinyl siding/gutters/trim, then actually get to building the deck/screened in porch.

That almost sounds like two contractors who don't really know what they are doing.

They may be able to do the project, just not efficiently and effectively.

Are these guys referrals or just off the street type bids?



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Bill,

IIRC, you showed some pics of a multi-level deck and had us dreaming of water slides into the pool and so on.

For these kind of prices, I hope you're getting at least that.

If you're able to get this project going, would be interested to see before/during/after pics.

It's hard to say what the contractors know since we dont have pics of the existing space and what exactly the homeowner wants. He got 2 bids and its expensive, good chance its a lot more complicated than we think.

Yeah, I'll post some more pictures soon. Been meaning to and never got to it.

Pics here:







Look at this, and tell me how long an inspector would take to fail this.

Anyway, the goal really is to save the roof over the screened in porch somehow when everything is torn down and rebuilt. Possibly cutting out the stairs and doing a spiral staircase off the deck to save on Trex costs and space.

I'd like to think that it's possible / cheaper to put up some bracing to hold up the front part of the screened in porch roof in place while new footers / deck is put in place, screened in porch walls demo'ed and rebuilt, etc. The thought / cost of having to move the solar panels up there, and having whatever contractor properly tying back into the roof shingle-wise has me concerned. Hard not to think there's cost savings if the porch roof can be held in place while the other work is completed.

Still trying to get a couple more quotes. 1 flat out would not work with trying to save the existing roof, other thought it'd be possible.

Honestly, trying to save the roof seems to more trouble than its worth in labor.

Working around it, and having to take extra time to save it can cost more than saving it.

Tying in a new roof is easy, IF they know what their doing in the first place.

I suspect the contractor who wants to rebuild the roof knows this or is lazy.

Could go either way.

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I can't imagine saving the roof is going to be cost effective. What are you trying to accomplish? I get you want new siding, but what's the goal with the deck?

Are you going to change the footprint of the deck and stairs? Or is your main reason for redoing it because you don't think it's built well?

It's not built well -- in the first 2 pics, you might not notice it, but those little pieces of wood (along with bolts in the crossbeam above) are what's holding that cross beam up. It's not notched into the 6x6 like it should be.

That beam has a definite bow to it, and seems to be pulling on the house -- the parts of the house right up against the porch/deck aren't level, there's a noticeable dip. The one contractor was scared to stand under the deck. I don't think it's *that* bad, otherwise it would have fallen by now, but there's no way I'd AirBNB this place out with that risk, and the general condition of the wood. That outside porch area is also way too wide, there should be another post there for support. The outdoor shower is under the stairs, and due to the location, feels like a dungeon. Just everything adds up to replace instead of repair.

Instead of replacing planks/staining it, I'd rather just start over and do it correctly, and use Trex or some other composite so I don't have to deal with the maintenance and the ****ing carpenter bees that are everywhere here. It doesn't appear that all of the footers are necessarily sank into the ground either, at least one appears to be resting on the concrete.

Got a quote from my solar guy, $65 per panel to move/put the panels back after. Pretty sure there's 20 panels up there so $1300 for that is almost certainly going to be cheaper than whatever engineering/bracing would need to be built to hold that part of the roof up for the duration of the job anyway.

$45k though for the porch alone seems nuts. Put out some other feelers to contractors so hopefully I'll get some more estimates in the next couple weeks.

Meh. I wouldn't be surprised if the materials were 20k especially if you're looking at composite decking and handrails. You've got a staircase, lots of handrail, screened in porch. Add in new footers, plus demolition of the old structure and 45k doesn't seem that crazy.

Eta:

Yeah I can see it isn't built that well but for a couple k you could have someone come and shore it up strong enough to last a lifetime without worries. At which point you're talking about 40k+ for aesthetics, change of layout, and new finishes.

No, the scaled back 45k was *just* the screened in porch. Only exit/entrance from the top floor. No stairs, no outside area next to the porch, etc.

I need to get back into contracting and just travel the country working on the homes of people who post in this thread.

My FiL used to have a deck company. All they did was decks and fences. They did really well. Now I see why.

Agree with de cap that I'd just have someone repair/augment the supports on the one you have. If it were my house, I'd probably do it myself.

$500 worth of Simpson strong ties, an lvl, and a case of beer should do the trick.

Not sure how a Las Vegas Lifestyle would help here...

After further review, I would lean towards repair, unless the deck surfaces are rotten and the screen in porch is as well.

It really doesn't look that bad, its just an old deck, a little bracing, a new facing, it would do wonders.

And don't ever have anything to do with that fool who refused to stand under it.



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yeah, I'll have to get quotes on that. If it's possible to fix the underlying structural problem with it so the house isn't sagging/deck pulling on it, then great. Ideally I'd like to replace the wood planks with trex but I'm not sure how I'd do that myself since the screened in porch is sitting on it. Maybe leave that part to the professionals and let them figure it out.

i don't believe there are currently any exterior rated lvls on the market. the combination of wood type and amount of glue involved prohibits pressure treating from penetrating into the wood. i suggest looking into either an exterior rated glulam or parallam.

it's very possible I'm wrong but I'd swear the last time I was at Menards they had a display for special order exterior lvls. I was there looking specifically for beams for building a treehouse and thought they'd be perfect. They were about 10% higher than their standard lvls.

i'm not 100% up to speed on what's available, but either way the message is to be sure any wood you're using for a deck is exterior rated.

im having a problem with almost all of the windows in my house now, they are almost all casement windows and the cranks seem to be going bad. they hardly ever catch to open/close and spin freely, or are ridiculously hard to turn. tried tightening the screws in the back but that doesnt work. is there an easy way to replace/fix this? or is it something IN the window and they'd need to be replaced to fix?

id agree here. when i was in hs, my mom had a deck added to our house, plus a door installed in the wall. it was maybe 20x30 total with a depressed section, stairs up and down the edge, and railing on 2 sides. it was somewhere under 20 with normal wood, and maybe 37k with the lifetime w.e its called wood.

Over the past year I've learned to fix a lot of things in my house, but mostly stayed away from water and electricity. Figured maybe some of the things I'm frustrated by I would find help here. So, to start:

I've got a shower that has an overhead rain thing and a handheld sprayer. It's got controls for:

1. Temperature - on the main stem attached to the wall
2. Pressure - on the main stem attached to the wall
3. Handheld spray mode (3 spray modes)
4. Mode? - higher up the main stem attached to the wall, tells it if I want rain, handheld, or both

On the handheld part it says hansgrohe raindance 2.5 gallons per minute or whatever its name is.

The pressure from the handheld (how I normally shower) is awful. I haven't really checked the overhead pressure honestly.

When I took the handheld's head off and ran the shower into a measuring cup, I got a quart in 20 seconds (.75 gallon / minute).

When I detached the handheld's hose from the main stem and got the water directly from the stem, meaning no hose, head, or any of the widgets or filters involved in the thing involved, I got about a quart in 13 seconds, so just over 1 gallon / minute.

There was a filter near where the hose connected to the wall, so I cleaned the small amount of crud out of the way with no significant changes in things. 1 gallon/minute is way way lower than 2.5. The other shower in my house has no similar problem.

I don't really know where to start? The goal being to get appropriate water pressure. I feel like it's gotten worse over the past 6months. We got a new water heater about a month back. If anything, this shower's pressure got worse since then, but things seemed unchanged elsewhere.

the little filter thing might have been the flow restrictor. try it without it in there. either way, there is a flow restrictor in there somewhere to find and shitcan

Thanks, Thinman. I'll give that a shot shortly. My thoughts were that if removing everything and going "straight from the source" were too low total volume throughput, no amount of removing stuff down line could help. But maybe thats wrong somehow.

Relevant part of shower, with hand sprayer above:


End of hose that attaches to the wall (couple stacked little rubber rings + a filter):


This thing is in the main stem after I detach the hose. It is removable and seems likely to be a flow limiter (it has a spring involved). When I talked about the output earlier without the hose I meant without this thing, directly from this area into a measuring cup:


The hose into which the sprayer attaches (just a hose from this angle) and the end of the sprayer head itself (the one with the green an the metal circle in it: